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The Church and American Destiny: Evangelical Episcopalians and Voluntary Societies in Antebellum America

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 June 2018

Diana Hochstedt Butler
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Extract

The study of evangelical moral reform has become one of the most fruitful areas of research in American religious history. By looking at reform, particularly voluntary societies, social and political historians have acknowledged the cultural importance of religion. Thus, nineteenth-century evangelicals have been recognized for their positive, negative, or ambiguous contributions to American society. Often with great success, historians have expounded and promoted interpretations of social control, capitalist expansionism, and neo-Marxism regarding evangelical social action. Yet, in spite of differing nuances, many of these interpretations follow much the same story line: antebellum evangelicals attempted, however nobly or misguidedly, to impose their standards of piety and morality on the American public. They feared the chaos released by the American and French revolutions.

Type
Research Article
Information
Religion and American Culture , Volume 4 , Issue 2 , Summer 1994 , pp. 193 - 219
Copyright
Copyright © Center for the Study of Religion and American Culture 1994

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References

Notes

1 I wish to acknowledge the Lilly Endowment, which funded this paper through its project “Evangelicals, Voluntary Associations, and American Public Life.” An earlier version was presented at the Institute for the Study of American Evangelicals at Wheaton College.

2. There are a number of very thoughtful and thorough works on the the subject of voluntary societies. See, in particular, Bodo, John R., The Protestant Clergy and Public Issues, 1812-1848 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1954)Google Scholar; Cole, Charles Jr., The Social Ideas of the Northern Evangelists, 1826-1860 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1954)Google Scholar; Davis, David Brion, ed., Antebellum Reform (New York: Harper and Row, 1967)Google Scholar; Griffin, Clifford S., Their Brothers' Keepers: Moral Stewardship in the United States, 1800-1865 (New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 1960)Google Scholar; and Foster, Charles I., An Errand of Mercy: The Evangelical United Front, 1790-1837 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1960).Google Scholar Two important articles on voluntary societies are Banner, Lois W., “Religious Benevolence as Social Control: A Critique of an Interpretation,” Journal of American History 60 (June 1973): 23–41 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Singleton, Gregory H., “Protestant Voluntary Organizations and the Shaping of Victorian America,” in Victorian America, ed. Howe, Daniel Walker (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1976), 47–58.Google Scholar

3. This line of Interpretation owes much to Perry Miller's essays in Errand into the Wilderness (Cambridge: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1956); and Tuveson, Ernest Lee, Redeemer Nation: The Idea of America 's Millennial Role (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1968).Google Scholar

4. The best study on the High Church movement in America is Mullin, Robert Bruce, Episcopal Vision/American Reality: High Church Theology and Social Thought in Evangelical America (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1986).Google Scholar It far surpasses the older study, DeMille, George E., The Catholic Movement in the American Episcopal Church (Philadelphia: Church Historical Society, 1941).Google Scholar

5. Evangelical influence was probably strongest in the 1850's. At that time, Robert Baird identified half of the Episcopal church's bishops and two-thirds of its clergy as Evangelicals. Even taking into account Baird's pro-evangelical agenda, the number for bishops is about right (perhaps slightly less than half). The clergy percentage is repeated in a number of other nineteenth-century sources, but it seems a bit high—probably one-third to one-half would be closer. It is impossible to come up with a figure for the percentage of evangelical laypeople. See Baird, Robert, Religion in America; Or an Account of the Origin, Relation to the State and Present Condition of the Evangelical Church in the United States (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1856), 444-45.Google Scholar Robert Prichard, in his book A History of the Episcopal Church (Wilton, Conn.: Morehouse, 1991), 105ff., rightly points out that, although the Evangelical-High Church split was prominent in the clergy and upper echelons of the church, many Episcopalians formed a kind of middle party that he identifies as “Rational Orthodoxy.”

