What was the impact of the

Enlightenmentin America?

Cynthia W. Resor, Ph.D.

December 2016

HEART Grant

frontispiece of the Encyclopédie (1772)

About this presentation

• Warning – this PowerPoint is not recommended for middle/high school students• Created for a teacher/ grown-up audience to adapt for middle/high school

classes

• I talk fast – so taking notes is a challenge• BUT – the entire PowerPoint (in a PDF version) will be made available to you

• I love history and get really excited when I get to talk about it and may throw in random extra stuff.

Essential Questions for teachers• What is more important to learn/teach?

• Political history?

• Economic history?

• Intellectual history or social history?

• How do we teach about the “divides” in history?

• In our own modern culture?• The divide between the intellectual elite and “average” people?

• Other “divides”?• Race? Ethnicity?

• Nationality

• Class / Socio-economic status?

• Sex / Gender

• Young/ Old

• Others?

Essential Questions for Students

• How does the work of intellectuals impact the daily lives of “average” people?

• Has America ever been “unified” ORhave we always been “divided”?

Has America ever been “unified” ORhave we always been “divided”?• 17th century American colonies –

• conformed to Europe’s medieval socioeconomic structures• arrangements of privilege and subordination

• aristocratic promoters of American colonization received land as a gift from the English king• But they needed immigrants (God-fearing or fortune-seeking) to be the fishermen,

farmers, salt makers, mechanics, etc.• When didn’t have enough workers, imported

• African slaves in both the plantation South and merchant North• “waste people” dredged from the slums of 17th century England - vagrants, convicts, thieves,

bankrupts, strumpets, vagabonds, lunatics, and bawds as indentured labor

The “founding fathers” didn’t really believe that ALL people were equal . . .

• When assigning pews in Boston’s Old North Church

• In the streets of Benjamin Franklin’s Philadelphia

• On the estates of Jefferson or Washington in Virginia

• And even though Calvinist doctrine of predestination divided the Massachusetts flock into damned and saved but also divided them into servants and masters• Cotton Mather (1696) reminded the servants “You are the animate, separate,

active instruments of other men…your tongues, your hands, your feet, are your masters, and they should move according to the will of your masters.”

The most “enlightened” founding fathers . . .

• Ben Franklin - enlightened businessman and founder of libraries• looked upon the Philadelphia rabble as coarse material that maybe could be

brushed and combed into an acceptable grade of bourgeois broadcloth• His Poor Richard’s Almanack offered a program for “turning sow’s ears if not yet into silk

purses” - useful tradesmen furnished with a “happy mediocrity.”

• Thomas Jefferson• proposed public education for poor white children that he described as

“raking from the rubbish” the scraps of intellect and talent worth the trouble of further cultivation.

In American history, it has always seemed that

• Black, Native American, immigrant, and female lives have always mattered less than white, male lives

• Rich lives have always mattered more than poor lives. • Jefferson in a letter to John Langdon (New Hampshire founding father) in

1810: “Money, and not morality, is the principle of commerce and commercial nations.”

Interesting book with similar themes

• White Trash: The 400-Year Untold History of Class in America

• (2016)

• by Nancy Isenberg

• Older, different interpretation

• Anti-Intellectualism in American Life (1963)

• by Richard Hofstadter

SO – how do we, as history teachers,

teach about these divides ?

• We don’t want to make the divides wider . . . . • But students need to KNOW about the historical divides

in order to better understand the modern divides

Teaching history – key concepts

https://www.loc.gov/item/2001703720/

Types of History

• Political

• Economic

• Social• Religious history if studying the beliefs/practices of average members

• Intellectual (sometimes called cultural history)• Religious history if studying the theology of the leaders

• History of Great Men

• History of Formal Institutions

• Cultural history • “history with a literary turn”• different texts, which are distributed and read in different ways, can mean different things, at

different times, to different people• there is no single, objective way to interpret a text.

Social History

• study of the lives of groups of ordinary people, the people that are not of the elite, the wealthy, and politically powerful• history from the bottom up

• what shapes a society as a whole and large-scale social processes

• Associated with cultural history that refers to the study of how groups of people in the past understood their daily experiences

Culture

• What is the relationship between folk, popular, and elite culture?

