Patricia U. Bonomi

The reviews of this book all point to Bonomi's position on several fundamental questions. To what extent was religion in decline in the colonies starting in the late 17thC? Was there a "Great Awakening" in the 1730s-40s, and if so did this serve as the anteroom for the Revolution? As the reviewers all point out, Bonomi clearly does not believe that colonial religion was in decline starting in the late !7th Century, indeed she points out that declension only works if we narrow our scope to New England -- and even there it is not the whole story. She attempts to tell us the whole story by examining not just New England, but also the Middle and Southern Colonies. As Philip F. Gura points out in his review of the book, she comes down on the side of Alan Heimert (Religion and the American Mind from the Great Awakening to the Revolution) in his debate with Bernard Bailyn ("religion and Revolution: Three Biographical Studies" Perspectives in American History IV (1970), 85-169) over the linkages between evangelical religion and the Revolution. Bonomi sides with Heimert, though perhaps more subtly. The same could be said, so Gura, of a number of other recent studies -- Harry S. Stout (The New England Soul, 1986), Ruth H. Bloch (Visionary Republic, 1985) and Nathan O. Hatch (The Sacred Cause of Liberty, 1977).

Bonomi begins the book in her Preface by tracing her interest in the role of religion in American society to a conversation she had with Richard Hofstadter. As Hofstadter pointed out, religious loyalties shaped political debate -- yet the paradox existed that most historians agreed that church attendance was heading downward from the early 18th C to the Revolution. Bonomi finds the answer in gong beyond theological debates and focusing on popular expressions of religion in the colonies.

Chapter 1: The Religious Prospect

Bonomi opens chapter 1 by pointing to the predominance of church steeples on the horizons of American cities in 1760. Noting the importance of this landscape transformation from earlier times, she points to the importance of landscape sacralization (Butler). In addition, she points out that religion permeated colonial society in many other ways. Books and pamphlets with religious themes were the most popular literature and the greatest entertainment of the day was a sermon. Even at public hangings, it was the sermon that people remembered.

The narrative of declension adopted by historians could be read another way. Perhaps, she suggests, in a world where it was difficult to get a minister for your church and working ministers were stretched very thin, it was in the interest of the Puritan divines to point to decline and urge the support of more ministers? But it is not even necessary to impute such motives to Cotton Mather in order to rectify the image of religious decline he painted (and he may even have been right in some sense about New England). By looking at the middle and southern colonies, she argues, we get a more complete picture. To the New England Congregationalists, Bonomi adds the Pennsylvania Quakers, pietistic sects, Lutherans, Reformed and Presbyterians. None of which evidenced any signs of declension. She notes the importance of immigration patterns in the 18th C in making this a vital religious field. Based on this vitality, she points to a connection between the popular practice of religion and the American Revolution. She goes so far as to suggest the use of religious networks as "cells" of Revolution. And locates the origin of the principle of religious toleration in the stresses and strains of early American religious history.

Part I: Religion and Society

Chapter 2: The New Heavens and the New Earth

The "forlorne" State of Religion in early Virginia resulted from warfare between Indians and settlers, economic instability and political disruption. Despite the best stated intentions to spread Anglican faith, the Virginia Company did not provide a vital religious life for its young, single, male colonists. The rapid ascent of "new wealth" did nothing to provide incentive for religious institutionalization. Even the Puritan establishment in New England faced initial challenges, with too few ministers to serve the burgeoning settlements beyond Boston. In this field of religious disarray, dissent was rife. Roger Williams and Anne Hutchinson found themselves able to attract a substantial following precisely because of the disarray in the Puritan establishment. As they went off to settle Providence and Portsmouth, RI they gave new energy to the impulse for religious toleration.

