History of Christianity in America

Religion 304W—Spring 2002

http://faculty.samford.edu/~drbains/relg304

 

Mon., Wed., Fri. 10:30 to 11:35am
320 Chapman Hall

Office Hours: Mon. 4:05-5:00pm,
Tues. 2-4pm, Fri. 1:30-2:30

 

David R. Bains
Department of Religion
319 Chapman Hall
email: drbains@samford.edu
phone: 726-2879

Course Description:

This course surveys the history of Christianity in the United States and the colonies that preceded it. Special attention will be given to the relationship between Christianity and American culture, the changing shape of American denominations, and the role of race and gender in American religion.

Required Texts:

Butler, Jon, and Harry S. Stout. eds. Religion in American History: A Reader. New York: Oxford University Press, 1998. ISBN 0-19-509776-9 ("RAH")

Sernett, Milton C., ed. Afro American Religious History: A Documentary Witness. Durham: Duke University Press, 2000. ISBN 0822324490 ("AARH")

Stowe, Harriet Beecher. Uncle Tom's Cabin. New York: Signet, 1981. ISBN 0-451-52302-4

Williams, Peter W. America's Religions: From Their Origins to the Twenty-first Century Bloomington: University of Illinois Press, 2001. ISBN 0-252-06682-0

Other required readings on reserve, available online, or distributed in class.

Texts on Reserve:

Gaustad, Edwin S. A Documentary History of Religion in America. 2 vols. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1993. ("DHRA")

Hutchison, William. American Protestant Thought in the Liberal Era. Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 1968.

Smith, H. Shelton, Robert T. Handy, and Lefferts A. Loetscher, eds. American Christianity: An Historical Interpretation with Representative Documents. 2 vols. New York: Scribner's, 1963. ("AC")

Williams, Peter W., ed. Perspectives on American Religion and Culture. Oxford: Blackwell, 1999. ("Perspectives")

Course Requirements:

Policies:

Late papers will not be accepted without prior permission of the instructor. All extensions are at the sole discretion of the instructor.

The attendance policy of the Department of Religion and Philosophy will be enforced. Roll will be taken each day. In a MWF class a student may miss six classes without penalty. After the seventh absence your final grade will be reduced one letter grade. After the ninth absence the student will receive an FA for the course. Three tardies count as one absence. If you come in after your name is called, you will need to notify your professor at the end of the class period, or else the tardy will become an absence

The Department of Religion grading scale is: A = 95-100%, A- = 92-94%, B+ = 88-91%, B = 85-87%, B- = 82-84%, B- = 82-84%, C = 74-77%, C- = 70-73%, D+ = 66-69%, D = 63-65%, D- = 60-63%

Class Procedure:

Most class sessions will consist of lecture and discussion. You are responsible for doing the assigned reading before class. You should come to class prepared to ask and answer questions about the readings and lecture. While specific dates are not given on the course outline you should always stay ahead of the lecture topic in your reading. If you are in doubt as to what reading should be done before the next class, ask!

Some class sessions will be seminar days, on these days the entire class will be devoted to discussion and analysis of the readings. It is especially important that you carefully study the readings for these days. Typically a short essay assignment will be due on these days to help you prepare for discussion.

Course Outline (Subject to Revision):

Bracketed readings are strongly recommended, but not strictly required. Additional Seminar Days will be announced.

  1. Introduction: "History and the Past," "Christianity and America"

    2. Reading: Williams, 1-10

  2. European Christianity ca. 1600

    3. Reading: Williams [pp. 55-64], 64-102

    1. Established Church and Dissenting Sects
    2. Traditions / Confessional Groups
  3. Mapping Religion in America
  4. Puritanism in America

    5. Reading: Williams103-118

    1. Experience—discerning Visible Saints
    2. A Pure Church and a Holy Commonwealth

      3. Seminar Day: Puritan Experience and Ecclesiology

      a. Shepard, Thomas. Thomas Shepard Confessions.ed. George Selement and Bruce C. Woolley. (Boston: Colonial Society of Massachusetts, 1981): 60-80 RR
      b. "Cambridge Platform" (1648) in AC, I:128-138 RR
      c. "The Salem Symbols," in Williston Walker, ed., The Creeds and Platforms of Congregationalism, (1893; New York: Pilgrim Press, 1991), 116-118 RR
      d. Trent, Robert F. ""The Deuil Came Upon me Like a Lyon": A 1697 Cambridge Deathbed Narrative." Connecticut Historical Society 48 (1983): 114-119. RR
      Essay Question 2-3 pages: The Puritans have been described as "ambidextrous" theologians and churchmen. How is this ambivalence evident (or not) in these documents? Consider especially their desire to have a pure church of "visible saints" and at the same time to establish a comprehensive Christian commonwealth.