• What makes popular culture popular?

PopularFolkTraditionalIn the past – not literate

EliteIntellectualWealthPower

Who are the modern equivalents of the 18th century Enlightenment intellectuals?

From:Foreign Policy magazine - world’s preeminent thought leaders and public intellectuals - "100 Leading Global Thinkers” - 2014

Describe the work of these modern intellectuals . . .

The Enlightenment

The First Reading at Mme Geoffrin's of Voltaire's Tragedy 'L'Orphelin de la Chine', 1755 (oil on canvas)by Anicet-Charles Lemonnier, (1743-1824)Description: Play written by Voltaire (1694-1778) in 1753 as an adaptation of a Chinese play: The Orphan of Zhao. Exemplified Voltaire's belief that genius and reason have a natural superiority over blind force and barbarism. Marie Therese Rodet Geoffrin was a leading female figure in the French

Enlightenment.

The Enlightenment - when?

• 1715• the year that Louis XIV died

• TO

• 1789• the beginning of the French Revolution

Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen, 1789 unknown French artist - (18th century)

The Enlightenment - defined

• Intellectual movement

• Originated in Europe

• Questioned:• the source of authority and legitimacy of power

• liberty, progress, tolerance, fraternity, constitutional government• separation of church and state• individual liberty and religious tolerance VS absolute monarchy and state enforced religion

• BUT• MANY contradictions and disagreements among Enlightenment thinkers

• Was it . . .• a series of debates and problems?

• NOT a list of intellectual projects with precise definitions

• “flashpoints” or “pockets” of intellectual activity that impacted and changed developments in society and government over time, worldwide?

• Little consensus among historians on an exact definition

What came before it?

• Scientific Revolution • developments in mathematics, physics, astronomy,

biology, human anatomy, and chemistry

• Begins around the end of the Renaissance with • Nicolaus Copernicus's On the Revolutions of the

Heavenly Spheres (1543)

• Ends late 18th century • Isaac Newton's Principia (1687) that formulated the

laws of motion and universal gravitation.

• Influenced the intellectual social movement known as the Enlightenment

Portrait of Isaac Newton (1642-1727), c.1726 by Enoch Seeman, (1694-1744 - English) in National Portrait Gallery, London, UK

What came after it?

• Romanticism • end of the 18th century - peak from

1800 to 1850

• originated in Europe; spread to United States

• artistic, literary, musical, and intellectual• emphasis on emotion and individualism

• glorification of all the past and nature

• preferred medieval rather than the classical (Gothic Revival) Wanderer above the Sea of Fog (1818) by Caspar David

Friedrich (German - 1774 – 1840)Romantic masterpiece "suggesting at once mastery over a landscape and the insignificance of the individual within it. We see no face, so it's impossible to know whether the prospect facing the young man is exhilarating, or terrifying, or both."

The Enlightenment in Americaby Henry F. May1976

• Defined Enlightenment as:• A European intellectual phenomenon

• a “cluster of ideas” that included • liberalism

• progress

• rationality

• Enlightenment thought made two distinct claims:• 1. that the present age is more enlightened than the past

• 2. that we understand nature and man best through the use of our natural faculties (human thinking)

Review of the Enlightenment main thinkers

Initiation of an apprentice Freemason around 1800. Colored engraving.

Freemason groups in Europe helped to spread Enlightenment ideas.

The important guys

• Polymaths – person with expertise across many different subject areas

• Keep in mind - “disciplines” not invented yet

• Most were “philosophers” or “natural philosophers”• Name for study of nature and the physical universe BEFORE development of

modern science.

Humans are rational and can learn know everything

• Francis Bacon (1561 – 1626) • English; “father of scientific method”

• René Descartes (1596 –1650) • French; “father of modern western philosophy”

• I think therefore I am. - Cogito ergo sum

• John Locke (1632 –1704) • English; "lather of liberalism"

• humans are naturally good – will do good if know good

• Montesquieu (1689 –1755)• theory of separation of powers

French – too radical for most Americans

• Voltaire (François-Marie Arouet) (1694 –1778); • French; attacked Catholic Church (the state-sponsored, “established” church

of France)

• advocate of freedom of religion, freedom of speech, and separation of church and state.

