Religion and the American Revolution: An Imperial History

417 Pages·2021·7.366 MB·English

by  Katherine Carté

• Religion and the American Revolution
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Religion
American
and the
Revolution
an imperial history
Katherine Carté
Published by the
Omohundro Institute of
Early American History and Culture,
Williamsburg, Virginia,
and the
University of North Carolina Press,
Chapel Hill
The Omohundro Institute of Early American History and Culture is sponsored by
the College of William and Mary. On November 15, 1996, the Institute adopted the
present name in honor of a bequest from Malvern H. Omohundro, Jr.
© 2021 The Omohundro Institute of Early American History and Culture
All rights reserved
Manufactured in the United States of America
Cover illustrations: (background) © Shutterstock.com/Vadim Georgiev;
(foreground) from the British satirical print Spectatum admissi, risum teneatis, amici?
© The Trustees of the British Museum. All rights reserved.
Library of Congress Cataloging- in- Publication Data
Names: Carté, Katherine, author.
Title: Religion and the American Revolution : an imperial history / Katherine Carté.
Description: Williamsburg, Virginia : Omohundro Institute of Early American History
and Culture ; Chapel Hill : University of North Carolina Press, [2021] | Includes
bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2020055721 | ISBN 9781469662640 (cloth ; alk. paper) |
ISBN 9781469662657 (ebook)
Subjects: LCSH: Church and state—United States—History. | Protestantism—Political
aspects—Great Britain. | Protestantism—Political aspects—United States. | Religion
and politics—United States—History. | Church and state—Great Britain—History. |
United States—History—Revolution, 1775–1783—Religious aspects. | Great Britain—
Colonies—America—History—17th century.
Classification: LCC E209 .C3625 2021 | DDC 322/.10973—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020055721
The University of North Carolina Press has been a member of the
Green Press Initiative since 2003.
•For Marshall and Elaine
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Acknowledgments
When I first began to think about the questions at the heart of this project,
more than twelve years ago, I had a toddler on my lap and another child on the
way. I thought I could satisfy my curiosity about the nature of international
protestant community efficiently through research that would be mostly digital.
I could not have been more wrong. Instead, as the research question ballooned,
it transformed into something that has required years of travel, archival work,
and writing and rewriting. More than a decade has passed, and the little ones
are now nearly grown. This book is dedicated to them.
I am deeply grateful to the institutions and organizations that have made
this journey possible. Support from an American Council of Learned Societies
Charles A. Ryskamp Fellowship enabled a year at Princeton University’s Center
for the Study of Religion, where thanks are especially due to Anita Kline and
Jenny Wiley Legath. That year was supremely generative, and I am grateful
to everyone in the CSR community. Further support came from the Library
Company of Philadelphia, the Historical Society of Pennsylvania, the Ameri-
can Philosophical Society, the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland, and a Sam
Taylor Fellowship. The institutions at which I worked, Texas A&M University
and Southern Methodist University, were also generous in their support, and
I would like to thank the deans and provosts at these universities for valuing
research in the humanities. In the project’s later stages, I had the pleasure of
being the Sons of the American Revolution Visiting Professor at King’s College
London for the Georgian Papers Project, an opportunity that provided both
essential time and access to incredible resources. Portions of Chapter 1 were
previously published in the William and Mary Quarterly, 3d Ser., LXXV (2018),
37–70. They are reprinted here with permission.
Many of the most enjoyable moments along the way have been in the more
than forty archives across five countries that I visited to complete this study.
There is no way to list each archivist and librarian who shared their time and
expertise, but a few deserve special thanks. Jim Green and Cornelia King at
the Library Company of Philadelphia, Helen Weller at Westminster College
viii Acknowledgments
Library, Rebecca Jackson at the Staffordshire Record Office, and Oliver Walton
at the Royal Archives were all generous with their time and energy, as was
everyone at Lambeth Palace Library. Someday I will make a list of archives by
reading- room temperature, but for now I will thank the Beinecke Library for
including sufficient heat to its already long list of resources. Thanks also go to
Megan Corley, Grace Vargas, and Arnaud Zimmern for their research assistance.
I have been privileged to share this work with several audiences. I very much
appreciate their questions and comments, many of which shaped the project
