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Prof. Sweet's Religion and Culture in America

A Review Article

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 July 2009

Sidney E. Mead
Sidney E. Mead
Affiliation:
University of Chicago
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Type
Review Article
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Church History , Volume 22 , Issue 1 , March 1953 , pp. 33 - 49
Copyright
Copyright © American Society of Church History 1953

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References

1. “Every Dog Has His Day,” The University of Chicago Magazine, XXXIX (February, 1947), 11.Google Scholar

2. Ibid., p. 10.

3. Trinterud, L. J., “Some Notes on Recent Periodical Literature on Colonial American Church History,” Church Bistory, XX (12, 1951), p. 73.Google Scholar

4. See e.g. Nichols', Robert H. review of Religion in Colonial America in Church History, XII (03, 1943), 65–67Google Scholar. Professor Nichols complains of the lack of treatment of religious thought and of a general “externality” with little “exposition of the inwardness, the spirit aud genius of the forms of Christianity described.…

5. Trinterud, op. cit., p. 73.

6. Randall, J. H. & Haines, George, “Controlling Assumptions in the Practice of American Historians,” Theory and Practice in Historical Study …, Bulletin 54, Social Science Research Council, 1946, p. 25.Google Scholar

7. Ibid., p. 31.

8. Ibid., p. 44.

9. See his The Frontier Spirit in American Christianity. New York: The Macmillan Company, 1923.Google Scholar

10. Hutchinson, William T. (ed.), The Marcus W. Jernegan Essays in American Historiography. Chicago: The Univ. of Chicago Press, 1937. p. 138Google Scholar. Also, Kraus, Michael, A History of American History. New York: Farrar & Rinehart, Inc., 1937. pp. 390, 394.Google Scholar

11. Circuit-Rider Days Along the Ohio. New York: The Methodist Book Concern, 1923. p. 14Google Scholar: “By the middle of the eighteenth century a new society had been born in America, as well as a new section created… This society differed greatly in all essentials from the colonial society of the seaboard.” This view is bolstered with a quotation from Turner which immediately follows. This thesis is not at all promincat in ProfessorSweet's, Religion in Colonial America published in 1942.Google Scholar

12. In the present volume lie is especially critical of the tendency of the Turner historians to overemphasize “the economic motive” to tue point of making theniselves “economic determinists.” See pages 160, 313, 314.

13. This form of the thesis is found throughout his works. See e.g., “The Frontier in American Christianity,” in MeNeill, J. T. and others (eds.), Environmental Factors in Christian History. Chicago, Univ. of Chicago Press, 1939. pp. 390–91Google Scholar. The American Churches, an Interpretation. New York: Ahingdon-Cokesbury Press, 1938. pp. 38–39Google Scholar. American Culture and Religion. Dallas: Southern Methodist Univ. Press, 1951. p. 64Google Scholar. “The Protestant Churches,” Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, vol. 256 (March, 1948), p. 46.Google Scholar

14. Professor Sweet has consistently followed those historians who have emsphasized the irreligion and general religious deadness of the period immediately after the Revolution, as a background for the Revivals that began around 1795 (Story of Religion in America, 3rd ed., 1950, pp. 223–26)Google Scholar. Yet when discussing “The Nationalization of the American Churches” he has correctly noted that this was the period of organization—”… a period of general constitution making, both within the states and in the ecclesiastical bodies” (Ibid., p. 193), and hence presumably a period of considerable initiative and vitality. In the present volume chapter iii (“Breaking Old World Ties: The Ordeal of Organization”) really extensively documents the vitality of the churches as they faced and solved these problems. But chapter iv (“Religion Follows the Frontier”) opens with a development of the idea that “organized religion [was] at low ebb” (pp. 91–96). The seeming inconsistency apparent in tins dual interpretation of the same period is based upon Professor Sweet's typically “Methodistic” (see below)) definition of and criteria for “religious deadness” or “religious vitality.” It also suggests that extensive reappraisal of the period using more adequate definitions and criteria would lead to a more well-rounded and consistent picture of the churches' life at the time. The mode of such reappraisal and the results to be expected are suggested by two treatments of 18th century English church life: Sykes, Norman, Church and State in England in the XVIIIth Century (Cambridge: University Press, 1934)Google Scholar, and Watson, Edward W., The Church of England (London: Oxford Univ. Press, 1944), chapter vii and following.Google Scholar