• Denis Diderot (1713 –1784)• French; editor, and contributor to the Encyclopédie

• Published between 1751 and 1772 in thirty-five volumes

• Denis Diderot, Jean le Rond d'Alembert (until 1759) & 150 scientists and philosophers

• Spread the ideas of the Enlightenment across Europe and beyond

Truth

Reason and Philosophy to the right of Truth - one in raising the veil from Truth, the other in tearing it away.

At the feet of Truth, Theology, on her knees, receives the light from on high.

Truth enveloped in a veil and radiating light which parts the clouds and disperses them.

Memory, Ancient and Modern History; History records the pomp and ceremony, and Time serves as its support.

Below them are grouped Geometry, Astronomy, and Physics.The figures below this group represent Optics, Botany, Chemistry, and Agriculture. At the bottom are several Arts and Professions which derive from the Sciences. At the left of Truth one sees Imagination, who positions herself to adorn and crown Truth. Below Imagination, the artist has placed the different genres of Poetry: Epic, Dramatic, Satire, and Pastoral. After that come the other Arts of Imitation: Music, Painting, Sculpture, and Architecture.

frontispiece of the Encyclopédie (1772)

Sensibility (pre-Romanticism)

• Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712 – 1778)• Swiss• Emile, or On Education - education of the whole person for citizenship. • Julie, or the New Heloise - romanticism in fiction

• illustrates that one should do what is imposed by society if it is consistent with one's inner feelings and core identity.

• Faking it, acting falsely would pave the way to self-destruction.

• Confessions (1782)• Inspired modern autobiography

• Reveries of a Solitary Walker (1776-78)• exemplified the late 18th-century movement known as the Age of Sensibility• Focus on subjectivity and introspection that later characterized modern writing.

Humans are not always rational

• David Hume (1711 - 1776)• Scottish• A Treatise of Human Nature (1738 to 1740)

• skepticism about human powers of reason• passion rather than reason governs human behavior• sentimentalist who held that ethics are based on emotion or sentiment rather than abstract moral principle• “Morals excite passions, and produce or prevent actions. Reason itself is utterly impotent in this particular.”

• Adam Smith (1723 - 1790)• Scottish• Wealth of Nations (1776)

• first “modern” work of economics & foundations of classical free market economic theory• the economic system is automatic and usually able to regulate itself (invisible hand) • but this can be threatened by monopolies, tax preferences, privileges of some people/groups

at expense of others.

• Edward Gibbon• The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (1776 – 1789)

• Objectivity; used primary sources - became a model for later historians• Christianity as a cause for the fall (Romans gradually lost their civic and military values)

Humans can’t know everything

• Immanuel Kant (1724 –1804)• German – “father of modern philosophy”

• The human mind creates the structure of human experience

• no one can really know whether there is a God and an afterlife or not

• Don’t speculate on the nature of the world (can’t know that for certain)

• Instead - critique own thoughts• investigate what we can know

• define the limits of knowledge

• determine how mental processes affect what we know

Let’s examine impact on America using these categories (Henry F. May’s work)

• Moderate English Enlightenment – 1688 – 1787• Balance, order and religious compromise• Dominant in England from Newton to Locke• Favored by some American patriot leaders, moderate loyalists, most of the framers of the Constitution• MOST long term impact in 18th century America and today

• Skeptical French Enlightenment – 1750 – 1789• Britain and France• Skepticism of Hume

• skepticism about human powers of reason• passion rather than reason governs human behavior

• Revolutionary transatlantic Enlightenment – 1776 – 1800• Belief in possibility of creating a new world through destruction of old

• Rousseau to Thomas Paine

• Didactic Scottish Enlightenment – 1800 – 1815• Opposed skepticism and revolution• Believed in an understandable universe, clear and certain moral judgements, progress• Intellect should produce practical benefit for the individual and society as a whole.• Very popular in early 19th century United States