6. Hood, Fred J., Reformed America: The Middle and Southern States, 1783-1837 (University: University of Alabama Press, 1980)Google Scholar, rightly points to differing attitudes toward voluntary societies and American destiny by non-New Englanders in the Reformed tradition. Evangelical Episcopalians have some affinities to Hood's Presbyterians—particularly those, like Charles McIlvaine, who were themselves from the Middle Atlantic and had been educated at Princeton. For the Merscersburg critique of American exceptionalism, see Wentz, Richard E., “John Williamson Nevin and American Nationalism,” Journal of the American Academy of Religion 58, no. 4 (1990): 617-31.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

7. The Augustinian pattern—as outlined by Tuveson, Redeemer Nation— was the dominant one among sectarians. They often saw a radical disjunction between church and State. The Mormons, however, are probably an exception to this pattern. In this article, however, I am only examining the views of evangelicals within the Protestant mainstream.

8. For the involvement of Episcopalians in the early Sunday school movement, see Boylan, Anne M., Sunday School: The Formation of an American Institution, 1790-1880 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1988), 7.Google Scholar

9. Manross, William, “The Episcopal Church and Reform,” Historical Magazine of the Protestant Episcopal Church 12 (December 1943): 340 Google Scholar; and Wilson, Bird, Memoir of the Life of the Right Rev. William White, D.D. (Philadelphia: J. Kay, 1839).Google Scholar

10. White's approval probably came from the long-standing tradition of voluntary societies in the Church of England. Anglicans formed a number of such societies in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. The SPCK and SPG were both founded by the Reverend Thomas Bray in 1698 and 1701, respectively. On their histories, see Clark, W. K. Lowther, A History of the SPCK (London: SPCK, 1959)Google Scholar; and Thompson, H. P., Into All Lands: A History of the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts, 1701-1950 (London: SPCK, 1951).Google Scholar

11. The best discussion of the Hobart-Jay debate is found in Mullin, Episcopal Vision, 50-59, quote found on 58. A similar dynamic occurred in Anglican evangelicalism as well. See Brown, Ford K., Fathers of the Victorians: The Age of Wilberforce (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1961)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Lewis, Donald M., Lighten Their Darkness: The Evangelical Mission to Working-Class London, 1828-1860 (New York: Greenwood Press, 1986).Google Scholar

12. See, for example, Charles Brickley, “The Episcopal Church in Protestant America, 1800-1860: A Study in Thought and Action” (Ph.D. diss., Clark University, 1945); and William Manross, A History of the American Episcopal Church (New York: Morehouse-Gorham, 1959), 218-19.

13. Two good examples of tracts written for various societies include McIlvaine, Charles P., Address to the Young Men of the United States, on Temperance (New York: American Tract Society, n.d.)Google Scholar; and Tyng, Stephen H., The Connexion between early Religious Instruction and Mature Piety: A Sermon … (Philadelphia: American Sunday-School Union, 1837).Google Scholar On McIlvaine's involvement in the American Tract Society, see Stephen E. Slocum, Jr., ‘The American Tract Society, 1825-1975: An Evangelical Effort to Influence the Religious and Moral Life of the United States'' (Ph.D. diss., New York University, 1975). For Tyng and voluntary societies, see Tyng, Charles R., Record of the Life and Work of the Rev. Stephen Higginson Tyng and History of St. Georges Church, New York, to the Close of His Rectorship (New York: E. P. Dutton, 1890), esp. chap. 6.Google Scholar

14. Episcopal laypeople were as zealous for voluntary societies as the clergy For their participation in evangelical societies, see the personal narrative of Taylor, Jeremiah H., Sketches of the Religious Experience and Labors of a Layman (Hartford: Press of Case, Lockwood, and Co., 1867).Google Scholar Taylor's memoirs include a number of passages on the experiences of Episcopal women in voluntary societies. Part of the problem with the “voluntary society as social control” theory may be the fact that historians have ignored the accounts of laypeople and popular newspapers. By concentrating on the clergy and public issues, historians have overlooked the fact that large numbers of average Americans gave their time, money, and support to these organizations.