A Grudging Toleration

Charles I granted a colonial charter to his fellow Catholic Cecilius Calvert to settle Maryland in 1632. Yet the number of Catholics in the colony was always overwhelmed by Protestants. Even before the English Civil War forced the Catholic proprietors from the colony, Protestants outnumbered Catholics. The "Act Concerning Religion" grew out of a desire of the Catholics of Maryland to protect themselves and their faith. The Growth of Toleration was the direct result of contest and conflict, not of any high minded principles. With the deposition of James II by William and Mary, Catholic proprietorship was at an end and the Anglican Church was established in Maryland. A similar dynamic of religious diversity and contest forced Stuyvesant to adopt a policy of toleration in New Netherlands. Jews, Lutherans Quakers all served the economic interests of the Dutch West India Company. Toleration was not an idealistic, but rather a practical, maneuver on the company's behalf. The story of Quakers in Massachusetts also helps us understand the pragmatic roots of religious toleration. Quakers turned themselves into martyrs by refusing to submit to Puritan dictates. Whipping nursing mothers and hanging other Quakers, the Puritan fathers felt besieged and increasingly had to justify their actions to the public.

In 1660 when Charles II was returned to the throne, the Restoration Colonies were forced to accept a policy of toleration of dissent because Anglicans were not strong enough in the colonies to force their faith on all. Religious Liberty on Principle only developed in Rhode Island under the leadership of Roger Williams, and amongst the Quakers of Pennsylvania and New Jersey. Under Roger Williams' leadership in the 1640s, the colony of Rhode Island took a principled stand for religious toleration, even affording Quakers the free exercise of their religion. The Quakers of the Jerseys and Pennsylvania were also moved on principle to afford religious liberty even to Catholics!

Chapter 3: The Clergy

Study of the clergy in colonial America has suffered from fragmentary study and neglect that has relegated it to church historians. Bonomi seeks to understand the lot of the clergy by studying a cross section that allows the reader to get a broader overview. Beginning by reminding us of the shock they must have encountered in coming to the new world, she recounts a tale of slow institutionalization of Anglican, Congregational, Dutch Reformed and Quaker clergy in a first generation of the 17th C and the addition of a new wave of clergy in the 18th C in the form of Presbyterian, Lutheran and German Reformed Churches. As the communities became more settled over the period in question, the increasing professionalization of the clergy through the founding of denominational institutions lead to their increase preeminence over the laity. But that was not always or universally so. To show this, she covers the clergy in three denominations: Anglican, Congregationalist and the German Reformed Church.

The first clergy to receive Bonomi's attention are the Anglicans in the colonial south, particularly in Virginia. There she sees an interplay between the growing planter elite, who consolidated their power in the 1680s after the putting down of Bacon's Rebellion. These elites sought to constrain the power of the Anglican clergy, as they represented the power of London. Hence the local elites resisted the establishment of a Bishop in America, which the clergy felt would have strengthened their position. Instead of a Bishop, London sent a Commissary, Rev. James Blair. Blair served a long tenure and worked closely with the planter aristocracy to establish the Anglican church, a tenure which saw disputations wide and far on the topic of who appointed the rectors, house of burgesses or the governor. The governor eventually won (1748).

The Colonial Anglican Clergy suffer from a bad reputation as a result of their contest with the aristocratic planter. Like Maryland, the clergy of Virginia received no support from the society for the propagation of the gospel in London (SPG), as they were both established Anglican colonies. "The precariousness of their Livings" arose from the fact that they relied upon support from the colonial government, which put them at odds with the local elites who resented taxes to support the clergy from the very start. In other colonies the SPG and other London Anglican agencies supported the work of the clergy. Their lot was far from secure in the sea of diverse religious establishments, beliefs and constituencies.

The Anglican Rector's daily rounds in the New World were far different than the Old. With scattered parishioners in geographically large parishes, the rector was essentially an itinerate and was forced to "make house calls" for weddings, baptisms, funerals, etc. High mortality and frontier population growth presented the challenge of serving the growing flock, least they fall into the hands of Dissenters for lack of Anglican ministers. Another frontier challenge was dealing with the impact of warfare with Indians. Yet the challenged Anglican clergy rose to the occasion as the church grew impressively in America, such that at there were more than 300 Anglican churches in the colonies by 1750.

Congregational Clergymen were under pressure to make way for dissenters after the revocation of the Massachusetts Bay Colony's Charter in 1684. But they had the support of the local government apparatus to "throw sand" in the machinery of reform. Provincial and local officials assiduously resisted efforts to provide tax exemptions to dissenting churches (here Anglican Church). In contrast to the localism that protected congregationalism in MA, in Connecticut the Say brook Platform called together the ministers of that colony to institute colony-wide reforms that protected the established church from encroachments by dissenters.

