Left2Right

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Posted by: Chris

Any links for those numbers? What are they today? Where were they during the 19C & 20C?

Posted by: Chris | May 24, 2005 3:45:42 PM

Posted by: Aaron S.

Fascinating, I hope you follow this up with another post containing some insight into the current state of religiosity in the US.

Posted by: Aaron S. | May 24, 2005 4:46:21 PM

Posted by: Mona

Aaron S. writes: Fascinating, I hope you follow this up with another post containing some insight into the current state of religiosity in the US.

I think he gave that insight with his final sentence: It still is.

Myself, I find his understanding of religionists, and the Great Awakenings, quite crabbed. A simplistic model in which the secularists reflect all that is noble and good, as against the benighted forces of Religion, misses a good deal of human reality. There is more to say about attempts to retain a large aspect of culture, which religion inarguably is, than that such efforts are "reactionary."

Invoking Stalin in a post contrasting religionists with the supposed glories of secularism, is especially ironic.

Posted by: Mona | May 24, 2005 5:10:43 PM

Posted by: Austin B

The Great Awakening did not try to "stem the decline in religiosity ... by reimposing strict Calvinism across the board." This is wrong in two respects:

First, the Awakeners were not trying to "reimpose" anything. Rather, the Awakeners sought to *undermine* the established clergy. Basically, an itinerant preacher would show up in town, and suddenly all the locals would start questioning the authority of the local clergy (and political leaders for that matter). The Awakening was anti-authoritarian.

Second, the Awakeners were not always strict Calvinists. On the contrary, they oftentimes had Arminian tendencies, which is another reason that the established clergy distrusted them. Jonathan Edwards remained a Calvinist, but the whole point of his work as a preacher was to reconcile the Awakening to orthodox Calvinism. In other words, like other Calvinists, he saw the Awakening as a problem.

In sum, the Awakening was radical and populist, not reactionary. This is why most successful reformist movements in America--civil rights, temperence, anti-slavery--were evangelical in style.

Posted by: Austin B | May 24, 2005 5:42:58 PM

Posted by: Stagnolio

The numbers are misleading as they stand. Many of the original colonies were founded by religious communities for religious purposes (to escape persecution in England), so of course strongly religious people were overrepresented in the early colonies, and of course the percentages indicating religiosity were bound to fall when a more diverse group of people started entering the new world.

So when Mr. Oakes writes, "It suggests that over the course of the eighteenth century Americans were becoming more and more.... secular," he seems to be implying that Americans were undergoing period of secular enlightenment, when in fact the introduction of secularists from other parts of the world is the more likely culprit.

Posted by: Stagnolio | May 24, 2005 6:08:01 PM

Posted by: James Oakes

Critics of secular humanism have a bad habit of implying that they alone are the bearers of religion, that secular humanism is anti-religious, maybe even atheistic, that it leads to things like Stalinism.... They persist in this delusion no matter how often secular humanists point out the embarrassingly obvious fact that freedom of religion is one of their cardinal precepts, and that the flip side of religious freedom is the separation of church and state.

As it happens I very much admire the way Christians in 18th century America took on board so much enlightened humanism, in particular a... faith? shall we say, in the ability of human beings to reason their way to truth and to sympathize their way to morality. Without those ideals its almost impossible to imagine where the critique of slavery would have come from. That's certainly how the Methodists got there in the 1780s. In short, I have great admiration for the "humanized" christian tradition of Revolutionary America.

The fundamentalists hate that stuff, of course. I guess that makes them, what? witch burners? Proto-fascists? Klansmen with collars instead of hoods? Why not? Secular humanists gave us Stalinism, right?

I've never been persuaded that an attack on established authority is, in itself, a "radical" position. The Awakeners inadvertently undermined the authority of the clerics--but that didn't make them radicals. The advocates of "massive resistance" rejected the authority of the Supreme Court--that didn't make them radicals. The secessionists rejected the authority of the Union; that didn't make them radicals. The Nazis undermined the authority of the Weimar Republic..... you get the point.

The old social history paradigm that interprets the Great Awakening without regard to its theology--which was almost uniformly Calvinist--has long since been displaced by the work of religious historians, historians who actually know their Bible. Besides showing that the Great Awakening was not so "great" in terms of the numbers of converts, they've also demonstrated that post-Revolutionary evangelicalism was NOT a continuation of the Great Awakening.

Nor is it enough to say that our greatest movements for social justice were inspired by "religion," or even "evangelical" religion. You have to be a lot more specific.