15. Manross, William, The Episcopal Church in the United States, 1800-1840: A Study in Church Life (New York: Columbia University Press, 1938), 50.Google Scholar

16. McIlvaine, Charles P., Rev. Mr. M'Ilvaine in Answer to the Rev. Henry U. Onderdonk (Philadelphia, 1827), 4. Both men later became bishops.Google Scholar

17. Foster, , Errand, 236 Google Scholar; and Marsden, George M., The Evangelical Mind and the New School Presbyterian Experience: A Case Study of Thought and Theology in Nineteenth-Century America (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1970), 19–20.Google Scholar

18. Tyng, Dudley A., The State and Prospects of Our Church as Indicated by Her Last General Convention: A Sermon … (Cincinnati: C. F. Bradley, 1854), 3.Google Scholar

19. McIlvaine, Charles P., The Holy Catholic Church; Or the Communion of Saints, in theMystical Body of Christ: A Sermon (Philadelphia: H. Hooker, 1844), 10.Google Scholar

20. McIlvaine, Charles P., Origin and Design of the Christian Ministry: A Sermon … (Gambier, Ohio: Western Church Press, 1839), 5.Google Scholar Italics original.

21. The story of the ABCFM and its influence can be found in Andrew, John A., Rebuilding the Christian Commonwealth: New England Congregationalists and Foreign Missions, 1800-1830 (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1976)Google Scholar; Phillips, Clifton J., Protestant America and the Pagan World: The First Half-Century of the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions (Cambridge: East Asian Research Center, Harvard University, 1968)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Strong, William E., The Story of the American Board: An Account of the First Hundred Years of the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions (Boston: Pilgrim Press, 1910).Google Scholar

22. For the history of the AHMS, see Goodykoontz, Colin Brummitt, Home Missions on the American Frontier, with Particular Reference to the American Home Missionary Society (Caldwell, Idaho: Caxton, 1939).Google Scholar

23. Dyer's autobiography, Records of an Active Life (New York: T. Whittaker, 1886), is one of the best examples of the extensive involvement of Episcopalians in nineteenth-century voluntary societies.

24. Even the Presbyterians were, at times, skeptical of the AHMS as a Congregationalist scheme to “subvert Presbyterianism.” Goodykoontz, , Home Missions, 178-79.Google Scholar

25. Although the sermon was preached on September 28, 1814, it was not published until 1816. Alexander V. Griswold, A Charge to the Clergy of the Protestant Episcopal Church in the Eastern Diocese … Sept. 28, 1814, in Stone, John S., Memoir of the Life of the Right Rev. Alexander Viets Griswold (Philadelphia: Stavely and McCalla, 1844), 601-20.Google Scholar See also Manross, , A History of the American Episcopal Church, 253.Google Scholar

26. Stone, , Memoir of Griswold, 236-37.Google Scholar

27. This is a good example of an early Evangelical Episcopal missions sermon. See Allen, Thomas G., Memoir of the Rev. Benjamin Allen (Philadelphia: Latimer and Co., 1832), 192.Google Scholar The text of Allen's sermon, “The Duty of Spreading the Gospel,” appears in full: 188-202. Published separately as The Duty of Spreading the Gospel: A Sermon … (Charlestown, Va.: Richard Williams, 1820).