Moderate English Enlightenment – 1688 – 1787

• Social and economic change in England• Caused by growth in wealth through foreign trade

• Growing population

• Technological and agricultural inventions and improvements

• New rich (wanted security and certainty)• Enlightenment ideas - Order, freedom, prosperity - appealed to upper class

and those moving into a more financially secure “middling” class who wanted to “move up”

• Displaced craftsmen and peasants (shifting to factory work)• Majority of people in lower classes struggling

• Harsh penal code, riots, crime, drunkedness, prostitution (HOGARTH – NEXT SLIDE)

• These people saw not evidence of order, freedom, prosperity of Enlightenment thought

• A Rake's Progress III: The Rake at the Rose-Tavern, 1733

• By William Hogarth (1697-1764)

• English painter, printmaker, pictorial satirist, social critic, and editorial cartoonist who has been credited with pioneering the comic strip/graphic storytelling

Beer Street and Gin Lane were two prints issued in 1751 by English artist William Hogarth in support of what would become the Gin Act (to reduce the drinking of hard liquor). Designed to be viewed alongside each other, they depict the evils of the consumption of gin as a contrast to the merits of drinking beer.

Moderate English Enlightenment – 1688 – 1787• Church of England

• Very moderate – many embraced Enlightenment• Condemned Catholicism and religious enthusiasm • Okay with using human reason with religion

• Can deduce proper morals AND existence & nature of God by reason and by studying nature• Revelation (knowing through faith) has its place in religion BUT reason must also be used

• Dissenting groups varied in their views of Enlightenment (mostly made up for middle class)• Presbyterians, Congregationalists, Baptists, Quakers

• Deists – went one step further• Also believed God acted in an orderly, moral, rational manner• God’s purpose was seen in positive light (not just punishment) – goals beneficial to man• God revealed his existence and purpose in nature; man could figure out nature• Deists denied the irrational acts of the Bible

• The Life and Morals of Jesus of Nazareth, (Jefferson Bible)• Excluded miracles and supernatural parts of the New Testament

Moderate English Enlightenment in American colonies

Enlightenment ideas of balance, order, rationality appealed to

• Economically prosperous

• Urban

• Successful

• striving to be gentry, “middling sort” –tradesmen, farmers, artisans

• most educated

• People that wanted:• moderate religion• Constitutional government• Respect for class and rank

Did not appeal as much to or was not familiar to . . .

• The illiterate (more common in middle/southern colonies)

• The unsuccessful groups of people who did not see balance order and rationality in their lives

• Newer “evangelical” religious denominations, revivalists

Religious diversity & Enlightenment:opinions varied

• New York never very religious

• Many in new England – hoped for a “city on the hill” of Congregationalists

• Boston and Philadelphia – lost their religious identity

• Many on frontier/south “unchurched”

• American universities –controversy between “liberal intellectuals”; traditionalists; revivalists • some innovations made because of

Enlightenment ideas

Did Enlightenment ideas “trickle down” from “high” to “low” culture?

If so, HOW did Enlightenment ideas move from the elite to lower social classes? How do historians know what Americans read/believed?

A “reading” revolution helped spread ideas .

18th century

• Impact of economic shifts from pre-industrial to industrial economy

• Parts of Britain, Netherlands, northern Italy had entered the Industrial Revolution

• Increasing amount of “consumer goods” made and sold including books, pamphlets, newspapers, pictures that transmitted ideas and attitudes

21st century

• Shift from industrial to “post-industrial economy”

• Technology / communications revolution

• Internet, social media, electronic books, etc.

• Agriculture

• to Industrial

• to Postindustrial

In the 18th century . . .

• Language – French was replacing Latin as the international language • social/intellectual elites of all nations (British sometimes an exception) were trained in French

/ Latin

• Many still illiterate BUT visual representations (pictures, engravings, stage-sets, statues in public places) transmitted ideas.

• Organizations that promoted new ideas:• Membership limited but still broader that previous centuries

• Masonic lodges• Learned academies and societies

• Open to more people -• Commercial operations (open to all who could pay) that exposed different social classes to similar ideas

• Public lectures

• Coffee houses• Lending libraries

• Art exhibitions

• Operatic and theatrical performances

Changes in the act of reading . .