Consider antislavery. The post-Revolutionary upsurge of Evangelicalism was organized around a remarkably uniform commitment to biblical literalism, something almost unheard of among European Protestants, and not part of the 18th century Awakening. But how do get to antislavery from Biblical literalism? The answer is, you can't. The Bible, literally, is proslavery.

That's why post-Revolutionary Evangelicism fractured over the problem of slavery. And that's why antislavery Protestants in the North eventually abandoned biblical literalism for a "liberal" ethical christianity that held slavery to be incompatible with the "spirit" of the Bible--because slavery was quite compatable with the literal word of the Bible. This "liberal Christian" tradition more or less won the Civil War and prevailed through the late 19th century.

So it took a repudiation of post-Revolutionary evangelicalism for Northern christians to get themselves to antislavery.

And even that won't explain Abraham Lincoln, whom Allen Guelzo describes as "the last Enlightenment President" in his book "The Emancipation Proclamation." Lincoln's antislavery was rooted in the secular humanism of the Revolution. He believed in God, but not in the divinity of either Christ or the Bible. Yet he hated slavery. And for my money he had a lot more to do with emancipation than William Lloyd Garrison and John Brown.

Finally, post-Revolutionary evangelicalism was, as I said in my original post, "many things." For example, evangelicalism became so widespread in early national America--nearly universal, in fact--its public culture of religious enthusiasm was so egalitarian, that it paved the way for the democratic political culture that prevailed for most of the 19th century.

But early national Evangelicalism was also, in its commitment of biblical literalism, its antirationalism, its revival of the old Calvinist premise of universal human degradation--a rejection of the enlightened Christianity of the eighteenth century. You could even call it a "reactionary assault" on the secular humanism of the Revolution.

Posted by: James Oakes | May 24, 2005 9:58:59 PM

Posted by: John Biles

To understand the figures cited by Mr. Oakes, you have to take several things into account.

First of all, different regions of the country had different levels of religiosity and different churches. In Puritan New England, it was relatively easy to found more congregations as settlement expanded because each congregation was semi-independent.

In other regions, however, the dominant churches were less flexible and adapted more poorly to the expansion of settlement. From Virginia on south, the Church of England failed to provide adequate numbers of priests (who all had to come from England) to expand the network of parishes to adequately meet demand. This did not mean the South was a hotbed of secular humanism, but rather that you had problems of providing all the resources necessary to extend the established church.

In the central colonies, some of the dominant churches either didn't use fixed church buildings (Quakers) or struggled with providing adequate numbers of ministers to meet needs as the fronteir expanded (Lutherans, Presbyterians).

As the Fronteir moved west between 1700 and 1800, churches were a luxury to be built later, not something built right off the bat. It took the Second Great Awakening to bring about the further development of churches in the West, and it was those churches which were less hierarchical and better able to be founded from the ground up by locals who tended to win out in the SGA.

Posted by: John Biles | May 24, 2005 10:23:22 PM

Posted by: mtnmarty

Finally, a post with some zip, but I'm confused a little about this definition of secular humanism.

So "freedom of religionists" are "bearers of religion" for supporting that freedom? Are supporters a a free press, the press? Are supporters of the right to bear arms, the militia?

Some dictionary definitions:
Secular humanism: An outlook or philosophy that advocates human rather than religious values.

Secularism:
1. Religious skepticism or indifference.
2. The view that religious considerations should be excluded from civil affairs or public education.

What do you make of the secularism of the Boston Globe editorial board that thinks religious rhetoric has no place in the public square? Are they in or out of the secular humanist group?

Posted by: mtnmarty | May 24, 2005 10:52:33 PM

Posted by: Caleb

I think it is significant that the print culture of the eighteenth century was increasingly infused with non-religious titles over the course of the eighteenth century. But the declining percentages of religious titles need to be coupled with the points that: (1) print as a whole was multiplying in this period: conceivably, it was growing enough that the percentage of religious titles could have declined even while the absolute numbers of religious titles stayed the same; (2) this figures only tell us about the supply of religious titles, but by themselves they do not tell us about the demand for religious titles (assuming I'm right that the overall supply of all titles was growing in this period), and it's certainly possible for American readers to have been consuming religious and secular titles simultaneously. Finally, many printed works in this period mixed religious and secular themes; the title by itself is not a sure indicator of the presence of religious tropes and logics in the work itself. Given these points, it's not clear to me that an analysis of titles can by itself prove that Americans were becoming more secular in this period.