    3. Challengers: Anne Hutchison and Roger Williams

      4. Reading: Roger Williams to John Endicott (1651) and "The Examination of Anne Hutchinson", in DHRA I: 114-117, 132-134 RR
      [Roger Williams's Plea for Religious Freedom http://www.constitution.org/bcp/religlib.htm]

    4. Interpreting the Puritan Errand

    Seminar Day:
    a. Perry Miller, "Errand into the Wilderness" in RAH, 27-41
    b. John Winthrop, "A Model of Christian Charity," in AC, 1:97-102 also online at http://www.winthropsociety.org/charity.htm
    Essay Question: "In Errand into the Wilderness," Perry Miller argues that the early settlers of the Massachusetts Bay Colony viewed themselves as on an "errand" for the great cause of the Reformation. Considering all you have learned about the Puritans, especially from A Model of Christian Charity, Shepard's records of conversion relations from Cambridge, and the Cambridge Platform, do you agree with Miller's assessment? If so, why? If not, why not? What alternative interpretation do you suggest? How would you describe the religious purposes of the Massachusetts Bay Colony in the 1630s and 1640s?

  5. Religion and Church in other Colonies
    1. Middle Colonies

      2. Reading: Williams, pp. 119-135, 153-163

    2. Anglican South
      1. Difficulties of Establishment, Reading: Williams, 105-107
        [Holmes in Perspectives, 66-79]
      2. African Religion

        3. Reading: Williams, 23-28, 216-219; Olaudah Equiano and Bryan Edwards in AARH, 13-24

      3. Anglican Missions to Slaves

    Seminar Day: Le Jau in Sernett, 25-33; Bacon in RAH, 73-87

    Essay Questions: What role does "race" play in Le Jau and Bacon's views of slaves? Given the description of African religion by Williams, Equiano, and Edwards what were the strengths and weaknesses of the Anglicans' missionary approach.

  6. The Emergence of Evangelicalism—The Second Great Awakening

    7. Reading: Williams, 135-147, 153-158

    1. Great Awakening in New England

      2. Reading: Jonathan Edwards, "A Divine and Supernatural Light" http://www.ccel.org/e/edwards/sermons/supernatural_light.html
      Jonathan Edwards, "A Faithful Narrative of the Surprising Work of God" (selections)
      http://faculty.samford.edu/~drbains/relg304/edwards-narr.html

    2. Trans-Atlantic Evangelicalism
    3. "Separates" and the Emergence of Baptists

      4. Reading: "Separate Baptists Come to North Carolina" in American Christianity, I:360-366 RR; Liele and Bryan, in AARH, 44-51, Haynes, 52-60

    4. Methodists

      5. [Recommended Reading: Devereux Jarratt in American Christianity, I:366-371]

    5. Women in the Great Awakening

      6. Reading: Hambrick-Stowe in RAH, 129-141

    6. Interpreting the Great Awakening

    Seminar Day: Butler and Stout in RAH, 88-128; Essay Question: Questions at the end of first paragraph on page 88.

  7. Reason and Revolution

    8. Reading: Williams, 148-153, 175-181
    Thomas Jefferson, Note on the State of Virginia, selection from Query XIV and all of Queries XVII to XIX ed. William Peden (New York: Norton, 1954) pp. 137-149 and pp. 157-165 RR
    online: assigned selections: http://faculty.samford.edu/~drbains/relg304/jeff-notes.html
    full text: http://etext.lib.virginia.edu/toc/modeng/public/JefVirg.html

    James Madison, Memorial and Remonstrance, in DHRA I:262-267 RR or
    online: http://religiousfreedom.lib.virginia.edu/sacred/madison_m&r_1785.html


    Issac Backus on Religious Liberty in DHRA I:267-270 RR

    1. Varieties of Enlightenment in America
      1. Deism and Latitudinarianism
      2. Unitarianism and Latitudinarianism
      3. Common Sense Philosophy
    2. Religious Freedom and Disestablishment
    3. Varieties of Rational Christianity

    Reading: William Ellery Channing. "Baltimore Sermon," in AC, I:493-502
    Thomas Campbell, "Declaration and Address," in AC, I:578-586

    [First Mid-Term Exam Tentative]

  8. The Second Great Awakening and Evangelical America
    1. The Frontier Revivals

      2. Reading: Williams, pp. 181-190. 226-235

    2. The Emergence of Mormonism

      3. Reading: Williams, pp. 235-243; Wood in RAH, 179-197

    3. Growth and Fragmentation of Methodism

      4. Seminar Day: Allen and Lee in AARH, 139-154, 164-184

    4. Voluntary Principle and the Benevolent Empire

      5. Reading: Williams, 190-208, [208-215]

    5. Domesticity

      6. Reading: Welter in RAH, 157-178

    6. Christianity Under Slavery
      1. African American Religion Reading: Randolph, Kelly, and Bibb in AARH, 63-80 [Higginson, in AARH, 112-138]
      2. Slave Revolts—the resources of Christianity