• Before: “intensive reading”• Fewer printed works; expensive to own

• People owned only a few books, such as Bible, devotional works, almanac, Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress

• Read over and over again• sometimes in silence, sometimes out loud to friends, families

• By late 18th century: more “extensive reading”• More different printed works to read, cheaper to buy

• Read many different printed works just one time and moving on to others

• Reading done more alone instead of socially

Who were the authors of these new publications?

• Much of what was read was produced by professional writers (not elite Enlightenment thinkers)• Many of these prolific and popular writers are forgotten today.

• Did professional writers echo the ideas of the elite intellectuals (or were they “anti-intellectual”)?• Maybe or maybe not – these authors wrote what sold well

• What was popular?• Novels

• Best sellers• Samuel Richardson’s Pamela (1740) and Clarissa (1747-8)• Rousseau’s Julie, or the New Heloise (1761)• Goethe’s Sorrows of Young Weather (1774)

• Newspapers• Children’s books• Travel• Natural history

• By late 18th century, historians have found that in German, English and North American lending libraries• Over 70 % of books borrowed were novels• 10% history, biography and travel• Less than 1% were religious works

What did colonists read?

In England

• aristocratic patronage still important for a literary career

• New “middling class” liked:• didactic, exiting, not too difficult

literature

• Novels

• Coarseness, but not frivolity or cynicism

In American colonies

• No control by aristocracy, church, or government

• Two types of book-sellers influenced the market:• New England minister

• Publisher, printer, bookseller• Ex – Ben Franklin

What did colonists read in mid 1700s?• Sermons (but popularity was decreasing)

• Formal speeches for funerals, ordinations, elections, theological, moral, politics

• Newspapers• Much of the content was copied straight from European papers• American content

• Sales, auctions, shipping news, announcements• Essays and poems as fillers – often copies from other sources

• English and Continental books (usually translated)• Preference for Protestant, Whiggish, moral and moderate

• Whig's - emphasized innovation and liberty and was strongly held by about half of the leading families in England and Scotland, as well as most merchants, Dissenters and professionals.

• Toryism - traditionalism and conservatism; supported by great families; most of the landed gentry

• Most radical of European Enlightenment writers – little known in America before the Revolution

• Whiggish

• a view which holds that history follows a path of inevitable progression and improvement and which judges the past in light of the present.

• A very positive view of the span of human history

• Do we have “Whiggish” views of history today?

The Spectator• daily publication founded by Joseph Addison and Richard Steele

• Published in England from 1711 to 1712

• Collected into seven volumes – popular into the early 19th century

• Opposed to upper-class vices, gambling, obscenity, French foppery, décolletage

• Praised – cheerful, modest, natural manners

• Neutral in politics

• Orthodox Anglican• Against enthusiasm

• More about this later . . . . . .

Title pages of the c. 1788 edition of the collected edition of Addison and Steele's The Spectator.

The public sphere & the Enlightenment . .

• an area in social life where individuals come together to :• identify and discuss the problems of society

• & influence political action

• Begin in the 18th century with• Coffee houses

• pubic lectures

• lending libraries

• Masonic Lodges

• flourishing book trade

• Accessible to more, new groups of people

Enlightenment Coffee Houses

• The Humors of an Election (right)

• Midnight (at a coffee house) (above)

• By William Hogarth (1697 - 1764) English painter, printmaker, satirist, social critic

Freemasonry & Enlightenment• In Europe, Masonic lodges helped to create a new

secular culture• The lodges practices a new type of politics

• Based up constitutionalism• NOT the traditional privileges of social class

• Believed that merit (NOT birth) was the foundation of the social and political order of their clubs

• Elected their leaders • Created groups of people engaged in conversations about

important topics of the day• Allowed members from a wide range of occupations, social

classes• Allowed people to mix and converse in new ways

18th century Freemason Apron

Enlightenment VSGreat Awakening

John Wesley preaching on his fathers grave: in the church yard at Epworth Sunday June 6th 1742Published by Currier & Ives, [between 1856 and 1907]