28. Old School Presbyterians stopped supporting the ABCFM in 1837 and formed their own society See Brown, Arthur Judson, One Hundred Years: A History of the Foreign Missionary Work of the Presbyterian Church, U.S.A. (New York: Revell, 1936), 27–42.Google Scholar

29. There are two older histories of the Domestic and Foreign Missions Society. See Denison, S. D., A History of the Foreign Missionary Work of the Protestant Episcopal Church (New York: Foreign Committee of the Board of Missions, 1871)Google Scholar; and Emery, Julia C. A Century of Endeavor, 1821-1921: A Record of the First Hundred Years of the Domestic and Foreign Missionary Society of the Protestant Episcopal Church in the United States of America (New York: Department of Missions, 1921).Google Scholar

30. Bedell's report to the board of directors, 1823; in Denison, A History, 1:37.

31. Charles P. McIlvaine, Missionary Character and Duty of the Church. Reprinted many times in the nineteenth Century this copy appeared in Select Family and Parish Sermons: A Series of Evangelical Discourses, Selected for the Use of Families and Destitute Congregations, vol. 2, ed. C. P. McIlvaine (Columbus, Ohio: I. N. Whiting, 1838), 311.

32. Ibid., 314.

33. Ibid., 322-23.

34. Denison, A History, 1:250.

35. Ibid., 252-53.

36. Every one of the recommendations made by the committee was either directly mentioned or alluded to in McIlvaine's sermon.

37. Two years later, in 1837, the Presbyterians made a similar move when they established a denominational Board of Missions under the control of their General Assembly. See Brown, , One Hundred Years, 38–42.Google Scholar

38. Irving, Edward, Babylon and Infidelity Foredoomed ofGod: A Discourse on the Prophecies of Daniel and the Apocalypse, Which Relate to the Latter Times (Philadelphia: Church Missionary House, 1828)Google Scholar; and Croley, George, The Apocalypse of St. John, Or Prophecies of the Rise, Progress and Fall of the Church of Rome… and the Final Triumph of Christianity (Philadelphia: Littell, 1827).Google Scholar

39. Allen, Memoir of the Rev. Benjamin Allen, 362. Edward Irving's prophetic views were extreme. He is considered an early premillennialist. That Allen would include his brother's interest in Irving without comment indicates that Irving was being read and, it appears, being accepted by Evangelical Episcopalians. For Irving's views on the Church of England, see Bebbington, D. W., Evangelicalism in Modern Britain: A History from the 1730s to the 1980s (London: Unwin Hyman, 1989), 76–91 Google Scholar; and Sandeen, Ernest, The Roots of Fundamentalism: British and American Millenarianism, 1800-1930 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1970), 14–29.Google Scholar Sandeen argues that “only after 1840 did British millenarian thought begin to attract attention in the United States.” Allen's interest in British millenarianism was contemporary with Irving's own work. It does not appear that Allen was isolated in his interest. Thomas Allen, editor of Benjamin Allen's memoirs, published in 1832, records all Allen's millenarian comments in matter-of-fact style. It appears that he expected his audience to be familiar with British millenarianism and the study of prophecy. Evangelical Episcopalians, therefore, were thinking about the millennium a full twelve to fifteen years before Sandeen indicated, and they helped to transmit British millenarian thought to other American Evangelicals. Sandeen does point out that Episcopal ministers were keenly interested in millenarianism following 1840. See Sandeen, , Roots of Fundamentalism, 55–56.Google Scholar

40. Ibid., 543.

41. Henshaw, J. P. K., An Inquiry into the Meaning of the Prophecies Relating to the Second Advent of Our Lord Jesus Christ (Baltimore: Daniel Brunner, 1842)Google Scholar; Isaac Lebagh published the periodical American Millenarian and Prophetic Review; Winthrop, Edward, Lectures on the Second Advent of Messiah: and Other Important Subjects (Cincinnati: J. B. Wilson, 1843)Google Scholar; Shimeall, Richard C., Prophecy, Now in Course of Fulfillment (New York: Stanford and Sword, 1844)Google Scholar; and Hare, George Emlen, Christ to Return: A Practical Exposition of the Prophecy Recorded in the 24th and 25th Chapters of the Gospel According the St. Matthew (Philadelphia: H. Hooker, 1840).Google Scholar Shimeall left the Episcopal church during the Oxford crisis and became a Presbyterian. Millennialism in the Episcopal church occasionally extended beyond the Evangelical party; Levi S. Ives, the High Church bishop of North Carolina and future Roman Catholic convert, wrote the preface to Hare's book.