15. Quoted by Kraus, , History of American History, p. 394.Google Scholar

16. Trinterud, L. J., The Forming of an American Tradition, a Re-examination of Colonial Presbyterianism. Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1949.Google Scholar

17. Referring particularly to Religion in Colonial America and The Story of Religion in America.

18. Compare the statement in Environmental Factors …, p. 386.

19. This is recalled from classroom lectures. See also Environmental Factors…, pp. 383–84.

20. Cross, Whitney R., The Burned-over District: the social and intellectual history of enthusiastic religion in western New York. Ithaca: Cornell Univ. Press, 1950. p. 226.Google Scholar

21. Ibid., p. 70.

22. History of American Socialisms. Philadelphia, 1870. p. 20Google Scholar. Noyes held that “the male element” was entirely of European origins.

23. Cross, , Burned-over District., p. 140.Google Scholar

24. Cannon, H. Hamlin, “The English Mormons in America,” American Historical Review, LVII (07 1952), p. 893CrossRefGoogle Scholar. See also the same author's “Migration of English Mormons to America,” in op. cit., LII (April 1947), pp. 436–55.

25. In Taylor, George Rogers (ed.), The Turner Thesis Concerning the Role of the Frontier in American History. Boston: D. C. Heath & Co., 1949Google Scholar. The article was first published in Fox, Dixon Ryan (ed.), Sources of Culture in the Middle West, 1934.Google Scholar

26. E. g., in Environmental Factors … pp. 390–91; “The frontier was to prove the testing-ground where it was to be determined which among the American churches were to become the most numerous and influential as well as the most typically American religious bodies…. It is a significant fact that neither of the churches which were established by law during the Colonial period—the Congregationahists in New England and the Episcopalians in the colonies south of Pennsylvania— succeeded in maintaining their positions of leadership as population pushed westward, and both churches have remained relatively small bodies. Neither of these bodies developed any adequate method of following population westward. On the other hand, those churches which succeeded in finding an adequate technique in dealing with restless and moving populations in the early West were those churches which became the most evenly distributed as well as the most numerous religious bodies in America.” And see note 13 above for references to other statements.

27. Professor Sweet has recognized religious freedom as perhaps the most important and significant thing in the religious history of America. Nevertheless, except insofar as it is assumed throughout as an essential part of the background, the principle does not play a leading role in his interpretations. I am suggesting that the frontier thesis, by centering attention upon the National as the “formative” period, tends to a slighting of the formative influence of the struggles for religious liberty that preceded. If one considers Religion in Colonial America and the present volume as a unit, the rise of religious liberty is seen as one culminating point of the Colonial period but not necessarily central to it.

28. That is, the statement quoted in note No. 26.

29. In a later work (The American Churches, pp. 135–36) there are indications that Professor Sweet had modified his earlier views somewhat. There he recognizes that “While all of the American Lutheran churches have maintained their European character and theological emphasis to a greater degree than any other large Protestant body, they have, however, been greatly influenced in their forms of church government by their American environment. The Scandinavian Lutheran bodies, for instance, did not transplant their Old- World episcopal systems, but have developed here a Congregational-Presbyterian type of polity, in which the laity have an important part. The same is true of the conservative Lutheran churches of German background.” The tendency here to minimize the significance of changes in “forms of church government” seems strangely inconsistent with the general significance given to “forms” and “patterns” when dealing with other groups. And the emphasis placed upon the maintenance of “European character and theological emphasis” would seem to slight the extensive development of independent “pietistic” or “Haugean” Lutheran churches in America. Two recent Ph.D. dissertations at the University of Chicago throw much light on these matters: Fevold, Eugene L., “The History of Norvegian-Amerjean Lutheranism 1870–1890” (1951)Google Scholar, and Nyholm, Paul C. E., “The Americanization of the Danish-Lutheran Churches,” (1952).Google Scholar

30. It is indicated, for example, that the revivalistic work and the theology of Charles G. Finney was conceived and shaped in important respects by Finney 's attempts to meet the claims and inroads of the Universalists [Waizer, William C., “Charles Grandison Finney and the Presbyterian Revivals of Central and Western New York,” (Ph.D. thesis, Univ. of Chicago, 1944)]Google Scholar. Unitarianism has likewise exrted a similar important role in shaping the other Protestant groups.