The clergy in New England enjoyed significant advantages over their fellows elsewhere. Bonomi points to the growth of institutions of higher learning that produced a healthy supply of ministers. The shortages faced on the frontier of Western MA and Maine/VT/NH were more the result of clergy seeking better parishes in the established/settled areas. Despite wrangling over pay rates, the Congregational clergy seemed to have prospered in the "clean air" of New England.

The middle colonies were the locus of the greatest diversity in ethnic and religious terms, conventionally seen as a source of religious lassitude and viewed by Bonomi as a well spring for renewal in the German ethnic population. Seeking to avoid the contamination of the sects, the German communities formed their own barriers to the diversity around them by relying upon the work of pious lay people. The German Church Clergy of the Lutheran and Reformed Churches were more likely to be schoolmasters or pious lay people. In the Jerseys, New York and Pennsylvania Lutherans has no choice but to rely upon lay leaders. Because settlements did without ordained clergy for a good deal of the early years, wandering charlatans were a clear danger. Stories of these folk lead to the low estimate of the character of the German clergy. When they did arrive, ordained ministers were not always welcomed with open arms. Having to prove their authenticity, they were immediately put on the defensive. Some, like Henry Muhlenberg, stayed. Others returned to Germany in disgust. Bonomi sees this diversity in the Middle Colonies as a source of strength, as it fostered the rise of volunteerism which would come to be a respected American value in the 19th C.

Chapter 4: The Churchgoers

Bonomi starts with a "word about numbers" to put in perspective the statistics for church-going that have long buttressed the arguments in support of declining religious adherence. The church as center of community life looms large in colonial America, but the actual numbers of who belonged to the churches may distort real participation. Pointing to stringent requirements for full church membership in New England, as well as the tribalism that excluded newcomers, she sees even the New England numbers typically marshaled to support the declension thesis as misleading. Looking beyond the settled communities of New England, SPG reports from the growing frontier of the South confirmed that though people held Christian beliefs they may not have had the opportunity to attend formal services. In the middle colonies, the population explosion led the denominations to rely heavily upon itinerancy, further distorting the reliability of purely spastically tabulated formulations.

Turing to an analysis of churchgoing and social rank. Bonomi finds it hard to make direct correlations between church membership and wealth. The COE attracted members from all social strata in the south, even though dominated by the planter aristocracy. In the North, Congregational churches were not the exclusive domain of the wealthy. Things become even more mixed when looking at economic correlations in the middle colonies, where Quakers were mostly dominant. Instead of talking of one religion or another being the province of a particular social stratum, she finds it more helpful to talk of a religion's hegemony in a region. Dissenters in the three regions were not just poorer, which in some cases they were not, rather they were marginalized from the levers of power. Rising to challenge a hegemonic religious power, they had more than pure economic motivations.

Anglicanism in Virginia was a "Gentleman's Religion." Believing in the importance of good works and the primacy of outward religious observance for maintaining social order, planters such as William Byrd II found solace in their religion. George Washington was a faithful Anglican and also saw the importance of religious worship in maintaining a good society. As time wore on, the gentlemen's propensity for rationalism became more pronounced and sermons became more compact and emotionalism receded even further into the background. The contrast between the 2 hour sermons of the Boston Congregationalists and the Richmond 20 minute sermon is clearly related to this dynamic. Yet rationalism also made headway in New England and in the Middle colonies. Where Virginia had its rationalist Thomas Jefferson, so Massachusetts had its John Adams and Philadelphia its Benjamin Franklin. The class issue is perhaps less important, however, for the broader population than the gender one at this time. Increasingly, churchgoing was becoming a social and political event for colonial males, as females were increasingly assuming responsibility for the spiritual well being of their families.