That's not to say I disagree that there was a significant secular transformation that culminated in the Revolution, or that I disagree that the Great Awakening was not all that Great. I'm just not sure the print culture thumbnail sketch is evidence of those transformations.

In a larger sense, too, I think telling the history of secularization as a history of religion's displacement is misleading. Professor Oakes hints that liberal divines were often responsible for their own secularization, and that's an important point. That means the declining religiosity (however we would define that) does not mean increasing secularity (however we would define that). This wasn't a zero sum game, but rather a complicated process in which religious concepts and concerns often became wrapped in new secular forms, and vice versa.

Thanks for an engaging and provocative post.

Posted by: Caleb | May 24, 2005 10:58:25 PM

Posted by: Mona

Mr.Oakes writes: The fundamentalists hate that stuff, of course. I guess that makes them, what? witch burners? Proto-fascists? Klansmen with collars instead of hoods? Why not? Secular humanists gave us Stalinism, right?

Secular humanism did not give us Stalinism. Marxism is a messianic, secular religion, but it is not a species of humanism, secular or otherwise.

Secularism, as with Xianity or Islam, can be a force for good or bad, depending on the content of the specific brand.

And Lincoln was not, by the time he was elected President, against slavery. He was the consummate pragmatist (and he was likely not a Xian, since, as Mr. Oakes implies, it is nearly certain he did not believe in the divinity of Christ). If retaining the "peculiar institution" would have saved the Union, Lincoln would have retained slavery.

Additonally, Evangelicals are not coterminous with biblical literalists. Fundamentalists qua biblical literalists did not emerge as a movement until the early 20th century. Xians such as Bush are Evangelicals, not fundamentalists, and they are in the tradition of the Evangelical-led abolitionists.

I'm a non-theist, but I recognize the salutary role many religionists and religious movements have played in American (and world) history. I further recognize that secularists have killed many millions and instigated much misery-- as is also true of religionists. Mr. Oakes proposes a simple (and decidedly unnuanced!) paradigm that human reality does not bear out.

Posted by: Mona | May 24, 2005 11:21:19 PM

Posted by: James Oakes

The 18th century numbers have meaning in the context of what's happening to the theology; together they indicate a decline in religious zeal--not in religion per se. When you think about it, it actually pretty amazing that people find the 18th century trend toward secular humanism hard to swallow. After all, it provides a most satisfactory context for the popularity of the principles of the American Revolution. Unless, of course, you want to go into denial about what those princples were.

Then, too, the numbers that show startling increases in church membership after 1790, reaching ninety percent or so by the 1830s and 40s, are hard to read as anything other than a dramatic reversal of 18th century trends.

Posted by: James Oakes | May 24, 2005 11:38:14 PM

Posted by: Mona

Mr. Oakes is a professor, and I am not, but my undergrad degree is in religious studies, with an emphasis on religion in America. Perhaps subsequent to my undergrad matriculation in the late 80s a great shift occurred in the understanding of the Great Awakenings, but when I was being instructed by liberal academics at a secular institution, I was given to understand American religious history as this site:
http://www.answers.com/topic/second-great-awakening

explains them. An excerpt:

In the late 1820s and 1830s a religious revival called the Second Great Awakening (a reference to a similar revival that had swept the colonies in the previous century) had a strong impact on antebellum American religion and reform. It grew partly out of evangelical opposition to the deism associated with the French Revolution and gathered strength in 1826, when Charles Grandison Finney, a charismatic lawyer-turned-itinerant preacher, conducted a revival in Utica, New York. Finney argued against the belief that a Calvinist God controlled the destiny of human beings.... The Second Great Awakening had effects that extended beyond American Protestantism. The period has been called a "shopkeeper's millennium" because nascent capitalists used church membership and the admonition to work and avoid sin as a means of instilling discipline in workers accustomed to being independent artisans. And by spreading the belief that "heaven on earth" was possible, the revival movement inspired or contributed to many secular reform movements, including sabbatarianism, temperance, abolition, antidueling, moral reform, public education, philanthropic endeavors, and utopian socialism.

A fierce reaction to the anti-clericalism and secularism that fed the blood bath of the French Revolution was a good thing, in my secularist's opinion. But I invite Mr.Oakes to point to the scholarship that undermines the above.

Posted by: Mona | May 24, 2005 11:39:20 PM

Posted by: mtnmarty

You have thought a lot about slavery and history.

I am curious as what you see as the "cause" of changes in moral and religious sentiment.