31. See, for example, ProfessorSweet's, comment in Environmental Factors.…, p. 383, n. 12Google Scholar; and in The Annals …, p. 46.

32. In spite of this restriction placed upon students, he did permit himself the privilege of a general history of his own denomination (Methodism in American History. New York: The Methodist Book Concern, 1933)Google Scholar, which he rightly looked back upon as playing a significant part in effecting Methodist unification precisely because “all controversial issues were treated objectively” since “the author had no side to defend, no party to uphold” and hence had as the object, only “to tell the whole truth without fear or favor and with full appreciation of all the differing viewpoints” (American Culture and Religion, p. 76).

33. American Culture and Religion, p. 4. For Professor Sweet's general conception of “objectivity” or “historical- mindedness” see this work, pp. 73–76.

34. Sometimes the finger becomes almost tangible, e.g., “The Methodists seemed ideally suited to meet the immediate needs of a moving and rest. less population” (Environmental Factors …, p. 393). And see also, The American Churches, pp. 41–48.

35. As expounded, for example, by Niebuhr, H. Richard, The Meaning of Revelation. New York: The Macmillan Company, 1946. Chap. 1.Google Scholar

36. The definition of Christianity in these general terms underlies and pervades all of Professor Sweet's work. But see, for example, The Annals …, p. 44: “The left-wing emphasis on religion as a way of life rather than the emphasis on creed became and remains the common mans pattern of Christianity in America.” And again, The American Churches, p. 81: “The concept of the church which has come to prevail in American Protestantism is that of a voluntary society, and not of an authoritarian institution tied to the state. Its sacraments are means of grace rather than symbols of historic confessions.”

37. Methodism in American History, p. 335.

38. See, for example, Professor Sweet's comments on “the crisis theology” or “pessimistic philosophy” in The American Churches, pp. 138–39; and in The Story of Religion in America (3rd ed., 1950), pp. 450–51Google Scholar. For a suggestion of the larger context, see e.g. article by Lowell, C. Stanley, “Let's Bury the Corpse” in The Pastor, XVI (09 1952), 3–4Google Scholar, together with letters and articles in commendation or reply in subsequent issues. For one example of how Professor Sweet's “Methodism” has conditioned his interpretation, see Note 14 above.

39. History of American History, p. 394.

40. Environmental Factors…, p. 397.

41. But one suspects that the “secular” historians have been more impressed and influenced by the “McMaster” aspect of his work.

42. “Denominationalism” as so well delineated by ProfessorPauck, Wilhelm, “Theology in the Life of Contemporary American Protestantism,” The Shane Quarterly, XIII (04, 1952), 33–50.Google Scholar

43. I refer, for example, to the work of such men as Collingwood, R. G., and Butterfield, Herbert in England, and to Stephenson's, GeorgeThe Puritan Heritage (New York: The Macmillan Co., 1952)Google Scholar, in which see the “Epilogue.” For a summary of these, and similar developments, see Harbison, E. Harris, “The ‘Meaning of History’ and the ‘Writing of History,’” Church History, XXI (06, 1952), 97–107.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

44. “Limiting and frustrating” for Christian historians precisely because, as Nichols, James H. has put it, “positivist history must be secular history”“The Art of Church History,” Church History, XX (03, 1951), p. 6.Google Scholar

45. In Tillich, Paul, The Protestant Era, Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press, 1948. p. 57.Google Scholar

46. Billington, Ray A., Loewenherg, B. J., and Brockunier, S. H., The United States; American Democracy in World Perspective. New York: Rinehart and Company, 1947. Preface.Google Scholar

47. I have argued elsewhere that “The Task of the Church Historian” is to be “an evangelist” (The Chronicle, XII (July, 1949), 127–43.Google Scholar