New revivalist movements: Methodists,

Baptists, Pietisms

(Germany)

Traditional:Catholic, Anglican,

Lutheran

Rational Religion:

Deists

Atheism (NOT common in Britain

and colonies)

18th century spectrum of religion

Spiritual----------------------------------------------------------------------------------Rational

• Anglicans

• Moderate Congregationalists

• Methodists• John Wesley (1703 –1791)

• Political conservative

• Arrived in colonies in 1770s

• Congregationalists - "New Lights" • Jonathan Edwards (1703 –1758)

• Not concerned with politics

• Separate Baptists• Revival in North Carolina - 1755

RevivalistsIntellectual Protestantism

Conflict between piety and rationalism

Intellectual Protestantism • Progress of humans• Rationality• Balance• Order & Moderation

• Believed revivalists were:• Enthusiasts• Dangerous levelers• Madmen• Crazy reactionaries• Stirring up the ignorant rable

Revivalists• Dwelled on sin and failings of humans• Religious emotion• Knowledge through Bible / revelation• Mediation on death• Anti-intellectual• Concerned about sin and proper

conduct – against cards, dancing, passion

• Believed the Intellectual Protestants were:• Hard-hearted• Destined to hell

Sidebar:

Shakers, Kentucky and “getting the spirit”

• 1774 – Ann Lee and followers arrive in America• Shaker faith / communities form and

grow in New England

• 1801 – Cane Ridge Revival (Bourbon County)• Shakers participate – growth of

Kentucky Shaker Villages• Pleasant Hill (near Harrodsburg)

• South Union (near Bowling Green)

BEFORE The Great Awakening

Colonial Religion before 1750s

About the previous image

• The Expulsion of the Salzburgers• On October 31, 1731, the Catholic ruler of Salzburg, Austria, Archbishop Leopold von

Firmian, issued an edict expelling as many as 20,000 Lutherans from his principality. • Many propertyless Lutherans, given only eight days to leave their homes, froze to

death as they drifted through the winter seeking sanctuary. The wealthier ones who were allowed three months to dispose of their property fared better.

• Some of these Salzburgers reached London, from whence they sailed to Georgia. Others found new homes in the Netherlands and East Prussia.

• From: (EXCELLENT RESOURCE – highly recommended)

• Religion and the Founding of the American RepublicAmerica as a Religious Refuge: The Seventeenth Century

• https://www.loc.gov/exhibits/religion/rel01.html

MYTH!!!

• MYTH – all 17th century English colonists fled from religious persecution into land of religious freedom

• REALITY – Colonists came for many different reasons:• diverse religious goals

• many were not persecuted at home; some were

• few wanted to live in a society that tolerated any religion

• many wanted their own religion to dominate

• Many sought ONLY economic advantages

• At end of 1600s – most colonies offered LESS religious toleration than did the home country

Established Churches • Official Church supported by government

• Paid taxes or face fines, whippings, jail

• Puritan /Congregational Church • Plymouth, Massachusetts, Connecticut

• most ministers and churches• est. Harvard – 1636 and Yale - 1701 to train ministers

• Dutch Reformed Church• New Netherland (New York)

• Church of England (Anglican)• First in Virginia, Barbados, Jamaica, Leeward Islands

• est. William & Mary-1693 but small & underfunded

• 1690s – creation of new Anglican Establishments is:• Maryland, southern New York, South Carolina, North Carolina

• Middle colonies • “soul destroying whirlpool of apostasy”• ethnic and religious diversity – prevented establishment • denominations had to rely on voluntary attendance and

contributions • SHOCKING to orthodox ministers

Criminal laws in the early New England colonies were based on the scriptures, especially the Old Testament. Many civil laws and procedures were modelled after the English common law.The General Laws and Liberties of the Massachusets Colony: Revised and Reprinted , Cambridge, Massachusetts: Samuel Green, 1672.From: Religion and the Founding of the American RepublicAmerica as a Religious Refuge: The Seventeenth Centuryhttps://www.loc.gov/exhibits/religion/rel01.html

By 1750

• approx. 1,500 local congregations in colonies• averaging about 90 families each

• Around 2/3 of colonial adults were “churched” • But what does that mean when you are REQUIRED to be a member of an

Established churches?