In the mid-18th C, women increasingly assumed the role of religious education of their children. As "Daughters of Zion," women of all social strata found themselves empowered to act on a wider stage. In addition to providing for the religious instruction of their children, society matrons exercised considerable power over who would be selected as minister and other matters of church politics. Their writings on spiritual matters were even taken seriously enough to be included in sermons delivered by men. Quakers were particularly open to the ministry of women, and several of them became martyrs to the cause (Mary Dyer in Boston). Ranging from the preaching of the Congregationalist Sarah Haggar Osborne in Newport, RI to the female administered cloister of the Ephrata in Pennsylvania, women found religion a way to lead rather than merely follow.

The rising role of women in religion is often linked to the feminization of religion in the 18th C. The classic narrative links increasing secularization to this process, and this is not far from the argument made by Cotton Mather, who observed that there were "more Godly women than men" in his congregation in 1759. Mather and others took an experiential/essentialist view that linked women's experience in childbirth to greater piety. Historians since then have argued that men were distracted by commercial pursuits, but Bonomi takes issue with this. Tracing male church participation throughout the colonies she concludes that it was the professionalization of the ministry that forced men out. As lay leaders were replaced by ordained clergy they saw less reason for their participation. Though all denominations provided for the education of the young in matters religious, the full participation in church activities was often delayed until people were in their 20s. In a society where 25 was middle aged, this was a significant social factor. The opposite was true of the aged. The elderly were believed to be particularly religious and great respect was accorded to them in churches as a result.

What of the various groups outside of the middling sorts and the well to do? Blacks, Indians and Indentured Servants were all targets of church efforts at conversion to greater or lesser degrees. In the South, as the black slave population grew, masters became increasingly wary of the potentially destabilizing effects of slave conversion. Tensions arose between SPG ministers and the planter elite over this dynamic. Blacks made up only a very small portion of congregations, north and south. Native Americans, in general, proved relatively immune to religious appeals. Despite efforts to bring some of the indentured servants and poor into religious communities, for much of the 18th C most remained outside the embrace of the denominations.

For a time, the religious revivals referred to collectively as the Great Awakening (17303-1740s) brought more men and young people into the Christian fold and enlarged church membership for a time to include the marginalized poor, Indians and blacks (slave and free). Bonomi argues that blacks were especially receptive to the message of revival, taking quickly to the evangelical ministry in song and even shaming their masters to attend church (here the story of Robert Carter's oldest slave Dadda Gumby). She sees the roots of African-American Christianity in this revival religious upsurge. Perhaps the most important part of the revival, however, was the fact that it brought more ministers into the field to serve the increasing numbers of remote frontier settlements. The overall impact, at a macro level, was then to increase the already growing Christianization (to borrow a phrase from Butler) of the colonies.

Part II: Religion and Politics

Chapter 5: "The Hosannas of the Multitude": The Great Awakening in America

The period of early 18th C in which the event known as the Great Awakening occurred (1735-1745) was wrought with conflicts between rationalists and pietists, ethnic conflicts brought on by increasing population due to immigration and conflicts over expansion into the western lands. As many have since argued, the revival ministries of the "Awakening" had the effect of breaking down barriers of deference to civil authority and perhaps contributing to the momentum that brought on the Revolution.

Yet all of this started with disputes within the clerical profession between factions. The Presbyterians were the first to see this burst into the open, but the same was also true of Congregationalists and others. Bonomi focuses on the case of the Reverend Orr in Donegal Presbytery (Lancaster County, PA). Accusations against the reverend for marital infidelity lead to an all out dispute between him and the Presbytery in the mid 1730s. Growing out of this dispute, the "New Sides" founded the evangelical Presbytery of New Brunswick, NJ. This new Presbytery challenged the authority of the synod of Philadelphia by ordaining ministers trained at William Tennant's private school at Neshaminy in Bucks County.

All evidence points to the conclusion that the "Log College" produced highly educated graduates, but that was not the point. By March of 1740, Gilbert Tennant (son of William Tennant, Sr.) was delivering his sermon on The Danger of an Unconverted Ministry in which he labeled the Old Sides modern day Pharisees. After being expelled from the Synod of Philadelphia, in 1745 the New Sides founded the Synod of New York. Essentially, Old Sides were older more traditional men (Ulster Scots in the main) who had been educated in Europe (or at Harvard and Yale) and were by the 1740s well established in their careers. New Sides were younger men, educated in the colonies who were impatient with the formalities of their elders. The "divine fire" was kindled in New England by publication of Gilbert Tennant's Danger, as well as by the preaching of George Whitefield and James Davenport.