42. Sandeen, Roots of Fundamentalism; Timothy Weber, Living in the Shadow of the Second Coming: American Premillenialism, 1875-1925 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1979). Sandeen and Weber may have underestimated the extent of premillennial views in antebellum America. See Gaustad, E. S., ed., The Rise of Adventism: Religion and Society in Mid-Nineteenth Century America (New York: Harper and Row, 1974).Google Scholar

43. This also seems to be true of William Jay. Jay, originally a postmillenialist, became discouraged by the growth of Roman Catholicism in the 1840's and began to wonder if Christ might only return after a period of decline in the world. See William Jay to Charles McIlvaine, April 15, 1843, McIlvaine Collection, Kenyon College, Gambier, Ohio.

James Moorhead makes the same point about the tensions between optimism and pessimism in American millennialism in “Between Progress and Apocalypse: A Reassessment of Millennialism in American Religious Thought, 1800-1880,” Journal of American History 71 (December 1984): 524-42; see also Doan, Ruth Alden, The Miller Heresy, Millennialism and American Culture (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1987), 13–14.Google Scholar

44. Stephen Tyng, for example, was clearly a dispensational premillennialist by the end of his career. His good friend McIlvaine remained a postmillennialist. This stopped neither of them from participating in various missions and voluntary societies, and both believed themselves to be working to further the kingdom of God.

45. McIlvaine, Charles P., The Evidences of Christianity; in Their External, or Historical Division: Exhibited in a Course of Lectures (Philadelphia: Smith and English, 1859), 298, 313.Google Scholar Evidences was an immensely popular book. First printed in 1832, it went through more than thirty editions in America and Europe and remained in print for one hundred years. The chapter on Christian benevolence, “The Fruits of Christianity,” from which the two quotes are taken, was printed as a separate tract as well.

46. [William Jay], A Letter to the Rt. Rev. Bishop Hobart, Occasioned by the Strictures on Bible Societies Contained in His Late Charge to the Convention of New York (New York: J. P. Haven, 1823), 29.

47. Jay, A Letter, 12-20.

48. McIlvaine, Charles P., “Address of Rev. Prof. McIlvaine,” in First Annual Report of the American Tract Society (New York, 1826), 37.Google Scholar

49. Ibid., 38.

50. Ibid.

51. “Catholicus,” Letter to the Rt. Rev. Alonzo Potter.. .In Vindication of the Principle of Christian Union for the Propagation of the Gospel (Philadelphia: J. W. Moore, 1850), 66-67.

52. The two best recent studies of religious competition and conflict in antebellum America are Butler, Jon, Awash in a Sea of Faith: Christianizing the American People (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1990)Google Scholar; and Hatch, Nathan, The Democratization of American Christianity (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1989).Google Scholar

53. McIlvaine, Charles P., “Bishop M'Ilvaine's Speech before the British and Foreign Bible Society,” Episcopal Recorder 13, no. 14 (July 4, 1835): 56.Google Scholar

54. I believe that other evangelicals shared this view. See, for example, the theories of Methodists Jesse Lee and Nathan Bangs as outlined in Richey, Russell E., “Methodism and Providence: A Study in Secularization,” in Faith and Identity: Christian Political Experience, ed. Loades, David and Walsh, Katherine, Studies in Church History 26 (London: Blackwell, 1990), 51–77.Google Scholar

55. McIlvaine, Charles P., The Necessity of Religion to the Prosperity of the Nation: A Sermon Preached on the Day of Public Thanksgiving and Prayer, Appointed by the Governor of Ohio (Gambier, Ohio: Myers, 1838), 4.Google Scholar