• Are the members spiritually engaged? Or just on the membership books?

• Many backcountry people were “unchurched”

1750• Congregationalist – 450 churches (mostly in

New England)

• Anglicans – 300 parishes (mostly in South)

• Quakers – 250 meetings (most in middle colonies)

• Presbyterians – 160 churches (most in middle colonies)

• Baptists – 100 churches (most in middle colonies)

• Lutherans - 95 churches (most in middle colonies)

• Dutch Reformed – 78 churches (most in middle colonies)

• German Reformed - 51 churches (most in middle colonies)

• A few Catholic churches (especially in Maryland)

• A few Jewish synagogues – Newport, New York City, Charles Town

In Side of the Old Lutheran Church in 1800, in York, Pa. Watercolor with pen and ink by Lewis Miller, c. 1800.https://www.loc.gov/exhibits/religion/rel02.html

Splits among and within denominations:

Evangelical clergy

• wanted spontaneous, direct, individual religious experience

• Preferred soul-searching / dramatic conversions

• old forms of worship had lost intensity, were empty formal ceremonies

• Rejected new forms of “scientific” learning

• Calvinist God – God’s grace alone, humans depraved and must acknowledge it

Rationalist (Enlightened) clergy

• Favored critical, educated inquiry• Did not directly support scriptural

revelation and spiritual experience• impacted by Enlightenment –nature

as a orderly and predictable operation of laws of nature

• didn’t like overly emotional worship• expected members to follow learned

and authoritative leaders/clergy• Rational God – could earn salvation

through behaving well

The Great Awakening

Late 1730s –1760s

Enthusiasm display'd, or Moor Fields Congregation, 1739 (English engraving)Satire on the Calvinist George Whitefield (1714-70) who often preached to the

poor in the open air on Kennington Common or Moorfields (England), encouraging the Wesleys to do the same.

Religious revival

• Mostly in New England (1735 – 1745) & Virginia (1750s and 1760s)• ALSO – many backcountry people were unchurched – source of potential converts

• Began 1734 – 1735 Northampton Congregational Church (Mass.)• Reverend Jonathan Edwards preached• people could attain salvation only if they recognized their own depraved natures and the need to

surrender to God’s will (emotional conversions)

but isolated until

• 1739 – George Whitefield – English Anglican – spend 15 months preaching throughout colonies• 1000s came to listen and experience dramatic conversions – preached a “revived” religion

• Revivals crossed denominational lines – evangelicals from different denominations worked together

Old Lights & New Lights

• “Old Lights” – traditional clerics and followers

• “New Lights” – evangelicals

George Whitefield

George Whitefield acquired many enemies, who assailed evangelicalism as a distortion of the gospel and attacked him and his followers for alleged moral failings. The evangelist endured many jibes at his eye disease; hence the epithet "Dr. Squintum.“This satire shows an imp pouring inspiration in Whitefield's ear while a grotesque Fame, listening on the other side through an ear trumpet, makes accusations on two counts that have dogged revivalists to the present day: sex and avarice. The Devil, raking in money below the podium, and the caption raise charges that Whitefield was enriching himself by his ministry. At the lower left, Whitefield's followers proposition a prostitute, reflecting the line in the caption that "their Hearts to lewd Whoring extend."

From - Religion and the Founding of the American Republic - Religion in Eighteenth-Century Americahttp://www.loc.gov/exhibits/religion/rel02.html#obj056

Splits among the New Lights

• Moderates• still wanted established churches

and territorial parishes

• still wanted educated & ordained clergy

• still believed in social distinctions/ classes

• Radicals • no Established churches

• education / ordination not needed – only conviction made a minister

• no social distinctions in religion

• individuals should have free choice in faith (but didn’t always mean free choice in personal life)

• Some sought to include all in their faith – despite sex, status or race

Baptists one of most radical groups

• 7 congregations – 1769 to 54 congregations in 1774 • 10th of Virginians became Baptist

• Egalitarian worship (not hierarchical seating of Anglican Church)• addressed each other as brothers / sisters• plain dark clothing, short hair• emotional , ecstatic worship – laying on of hands, foot washing• no dancing, horseracing, cockfighting (gambling & pleasure)

• Anglican pastors used gov. backing to whip and jail unlicensed Baptist preachers • Was welcome by the persecuted to demonstrate their faith in god

• by late 1700s – Baptists more “mainstream” • restricting women’s rights in church, more education of clergy, etc.