in profound ways. Thank you to the communities supported by Mike Zucker-
man’s incredible Salon, the Omohundro Institute of Early American History
and Culture’s colloquium series, the WMQ-E MSI Workshop on “The Age of
Revolutions,” the Rocky Mountain Seminar in Early American History, the
Cambridge American History Seminar, the Colloquium on Religion and His-
tory at Notre Dame, and the Vanderbilt History Seminar for their time and for
their suggestions. The Center for Presidential History and the Clements Center
for Southwest Studies at SMU generously sponsored a manuscript workshop for
this project in 2017. Andrew O’Shaughnessy and Mark Valeri offered thorough
and thoughtful feedback, as did everyone else present. Mark Noll did the same
at a later date, and I am deeply grateful for his feedback and suggestions as well.
Numerous conversations with friends and colleagues have also been impor-
tant for finding sources, developing half- formed ideas, fixing mistakes, locating
good coffee near archives, and generally sharing joy and misery. I have appreci-
ated insights and help from Craig Atwood, Shelby Balik, Kristen Beales, Troy
Bickham, Cyndy Bouton, Arthur Burns, Ted Campbell, Mark Chancey, Lind-
say Chervinsky, Rick Cogley, Emily Conroy- Krutz, Ed Countryman, Heather
Curtis, Camille Davis, Jessica Delgado, Grayson Dickson, Joe Dooley, Margi
Evans, John Fea, Susan Ferber, Linford Fisher, Aaron Fogleman, Brian Franklin,
Craig Gallagher, Jen Graber, Keith Grant, Christopher Grasso, Andy Gray-
bill, Emma Hart, April Hatfield, Ben Irvin, Christopher Jones, Hillary Kaell,
MaryKate Kenney, Andrew Klumpp, Tom Knock, Sarah Knott, Courtney
Lacy, Ned Landsman, Kathryn Gin Lum, Spencer McBride, Brendan McCo-
nville, Christopher Minty, Amanda Moniz, Angel- Luke O’Donnell, Ben Park,
Sarah Pearsall, Seth Perry, Carla Gardina Pestana, Paul Peucker, Andrew Pres-
ton, Ashton Reynolds, Dan Richter, Brett Rushforth, Owen Stanwood, Tom
Tweed, Peter Walker, Oliver Walton, Molly Warsh, Adrian Chastain Weimer,
Ben Wright, and Karin Wulf. Very early in this project I had the pleasure to
be included in an exceptionally wonderful cohort with the Young Scholars of
American Religion at IUPUI. More than a decade later, their friendship con-
Acknowledgments ix
tinues to be a wonderful part of my academic life. Thanks to Ed Blum, Darren
Dochuk, Spencer Fluhman, Becky Goetz, Paul Harvey, Charles Irons, Katie
Lofton, Amanda Porterfield, Randall Stephens, Matt Sutton, and Tisa Wenger,
and to Phillip Goff for making the program possible.
In recent years I’ve been blessed with the very best of writing groups. Sharing
work with and benefiting from the wisdom of Elesha Coffman, Nicole Kirk,
Jenny Wiley Legath, Rachel Lindsey, Jessica Parr, Tisa Wenger, and Rachel
Wheeler has been productive, sustaining, and fun. Elesha, in particular, has
found a way to bring fresh eyes—and sharp wit—to work she has read in more
than eight years of iterations. Rachel Wheeler’s thoughtful engagement with
history and its meaning has been making me a better historian since we took the
German Script Course in the Moravian Archives twenty years ago. Shelby Balik
read and commented on key sections, and Travis Glasson provided a thorough
and helpful read of the whole manuscript. Working with all the folks at the
Omohundro Institute has been a joy. Nadine Zimmerli oversaw this project for
almost all of its gestation. Her thoughtful, informed, perceptive, and yet always
kind suggestions were an essential support without which, on some dark days,
I would surely have given up. Cathy Kelly, Ginny Chew, and Kathy Burdette
have made its final steps a breeze, and I am grateful for their excellent edito-
rial insights and experienced hand. Joseph Stuart provided essential assistance
with the index. I’d also like to thank the outside readers, whose comments and
engagement improved the project immeasurably.
Researching and writing this book has overlapped with half my thirties and
most of my forties, years during which I was also—constantly and urgently—a
mother, spouse, and professor. Essential to this journey has been the guidance
and mentorship of senior women who have mastered the combination of aca-
demic brilliance and human decency to which we all ought to aspire. Thank you
to them, especially, for not pretending it is easy. I could not be more grateful to
Cathy Matson, Amanda Porterfield, Judith Weisenfeld, and, above all, Sylvia
Hoffert for their kindness, generosity, and advice. The community of writers
that Sylvia fostered around her table, with a plate of cheese and a glass of wine,
is something I will treasure forever. Her guidance in the years since has been
just as important.
For the many hours of laughter, relaxation, and friendship that we’ve shared
while this book slowly marched on, I thank the Leybovich- Glikins, the Rosens,
and the Simaneks. To Lynn Dickinson, and to the PCDWA and HPUD clans,
thank you for the friendship and the hopeful path forward you all have offered
for our wounded world. Chelsea Brown, Pam Corley, Kacy Hollenback, and