The Democratization of American Christianity

Rating:
Summary: It's a good start, but it is incomplete.
Review: A precis: Hatch's thesis is narrow. The American Revolution spurred the democratization of American Christianity. But, at the same time, Hatch implicitly alludes to the effect of insurgent Christian sects had on American democracy. Hatch limits the book's chronology to c. 1780-1830 and the scope of discussion to the Protestant insurgent faiths of the Methodists, Baptists, Mormons and Christian 'generalists' who claimed no specific sect as their own. He does mention in passing the Congregationalists and Presbyterians, but essentially neglects Anglicans, Episcopalians and Roman Catholics, except to use them to illustrate a point about one of the other sects. To Hatch, it seems the older, traditional sects were spared the effects of democratization, save losing members to itinerant preachers. The primary effect on religion of the social democratization of the Revolution was to remove religious power from the few hands of the educated and organized traditionalists and put it in many more hands, similar to the Revolution's anti-aristocratic effect on the holders of political power. According to Hatch, anticlericalism gained strength at the end of the 18th century due to a profound upsurge to erase the distinction between gentleman and commoner[,] . . . reflecting the same fundamental division between those who believed in the right of the natural aristocracy to speak for the people and those who did not. (p. 44).

Hatch reads Gordon Wood as suggesting "that this issue was the essence of the struggle between Federalist and Anti-Federalists." (p. 44). Thus, the realm of religion was not immune to the same sorts of battles that were fought in the political arena. The substance of the religious battle was whether the illiterate and unsophisticated majority of Americans should get their religion from the traditional orthodoxy, or should religion be accessible, understandable and a product of individual conscience from itinerant preachers and religious newspapers. The orthodoxy reasoned by analogy that a person would wish to trust his health or property to a properly trained doctor or lawyer, so she should only trust her soul to a properly trained pastor. Logical as the argument might be, simultaneous to the Second Great Awakening, movements democratizing law and medicine were gaining popularity as well. This overall movement toward "democracy," reinforced by the non-establishment clause of the First Amendment, is to Hatch the origin of contemporary differences between the U.S. and other industrialized nations, namely that we have a strongly embedded religious heritage of Christianity in all levels of society, from the richest to the poorest. Removing the exclusive right to interpret the Bible from the hands of Harvard and Yale divinity school graduates and giving it to everyman, limited only to the constraints of his own conscience, was a second American revolution; it could not have happened without the first.

Hatch traces the religious revolution as a personality driven cult, the message occasionally lost to the drama of the speaker. The purpose of the insurgent sects was similar to that of the new political party system emerging at the same time. The preachers wanted to fill camp meetings, converting new souls. The politicians wanted to fill offices with candidates loyal to the party.

Though the book is important and takes us a step closer to understanding the depth of democratization on American social history (as opposed to political history), there is much to criticize. First, "democracy" is not an easy or clear-cut term. Hatch uses it alternately to mean individualism, anti-intellectualism, popular culture, popular sovereignty, leveling, anti-aristocracy and ignorance; his grails of democratic religious culture are individual conscience, interpretation of Scripture in light of daily experience and the use of the vernacular in music, newspapers and sermons. One must be careful when using a word of art in a crossover context. Democracy is a political term; to use it as a religious term, one must do so carefully, beginning with a clear definition. Hatch does not.

Second, though Hatch does stick with his thesis-the impact of democracy on Christianity-he does not develop the underlying counter-thesis, the impact of Christianity on democracy. To have done so would have logically widened the scope of the book while maintaining the integrity of the argument. And, students of American political history would have benefited as well as those of religious history.

Last, his discussion of the relevance of music to his thesis is tantalizing, but ultimately inadequate. Hatch introduces the relation of music to the democratization of religion and gives a brief discussion of how popular music was born. However, he glosses over, in one sentence, the mutual influence of blacks and whites on religious music in the 18th century Methodist churches, before the birth of A.M.E.

At times, he tests the waters of popular culture, but when he jumps in, he is immerses himself in only white culture of the time. He neglects, like many historians, the primary place of African-American culture in all American popular culture. If Hatch is truly interested in the effect of 19th century democratization on the modern world, he should explore a little farther into the history of African-American spirituals.