        3. Reading: Turner, 89-101

      3. Plantation Missions and pro-slavery Christianity
    7. Anti-Slavery
      1. Christian Debates on Slavery

        2. Seminar Day: Douglass and Armstrong in RAH, 222-238 [Douglass in AARH, 102-111
        Essay: TBA

      2. The Power of Domesticity

    Seminar Days: Stowe, Uncle Tom's Cabin

  9. Organized African-American Christianity in the South

    10. Reading: Payne, Lane, Holsey, Brown, and Payne in AARH, 245-269
    Montgomery in RAH, 293-313
    Williams, 282-292

    [Second Mid-Term Exam Tentative]

  10. Immigration and Religious Diversity

    11. Reading: Williams, 55-64, 292-307
    Moore in RAH, 198-221 [Bednarowski in RAH, 239-254]
    Orsi in RAH, 441-467. AARH, TBA

    1. Patterns of Immigration
    2. Ethnicity and Religion
    3. Development of American Catholicism
    4. Presence of Eastern Orthodoxy
  11. American Christianity in the Age of Empire

    12. Readings: Josiah Strong, Our Country (1885), Chapters 4,5, and 13, 30-59. 159-180, RR
    Crummell, Turner, Ransom in AARH, 282-295, 337-346,
    Clifford Putney, Muscular Christianity: Manhood and Sports in Protestant America, 1880-1920 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2001), 11-43
    Williams, 245-268

    1. Social Gospel and Race
    2. Foreign Mission
  12. Christian America, A Success?

    13. Readings: Schmidt in RAH, 345-370

    1. Genteel Evangelicalism
    2. Victorian and Commercialism
  13. New Fractures in Evangelical Protestantism
    1. The Fundamentalist Controversy I
      1. Diverging paths in the Nineteenth-Century

        2. Seminar Day: a.) Henry Ward Beecher, "The Study of Human Nature," in Hutchison, ed. American Protestant Thought in the Liberal Era, 37-45; b.) Briggs in AC II: 275-279; c.) Moody, and d.) Hodge and Warfield both in AC II: 320-332

      2. Conflict in the Twentieth-Century

      Readings: Marsden in RAH, 314-332
      Shailer Matthews, "The Affirmations of Faith," in Hutchison, ed. American Protestant, 88-95
      J. Gresham Machen, Christianity and Liberalism selection in American Christianity II:345-349,
      Reinhold Niebuhr, "As Deceivers, Yet True," in Beyond Tragedy, (New York: Scribner's, 1937),

    2. Neo-Orthodoxy and the Protestant Establishment
    3. "Neo-Evangelicals"

      4. Reading: Handy and Carpenter in RAH, 370-398

    4. Fundamentalism in the Reagan Era

      5. Readings: C. Kirk Hadaway and Penny Long Marler, "The Politics of Elite Disunity in the Southern Baptist Convention, 1946-1992," Research in the Social Scientific Study of Religion 6 (1994): 53-102 focus on 65-97

    5. The Pentecostal Tradition

    Readings: Mason in AARH, 314-324 & TBA

  14. African Americans and the Civil Rights Movement

    15. Readings: Ransom, Drake and Cayton, Garvey, Jackson, King in AARH; Spillers in RAH, 468-485; Williams, 322-327. 440-448

    1. Progressive Era
    2. Great Migration
    3. Nationalism
    4. Civil Rights Movement
    5. Legacy: Religion as a Place of Contest
  15. Changing Role of Denominations

    16. Readings: Williams, 343-389, 414-440

    1. Ecumenism
    2. Vatican II
    3. Transformations in Denominationalism
    4. New Immigration and Increasing Diversity

 

Resources to Know About:

Williams, America's Religions contains an excellent bibliography. For further research you may also wish to start with these sources:

Lippy, Charles H., and Peter W. Williams. Encyclopedia of the American Religious Experience: Studies of Traditions and Movements. 3 vols. New York: Scribner, 1988. (Theology Reference section: BL2525 E53 198)

American Religious Experience http://are.as.wvu.edu Online articles and photographs and lots of links to subjects in American religion. Perhaps the best starting place on the web for this subject.

The Material History of American Religion http://www.materialreligion.org A project on the material culture, the "things" of religion in America. Bowling Alleys, Credit Cards, Coffee Bars, and church fans, family Bibles and more.

Wabash Center Guide to Internet Resources http://www.wabashcenter.wabash.edu/internet/front.htm An annotated guide to all sorts of Religion Sources on the Web.

ATLA Religion Database, an index of periodical articles (in Research Resources on the Samford Library Home Page http://davisweb.samford.edu/researchalpha.shtml).