The Founding Fathers and the Place of Religion in America

306 Pages·2010·1.31 MB·English

by  Frank Lambert

The Founding Fathers and
the Place of Religion in America
Copyright © 2003 by Frank Lambert
Requests for permission to reproduce material from this work should be sent
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All Rights Reserved Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Lambert, Frank, 1943–
The founding fathers and the place of religion in America / Frank Lambert.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
eISBN 978-1-40082-553-0
1. Church and state—United States—History—18th century. 2. Freedom of
religion—United States—History—18th century. 3. United States—Religion
—To 1800. I. Title.
BR516.L29 2003
322'.1'0973—dc21 2002024346
British Library Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available This book has
been composed in Dante Printed on acid-free paper.∞
www.pupress.princeton.edu Printed in the United States of America 1 3 5 7
9 10 8 6 4 2
F O R B E T H
Contents
Acknowledgments
INTRODUCTION
PART ONE Religious Regulation
CHAPTER 1 English Heritage
The Crown and the Church
The Age of Faith
The Act of Uniformity, Religious Liberty, and Dissent
CHAPTER 2 Transplanting the Church of England in the Chesapeake
“Nursing Fathers” of the Church
A Gentleman’s Religion
Religious Outsiders
CHAPTER 3 Puritan Fathers and the “Christian Common-wealth”
“the religious design of [the Puritan] Fathers”
“Shields unto the Churches of New-England”
“a well-bounded Toleration”
CHAPTER 4 A “Holy Experiment” in Religious Pluralism
The “Holy Experiment”
“a great mixt multitude”
Religion, Politics, and the Failure of the “Holy Experiment”
PART TWO Religious Competition
CHAPTER 5 “Trafficking for the Lord” and the Expansion of Religious
Choice
Regulated Parishes
“a Sett of Rambling Fellows”
“as tho’ they had their Religion to chuse”
CHAPTER 6 Deists Enter the Religious Marketplace
The New Learning
Science and Religion
Founders and “True” Religion
CHAPTER 7 Whigs and Dissenters Fight Religious Regulation
Whig and Dissenting Traditions
Warning against “Spiritual Directors”
Dissent against the Standing Order
PART THREE Religious Freedom
CHAPTER 8 The American Revolution of Religion
Religion and Independence
Opposing Massachusetts’s “oppressive establishment of religion”
Triumph of Religious Freedom in Virginia
CHAPTER 9 Constitutional Recognition of a Free Religious Market
Religious Factions and the Threat to Union
The “Godless Constitution”
Ratification Contingent upon Religious Freedom
CHAPTER 10 Religion and Politics in the Presidential Campaign of
1800
“. . . govern . . . in the name of the Lo: Jesus Christ”
“JEFFERSON—AND NO GOD”
“one God, three Gods, no God, or twenty Gods”
Epilogue
Notes
Acknowledgments
WHILE I have benefited from the good offices of many people in writing
this book, foremost in directly shaping this book is my editor, Thomas
LeBien. I am indebted to him for his vision and imagination in the early
conception of the project and his knowledge and encouragement in seeing it
to completion. The book is better because of his work. I also profited from
the critical reading of the manuscript by two scholars, Leigh E. Schmidt and
Patrick Griffin, whose insightful comments sharpened my argument. I am
once again indebted to Senior Editor Lauren Lepow for her skillful editing,
in places making the obscure clear and at others the pedestrian graceful. I,
of course, am responsible for remaining flaws and errors.
More removed from the actual writing of the book, but nevertheless a
powerful influence, is Tim Breen of Northwestern University. Our friendship
extends over fifteen years and has progressed from that of mentor-student to
that of colleagues. As an outstanding scholar and teacher, Tim has inspired
me through his exemplary record of excellence. And he has on many
occasions imparted trenchant conceptual insights, often sketched on a
napkin, that have stimulated my own thinking. He aided the writing of this
book more directly by inviting me to teach his classes while he was at
Oxford University as the Harmsworth Professor. I was able to test ideas on
church-state relations before some delightful, tough critics, undergraduates in
a capstone course for history majors and graduate students in a reading
seminar.
I owe much to the bright undergraduate and graduate students at Purdue
and Northwestern Universities who helped shape this work by participating
in classes and seminars on the place of religion in America. Through lively
discussion and thoughtful papers, they challenged me to reevaluate
assumptions and consider alternative frameworks.
I also have the good fortune of having a wonderful, supportive family. My
wife, Beth, unfailingly encourages my scholarship, enduring periods of
preoccupied silence followed by animated volubility. Our sons, Talley and
William, both businessmen with history majors, provide real or feigned
interest and, upon occasion, direct research assistance, locating and
retrieving archival materials. Punctuating the writing of this book have been
two weddings and a birth, bringing to our family two delightful daughters-
in-law, Caroline and Paige, and a wonderful grandson, William Reid.
in-law, Caroline and Paige, and a wonderful grandson, William Reid.
The Founding Fathers and
the Place of Religion in America
Introduction
IN 1639, a group of New England Puritans drafted a constitution affirming
their faith in God and their intention to organize a Christian Nation.
Delegates from the towns of Windsor, Hartford, and Wethers field drew up
the Fundamental Orders of Connecticut, which made clear that their
government rested on divine authority and pursued godly purposes. The
opening lines express the framers’ trust in God and their dependence on his
guidance: “Forasmuch as it hath pleased the All-mighty God by the wise
disposition of his divyne providence so to Order and dispose of things, . . .
[and] well knowing where a people are gathered togather the word of God
requires that to mayntayne the peace and vnion of such a people there
should be an orderly and decent Government established according to God,
to order and dispose of the affayres of the people.” Moreover, the aim of
the government so instituted was religious: “to mayntayne and presearue the
liberty and purity of the gospell of our Lord Jesus which we now professe,
as also the disciplyne of the Churches, which according to the truth of the
said gospell is now practised amongst vs.”1 Like their neighbors in
Massachusetts Bay, the Connecticut Puritans determined to plant a
“Christian Common-wealth,” what Governor John Winthrop hoped would
become a “City upon a Hill” that would inspire believers everywhere as a
2
model Christian Nation.
Those Puritan Fathers exemplify two of the most enduring views of
colonial America: America as a haven of religious freedom, and America as
a Christian Nation. First, the Puritan settlers had fled England, where
Archbishop William Laud had persecuted them because they refused to
subscribe to religious beliefs and practices that they deemed to be
unscriptural. Now in the American wilderness, they were free to worship
according to the dictates of their consciences, governed only by the rule of
God’s word. And, second, those Puritan Fathers organized a Christian State.
They established their Congregational churches as the official religion of
Connecticut, supported by tax revenues and defended by the coercive arm of
government. The churches defined “heretics,” and the state punished them,
even to the point of executing those found guilty of “direct, express,
presumptuous, or high-minded blasphemy.” Moreover, citizenship in the