The New Lights and New Sides of New England and the Middle Colonies developed defenses for Minority Rights and encouraged their congregations to separate themselves from the traditional church authorities. By accepting, even encouraging, divided sovereignty The Great Awakening served as a Radical Model for the colonists, in some ways as a rehearsal for revolution. Whereas faction in politics had a distinctly disreputable air about it, religious faction increasingly gave vent to the separatist impulse and in turn the religious debate was increasingly cast in political terminology. Developing a defense of minority rights in defense of their withdrawal from the Philadelphia Synod, The New Side Samuel Blair pioneered the rhetoric of political withdrawal of the minority from the oppression of a tyrannical majority. New Lights in Connecticut and Massachusetts increasingly cast their arguments in the rhetorical field of natural rights philosophy. As many as 200 separate congregations formed throughout New England during this period.

Evangelical preachers increasingly forced the individual to deal with questions of personal over collective responsibility. Asking his congregation "Who is upon GOD's Side?", Gilbert Tennant brought the individual to the forefront of spiritual life. The general effect of these sermons was to raise the individual conscience to a level unheard of before in the colonies. In these new separate congregations barriers to full church membership fell. Even the likes of Jonathan Edwards was stopped short in an effort to put in place "Skillful Guides" to regulate admission to church membership. Edwards was subsequently relieved of his ministry. The forces of individual conscience, once loosed, would not so easily be tamed the next time round.

Chapter 6: The Political Awakening

The relationship between religious revival and revolution is one that historians are far from agreement upon. Recent works that have linked the two have come under criticism, but Bonomi proceeds along this course herself. Instead of directly equating revivalist with proto-revolutionary and anti-revivalist with proto-loyalist, she argues more subtly for a shifting style of politics. For Bonomi, it is the raucousness of the debates that enables people to think of first religious and then political authority as assailable. She shows this dynamic unfolding in Connecticut, Pennsylvania and then Virginia.

The movement from religion to politics in Connecticut was initiated by Old Lights who, in control of the government, enacted laws that marginalized the New Lights. It was, for instance, made illegal to officiate at ceremonies like weddings unless you were an ordained minister and ordination was denied to New Lights who ended up in prison for officiating at weddings. As the government clamp down proceeded, New Lights were increasingly politicized. In Branford, the New Light minister Reverend Philemon Robbins was suspended for preaching to a Baptist congregation. The parishioners supported him by paying his salary until he was reinstated. During the years when the debate raged in Hartford, it transmogrified into a political debate. New Lights became a political as well as a religious faction, which did not necessarily translate into support for the patriot cause. Some Old Lights would support the Revolution, but the more important point is that the political style had been transformed from one of relative consensus to one of overt conflict, tensions and appeals to "the people."

Denominational politics in Pennsylvania was driven by the rivalries between Quakers and the Scotch-Irish Presbyterians of the frontier territory. The Society of Friends was quickly outnumbered by the flood of immigrants in the 18th Century and found itself besieged in a world where land hunger and consequently indian war was one of the driving forces of politics. The Quaker Annual Meeting in Philadelphia was a highly political event, as it served as a forum to protect their interests as minority in the colony they had founded. In the colonial assembly, the Quaker east was disproportionately represented over the Presbyterian west. The depredations of the Paxton Boys (1763) against the Conestoga Indians were largely motivated over frustration at the lack of support the west of receiving in support of Indian wars. The Presbyterian Synod of Philadelphia quickly took on the same political aspects as the Quaker Annual Meeting. Further complicating Pennsylvania denominational politics was the entry of the Germans into the fray. Motivated by the Charter controversy, Lutheran Henry Muhlenberg reluctantly joined the political debate.