In a PC world, African-American is the only true mixed ethnic designation. Africans, because of their forced segregation from whites, retained much culture, musical and otherwise, from before the middle passage. This retained ethnicity merged with American culture, first in the white churches and in the plantation fields, then in freedom, to form a call-and-response relationship in music. Call and response was super-imposed on the traditional African drumming, and a form of music (removed from its sectarian origins) evolved in the secular world, a form called the Blues. Over time and geography, the Blues evolved into jazz and rock-and-roll as alternate branches of the same family tree. Though not the topic of the book, this evolution warrants at least a footnote.

Rating:
Summary: Class-Oriented Hatch Delivers
Review: Hatch's approach to the religion of the early republic is to define the principal conflict along class lines--the educated, eastern, Reformed, Federalist establishment versus the unschooled, western, anti-creedal, Jeffersonian populists. Judging from the prizes this book has won, numerous historians have considered it a landmark perspective on the early republic and subsequent American epochs, which must be taken into account in any future study.

Hatch marshals a copious amount of testimonial evidence as to the methods and convictions of both the religious populists and the clerical aristocrats against whom they rebelled. Unquestionably, Hatch is on to an integral part of early 19th-century religious life. Unfortunately, though, we are left to take Hatch's word for exactly how much this class warfare dominated the religious landscape. Hatch provides little statistical evidence to back up the populists' claims of a vast gulf between rich and poor, and one is left wondering about an excluded middle. Imagine writing an account of the religious history of our time purely from the quotes of Jerry Falwell and Ted Turner, and you see the problem--a vast, silent middle ground of religious opinion is neglected amid the rhetorical blasts of the polarized belligerents.

He never clearly locates the middle class (such as the mercantile bourgeoisie of New York City) on his socio-religious spectrum, only mentioning them in his penultimate chapter, which addresses the years 1830-1860. Similarly, though Hatch mentions a few counter-cultural educated Jeffersonians like Francis Asbury and Jefferson himself, he does not explore their unique fit into this era. Likewise, he implies that the entire under-class rejected clerical authority, never explicitly commenting on whether or not any of the illiterate laity remained faithful to their religious betters during this time.

Despite these silences, Hatch's exciting work provides the basis for a new paradigm in the study of American religious history. After tracing the theme of religious democratization up to the Civil War, he briefly sketches the theme through the 20th century in an epilogue. Anyone who has lived and moved in contemporary evangelical circles plainly sees the cyclical legacy of the early republic: a determined populist insurgency rebels against moribund, worldly religious institutions, but in the following generation, the insurgency itself becomes institutionalized and establishes rapport with higher culture, providing the ground for a new populist insurgency to arise. With an evangelical in the White House and upper-middle-class evangelical churches and institutions entrenched in the suburbs, it would seem the dialectic may be about to turn again, especially if current evangelical materialism becomes full-blown apostasy in the succeeding generation.

Rating:
Summary: A "must-read" for anyone "doing theology" in America
Review: I always like a book in which the author sets out his or her thesis clearly. In this case, such a statement comes in the first two sentences of Chapter 1!

"This book is about the cultural and religious history of the early American republic and the enduring structures of American Christianity. It argues both that the theme of democratization is central to the understanding the development of American Christianity and that the years of the early republic are the most crucial in revealing the that process." (p. 3)

But the clear thesis statement is not the only reason why I enjoyed reading "The Democratization of American Christianity." In presenting his argument, Hatch tells a highly entertaining story about a fascinating time in the history of the American Protestantism. It was a time filled with such colorful characters as Barton Stone, Francis Asbury, Lorenzo Dow, and Charles Grandison Finney. It was a time during which developed such famous -- or perhaps infamous -- American Church institutions as the circuit rider, the camp meeting, and "the anxious bench." And, most importantly -- as Professor Hatch points out -- it was the time during which the spirit of independence and democratic idealism that had propelled the Americans successfully through the Revolutionary War seeped into the American churches, giving shape to the distinctive form of Christianity in present-day America.