56. Ibid.

57. Ibid.

58. Ibid.

59. Ibid., 14.

60. Or, perhaps, as Daniel Walker Howe recently stated this, by “voluntary discipline.” He points out that all evangelical moral reform “was redemptive in purpose.” See Howe, Daniel Walker, “The Evangelical Movement and Political Culture in the North during the Second Party System,” Journal of American History 77, no. 4 (March 1991): 1216-39.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

61. The division between America and Israel is very clear in McIlvaine's thought. While he will sometimes use the image of a new Israel in America, there is never the confusion of equating America with Israel. The millennial kingdom, for McIlvaine, was much grander, much bigger, than America. He does not confuse the two. He does, however, want America to be faithful to that kingdom, and sometimes his language can be confusing to anyone unfamiliar with his whole corpus of writings.

62. There is very little critical material about the Oxford Movement in America. DeMille's Catholic Movement in the American Episcopal Church and E. Clowes Chorley's Men and Movements in the American Episcopal Church (New York: Scribner, 1946) are reliable guides to the events of the time but are dated in their interpretations. All Episcopal church histories have chapters on the Oxford Movement, the newest being Prichard, A History of the Protestant Church (1991).

63. For a fuller discussion of this argument, see Diana Hochstedt Butler, “Standing Against the Whirlwind: The Evangelical Party in the Nineteenth Century Protestant Episcopal Church” (Ph.D. diss., Duke University, 1991), 167ff.

64. On the beginnings of the ACMS, see Dyer, Records, 216-18; Emery, A Century, 143-61; and Andrews, C. W., The Voice of Experience, Or Thoughts on the Best Method of Conducting Missions in the Protestant Episcopal Church, in Its Present State (Philadelphia: Daniels and Smith, 1852).Google Scholar

65. See Colton, Calvin, Thoughts on the Religious State of the Country: With Reasons for Preferring the Episcopacy (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1836).Google Scholar Although Colton was no evangelical, Evangelical Episcopalians approved of his book. See the review in Episcopal Recorder 14, no. 9 (May 28, 1836): 35.

66. J. T. Brooke, Union: How Far Consistent or justifiable in View of the Present Differences between Churchmen (Cincinnati: Moore, Wilstach, Keys, 1859), 15.

67. Slocum, “The American Tract Society,” 134-40.

68. Tyng, Stephen and others, Our Martyr President, Abraham Lincoln: Voices from the Pulpit of New York and Brooklyn (New York: Tibbals and Whiting, 1865).Google Scholar

69. McIlvaine, Charles P., Pastoral Letter of the Bishops of the Protestant Episcopal Church … Friday, October 17, 1862 (New York: Baker and Godwin, 1862), 9.Google Scholar

70. Charles P. McIlvaine to William Carus, February 1, 1865, in Carus, Memorials of the Life of the Right Reverend Charles Pettit McIlvaine (New York: Thomas Whittaker, 1882), 251.

71. For the history of the Reformed Episcopal Church, see Aycrigg, Benjamin, Memoirs of the Reformed Episcopal Church and the Protestant Episcopal Church (New York: printed for the author by Edward O. Jenkins, 1880)Google Scholar; Cummins, A. M., Memoir of George David Cummins, D.D., First Bishop of the Reformed Episcopal Church (Philadelphia: E. Claxton, 1878)Google Scholar; and Guelzo, Allen C., Ritual, Romanism and Rebellion: The Irony of the Reformed Episcopalians, 1873-1930 (University Park, Pa.: Penn State University Press, 1994)Google Scholar.

72. This scale of highly exclusive to completely inclusive works for sectarian groups as well. Since nearly all sects were highly exclusive, they refused to participate in voluntary societies. The more exclusive the body, the less likely to confuse the religious group with the State. The lower the commitment to a particular religious group, the more flexible the view of church and State.

73. McIlvaine, “Bishop M'Ilvaine's Speech,’ 56.