Revival came late to Virginia. Not until the New Side Minister Samuel Davies settled in Virginia in 1749 did revival take off. Disinterring Presbyterians, led by Davies opposed Anglicans in Virginia only when their interests in frontier defense made them politically active. Hoping to get religious toleration out of their support for their efforts in the French and Indian War, the Presbyterians were deeply disappointed when the House of Burgesses proved reticent to grant those privileges. And then there were the Baptists, who cut a dour figure against the backdrop of landed gentry that made up the class of their social betters. Baptists agitated for religious toleration and disestablishment in the 1760s, but didn't see the fruits of their labors until the coming of the Revolution, at which time they were able to trade allegiance to the patriot cause for support of religious liberty.

Chapter 7: Religion and the American Revolution

The Ideology of Dissent grew form multiple sources, one of which Bonomi argues was evangelical religion. The individualism and non-conformist impulse of evangelical religion ran as a "parallel stream" along with rationalism to the Revolution. In an exercise of political science that ties the early writings of country Whigs to the opposition to high Tory religious doctrines of "passive obedience," she focuses our attention on the Anglican High Tory Reverend Doctor Henry Sacheverell, who's preaching on the doctrine of "passive obedience" brought him up on charges in the house of Lords. Though he received a light sentence, his name and memory are invoked repeatedly by Thomas Gordon and John Trenchard in The Independent Whig. Decrying "Priestcraft" and "Popery" they linked religious freedom, the limited governance of the Anglican church, and the limited government of the English Constitution. Political and Religious liberty were thus two sides of the same coin for the Country Whigs and religion would play a critical role in the ideology of revolution.

The controversy over an American Bishop (1767-70) would be unintelligible were it not for this history of church politics in England and the resultant linkage in the colonists' minds of "episcopacy," "priestcraft," "popery" and "tyranny." The crisis should be cast in the broader context of the British attempt to enforce the values and system of the metropolis on the wayward colonies. The apparent attempts to Anglicize the colonies was also resented by ethnic minorities, such as the Germans, Scotch-Irish, Dutch, etc. In 1767 when John Ewer (Bishop of Llanddaff) preached the annual sermon in London for SPG, his tirade against the religion of the colonies incensed the colonies. The threat of an American Bishop gave New Light ministers and Enlightenment rationalists something they could unite against.

The patriot clergy played a major role in propagandizing in support of the revolutionary cause. Steeped in the vocabulary of religious dissent, the clergy and the people spoke a common language. By lending divine sanction to the cause in their preaching and writing, clergy built on pre-revolutionary roles in reminding the people that religious and political liberty were of common origin. After the Revolution began, clergy could invest the David and Goliath struggle with readily available religious imagery.

Religious doctrine and rhetoric, then, contributed in a fundamental way to the coming of the American Revolution and to its final success. In an age of political moderation, when many colonials hesitated at the brink of civil war, patriotic clergymen told their congregations that failure to oppose British tyranny would be an offense in the sight of Heaven. Where political theory advised caution, religious doctrine demanded action. By turning colonial resistance into a righteous cause, and by crying the message to all ranks in all parts of the colonies, ministers did the work of secular radicalism and did it better; they resolved doubts, overcame inertia, fired the heart, and exalted the soul. (p. 216)

Chapter 8: The Formation of American Religious Culture

Bonomi closes by pointing to two enduring traits of American Christianity- the social context of much of American denominations and the latitudinarianism of much of American religious practice. Religion in America has always been bound up with the society in which it grew, in which European belief systems were reformulated in a new context. Then too, Americans are less concerned with doctrine than with religious experience and the "fundamentals" of Christian belief. In the formation of the political culture, religion has more often than not been a progressive force in America. By moving the people to greater and greater heights of individualism on the spiritual plane, evangelical revival fostered the cause of revolution. In the 19th C, reform movements would also be religiously inspired. Far from being anti-modern and anachronistic, religion in America (at least until the post-Civil War Period) seems to have been a force for "progress."

As to the decline of religion in the 18th C, Bonomi points to new statistics that put church adherence at 60% rather than the usual 5-20%. She has rescued religion in the 18th C from the claim that Enlightenment eclipsed religion in the 18thC only to be eclipsed itself by evangelical reform in the 19th. Instead we are left with a complex and conflicted continuum of religious belief that shaped American history from settlement into the 19th C.… (meer)