What caused the increase in secular humanism in the 18th century? You hint that the English and Scottish enlightenment played a role, but don't give much detail on the causes.

Most Americans nowdays (including myself), disapprove of slavery, many Americans approved of slavery in the 19th century.

Do you think "we" hold that view for good reasons and "they" held their views for no good reasons or are we all just the product of non-rational pendulum swings in sympathy?

Posted by: mtnmarty | May 25, 2005 1:10:36 AM

Posted by: le sequoit

How might one judge whether in the minds of the vast majority of those 90% or so of evangelists in the 1830's a distinction existed between societal crises' origins in the deism of the French and the secular humanism of the American Revolutions?

It would seem to require a sophisticated populace indeed to have reacted to one and not the other.

Posted by: le sequoit | May 25, 2005 1:29:04 AM

Posted by: Paul Shields

I think it is a mistake to take a popular contemporary dichotomy, e.g. between secular humanism and religion (meaning here the beliefs and culture of the Christian Right), and project this dichotomy back onto the broader historical tapestry of religious thought in America. It is hardly surprising that such an artificial historical treatment would then yield a thoroughly partisan moral. This reminds me of a student this fall who argued that Oedipus and Jocasta suffered from ‘communication problems’ (presumably requiring marriage counseling).

I basically agree with Caleb that

This wasn’t a zero sum game, but rather a complicated process in which religious concepts and concerns often became wrapped in new secular forms, and vice versa.

What puzzles me, in general, is the current tendency to view religious sentiment as being mainly a negative historical force. I know about the inquisitions, religious wars and intolerance. But religious sentiment has also been, historically, a powerful force for enlightenment. Capturing both sides of the story is important. Maybe it would help if we did our history before our politics.

Posted by: Paul Shields | May 25, 2005 3:07:12 AM

Posted by: Ralph Luker

Caleb's point about the declining percentages of religious imprints in the 18th century British-American colonies would also hold true for the ratios of churches to population. If congregations grew in size, it wouldn't mean much that their numbers in proportion to population declined.
Beyond that, neither the First nor the Second Great Awakenings represent repudiations of learning. To the contrary, they stimulate the building of colleges and academies. Nor is there any significant impulse in the Second Great Awakening to repudiate the disestablishment instincts of the founding generation. Rather, its leaders assume disestablishment and, as Sidney Mead argued, create voluntary societies that will promote voluntary allegiance to commonly held values. They continue to believe that a healthy society must have some commonly held values, but they do not expect the state -- certainly not the national government -- to be the primary agency promoting them.

Posted by: Ralph Luker | May 25, 2005 4:40:25 AM

Posted by: murky

The numbers don't seem so suggestive to me. Couldn't the trend reflect economic development and the emergence of a society? As wealth increased, church architecture becomes grander (and more capacious) and with a diversified economy (or the economic stability in which contemplating diversification becomes possible) colonial authors have more to do and write about than religion, not to mention a wider audience for any prospective publication.

Posted by: murky | May 25, 2005 8:03:06 AM

Posted by: john t

Mona maybe MR. Oakes threw Stalin in because he had been a seminarian. But perhaps there are other reasons.

Posted by: john t | May 25, 2005 8:47:19 AM

Posted by: john t

"That,as it is the duty of every man to worship God in such manner as he thinks most acceptable to him;all persons professing the Christian religion are equally entitled to their religious liberty". Maryland Constitution,1776. "That no person shall ever,within this colony,be deprived of the inestimable privilege of worshipping Almighty God in a manner agreable to his own conscience". New Jerey Constitution 1776. "It is the right as well as the duty of all men in society,publicly and at stated seasons,to worship the Supreme Being". Massachusetts Constituiton,1780. "As morality and piety,rightly grounded on evangelical principles,will give the best and greatest security to government",New Hampshire Constitution,1784. "Every sect or denomination of Christians ought to observe the Sabbath or Lord's day",Vermont Constitution,1786. "The Christian Protestant religion shall be deemed,and is hereby constituted and declared to be,the established religion of this state",South Carolina Constitution,1778. "That no person,who shall deny the being of God or the truth of the Protestant religion,or the divine authority either of the Old or New Testaments,or who shall hold religious principles incompatible with the feedom and safety of the state,shall be capable of holding any office etc",North Carolina Constitution,1776. Secularity,ain't it great.