In this 312-page book, Hatch examines five separate religious traditions, or "mass movements," as he terms them, that played upon the American stage during the early 19th Century: the Christian movement, the Methodists, the Baptists, the black churches, and the Mormons. Despite the wide-ranging theological opinions represented among these distinct bodies, "they all offered common people, especially the poor, compelling visions of individual self-respect and collective self-confidence." (p. 4) Moreover, these movements "took shape around magnetic leaders who were highly skilled in communication and group mobility." (p. 4) Hatch studies these men and others who rose to distinction on the American religious scene from the 1780s to the 1830s. He finds that "the fundamental religious debates in the early republic were not merely a clash of intellectual and theological differences but also a passionate social struggle with power and authority." (p. 14) Hence, the story of American religion within this time frame mirrors the story of American politics; both tell "how ordinary folk came to distrust leaders of genius and talent and to defend the right of common people to shape their own faith and submit to leaders of their own choosing." (Ibid.)

Such a profound change within the religious realm implies a fundamental shift in theology. Indeed, the rise of popular religious leaders unschooled in theology did result in theological competition, with the popular theology eventually winning out. This is due, in large measure, to the transfer of authority regarding religious matters from the Bible to the sovereign mind of man:

"The study of religious convictions of self-taught Americans in the early years of the republic reveals how much weight was placed on private judgment and how little on the roles of history, theology, and the collective will of the Church. . . . This shift occurred gradually and without fanfare because innovators could exploit arguments as old and as trusted as Protestantism itself. Luther, Calvin, Wesley, and Backus had all argued for the principle of sola scriptura; unschooled Americans merely argued that they were fulfilling that same mandate. Yet, in the assertion that private judgment should be the ultimate tribunal in religious matters, common people started a revolution." (p. 182)

Also significant were the means by which the new dogma was spread, and Hatch provides a penetrating analysis of these factors as well. The rise of the untrained preachers points to the fact that the ordained clergy "had lost their unrivaled position as authoritative sources of information." (p. 125) Preaching became "increasingly folk- rather than clergy-dominated." (p. 133) Moreover, popular religious newspapers provided a new forum for dissemination of ideas, "the grand engine of a burgeoning religious culture, the primary means of promotion for, and bond of union within, competing religious groups." (p. 126) The medium of music was employed as well, as new folk hymnody was

developed. Consequently, "[b]y systematically employing lay preachers, by exploiting a golden age of local publishing, and by spreading new forms of religious folk music, they ensured the forceful delivery of their message." (p. 127)

Religious populism even today "has remained a creative, if unsettling force at the fringes of major Protestant denominations. . . . American clergy have remained subject to democratic forces." (p. 16) "[T]he people continue to serve as custodians for their own beliefs, communicating them in understandable terms." (p. 218) This democratic ideal, penetrating more deeply into the soul of the American church than any theological dogma, has resulted in a polarization in American Christianity, as the two camps are drawn in opposing directions. The leaders of the mainline Protestants are oriented toward the norms of "high culture" and are "irresistibly pulled toward values and attitudes prevalent in the modern academic world." (Ibid.) The opposite side is populated by the Fundamentalists and Pentecostals, who "share all the virtues and vices of popular culture" and -- most significantly -- have embraced social institutions and subcultures that "are still populist through and through, reflecting the deepest convictions of their own constituencies and anointing new leaders by virtue of their popular appeal. . . . They will not surrender to learned experts the right to think for themselves." (p. 219) As Hatch concludes: "For two centuries Americans have refused to defer sensitive matters of conscience to the staid graduates of Harvard, Yale, and Princeton. They have taken faith into their own hands and molded it according to the aspirations of everyday life. American Christianity continues to be powered by ordinary people and by the contagious spirit of their efforts to storm heaven by the back door." (Ibid)

Rating:
Summary: ignorance is bliss
Review: This is an in-depth treatment of religious fads and movements of Christianity during the times of formation of this country. Hatch shows how the religious character of individualism, democratic populism, and just outright ignorance of tradition and church authority were viewed as the american way of determining what works in the American spirit. It should read for classical Protestants to show the damaging effects of SOLO scriptura in our churches. This book should lead one to Keith Mathison's book The Shape of Sola Scriptura. Hatch could have went further, but i guess he wanted to spare us the anti-intellualism of popular americana.