Posted by: john t | May 25, 2005 10:36:57 AM

Posted by: David White

"Consider antislavery. The post-Revolutionary upsurge of Evangelicalism was organized around a remarkably uniform commitment to biblical literalism, something almost unheard of among European Protestants, and not part of the 18th century Awakening. But how do get to antislavery from Biblical literalism? The answer is, you can't. The Bible, literally, is proslavery." --Oakes

I sense a subtle linkage here: Awakening=Proslavery. And I think that's very hard to justify if we look at the locations of the major revivals, especially during the Second Great Awakening.

I'm also having some problems here with the linkage of theology and the slavery question. Perhaps it's because I'm a bit out of my element (I'm more 20th century than 18th). Certainly the Quakers were never pro-slavery, but am I wrong for being hesistant to classify them as "humanists"? I have reservations in saying that they would identify themselves as such. How do we classify the Quakers within the context of the Awakenings?

And a query: when do we start seeing the major Southern biblical justifications for slavery? I don't recall seeing any major published apologia before the 1840s, well after Garrison, Phillips and Lundy et. al. had seized on Philemon as their justification for immediate abolition. (I think all three would consider themselves "fundamentalists", by the way)

Posted by: David White | May 25, 2005 11:42:33 AM

Posted by: J.S.

Great piece.

J.S.

http://voicesofreason.info

Posted by: J.S. | May 25, 2005 12:58:22 PM

Posted by: CTW

"secularists have killed many millions"

is this anything beyond a "revival" of the recurrent theme that commies (and, therefore, also misguided commie symps indirectly) have killed many millions? if not, isn't it just as meaningful to note that men with mustaches have killed many millions?

the point being, of course, that the fact that there have been efficient mass murderers in totalitarian states who have been secularists or at least espoused secular ideology isn't relevant to the comparison with religiosity. the question is: have there been actions taken in the name of an ideology and with support from associated institutions representing a majority of the population that have killed many millions?

I'm much too historically ignorant to answer, but my impression is that the answer for religion is "of course" (adjusting "millions" for populace inflation) and for secularism is "probably not", if for no other reason than that secularists are rarely if ever a majority. ie, in the spirit of recent threads, we haven't had "equal opportunity".

Posted by: CTW | May 25, 2005 1:16:09 PM

Posted by: Jeff Younger

Mona, your posts or should I say riposte are excellent.

Posted by: Jeff Younger | May 25, 2005 1:19:48 PM

Posted by: Mona

ctw writes: is this anything beyond a "revival" of the recurrent theme that commies (and, therefore, also misguided commie symps indirectly) have killed many millions? if not, isn't it just as meaningful to note that men with mustaches have killed many millions?

The French Revolution killed, if I recall correctly, nearly a million (but I'm willing to stand corrected; in any event, it was "lots."). Stalin killed millions, with the approval and support of Communists Parties and their sympathizers everywhere, including in the U.S. (Walter Duranty infamously noted in defense of Stalin's genocide-scale murders, the thingie about needing to break eggs to make omelets.) American Communists even saw their own called to Moscow and killed, or offed elsewhere, and stifled all criticism when not outright denying the manifest truth. Non-Stalinist Marxists who went to fight in the Spanish Civil War were killed there by the thousands on Stalin's orders, and the CPUSA thought that was just fine. And, the CPUSA aided Stalin in assassinating Leon Trotsky and some of his family and supporters.

Really, the murderous perfidy of the CPUSA, in its slavish devotion to a bloody tyrant, was breathtakingly heinous.

Secular ideologies can be as lethal and mindlessly adhered to as theistic ones.

Posted by: Mona | May 25, 2005 6:24:43 PM

Posted by: D.A. Ridgely

Ignoring for the moment whether Mr. Oakes’ evidence in support of a rise in secularism and commensurate decline in religion in 18th century America is correct, I take the point of his post to be the assertion that what some are beginning to describe as the third Great Awakening in the U.S. “still is” at least in part “a reactionary assault on the secular humanism of the Revolution.”

I suspect that’s true. To what extent the current growth of evangelical Christianity and / or what some might describe as certain revanchist tendencies in the Roman Catholic Church are either merely or necessarily an assault, reactionary or otherwise, against secular humanism is a more interesting question.

Unless, that is, Mr. Oakes’ position is that these versions of Christianity are everywhere and always and in every respect in diametric opposition to secular humanism. If so, he should so state, providing also a sufficiently precise definition of secular humanism for us to assess such a claim. Otherwise, it seems to me his claim boils down to something along the lines of “Some religiously devout Christians have opposed and some continue to oppose certain tenets of secular humanism.”

Yep.

Posted by: D.A. Ridgely | May 25, 2005 8:33:08 PM

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