Jefferson's Letter to the Danbury BaptistsThe Final Letter, as SentTo messers. Nehemiah Dodge, Ephraim Robbins, & Stephen S. Nelson, a committee of the Danbury Baptist association in the state ofConnecticut.

Gentlemen

The affectionate sentiments of esteem and approbation which you are so good as to express towards me, on behalf of the Danbury Baptist association, give me the highest satisfaction. my duties dictate a faithful and zealous pursuit of the interests of my constituents, & in proportion as they are persuaded of my fidelity to those duties, the discharge of them becomes more and more pleasing.

Believing with you that religion is a matter which lies solely between Man & his God, that he owes account to none other for his faith or his worship, that the legitimate powers of government reach actions only, & not opinions, I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should "make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof," thus building a wall of separation between Church & State. Adhering to this expression of the supreme will of the nation in behalf of the rights of conscience, I shall see with sincere satisfaction the progress of those sentiments which tend to restore to man all his natural rights, convinced he has no natural right in opposition to his social duties.

I reciprocate your kind prayers for the protection & blessing of the common father and creator of man, and tender you for yourselves & your religious association, assurances of my high respect & esteem.

Th JeffersonJan. 1. 1802.

• From https://www.loc.gov/loc/lcib/9806/danpre.html

• More information about restoration - https://www.loc.gov/loc/lcib/9806/danbury.html

Background of “Separates”

• In response to Whitefield’s preaching in Boston in 1740

• The pastor of the Baptist church disapproved of the revival excitement but some members liked it

• Members that like revival excitement withdrew from the First Baptist Church and formed Second Baptist Church in 1743.

• A favorite verse among new churches was II Corinthians 6:17 —"Come out from among them, and be ye separate.“• This led to them being called "Separates".

The Narrative of Daniel Trabue – Westward into Kentucky“The Separate Baptists of Revolutionary Virginia”

• In his youth Daniel Trabue (1760--1840) served as a Virginia soldier in the Revolutionary War.

• After three years of service on the Kentucky frontier, he returned home to participate as a sutler (civilian merchant who sells provisions to an army in the field) in the Yorktown campaign.

• Following the war he settled in the Piedmont, but by 1785 his yearning to return westward led him to take his family to Kentucky, where they settled for a few years in the upper Green River country. • He recorded his narrative in 1827, in the town of Columbia, of which he was a

founder.

Effects of Great Awakening

• Americans more willing to tolerate diversity

• Revivalists message challenged notions of deference

• First unifying event of colonial experience

• Origins of American evangelical tradition

• Major source of revolutionary anti-authoritarian and republican rhetoric

OR – are the effects of the Great Awakening overestimated

by historians?The Historiography:Historians’ Debate

about Great Awakening

3 interpretations

Interpretation #1

• It was a revolutionary NEW trend –• revivals were a way for humble colonists to challenge the upper class colonists • lower classes criticized their materialistic values / undermined claims to deference &

respect

• Great Awakening transformed and democratized modes of mass communication – setting stage for new popular politics of revolutionary period

• Historians that support this view:• Gary Nash – The Urban Crucible (study of major seaports in 1700s)• Rhys Isaac – The Transformation of Virginia, 1740-1790

Interpretation #2

• Great Awakening was a conservative movement • looked backed to earlier religious models, not to a new order

• Challenges to slavery and class privilege faded quickly in Revolutionary War years

• Historians that support this view:• Christine Leigh Heyrman – Commerce and Culture

• Christopher Jedrey – The World of John Cleaveland, Family and Community in 18th Century New

Interpretation #3

• Rejection of Great Awakening

• term “Great Awakening” was not contemporary • not used in revolutionary or early national periods of American history

• difficult to actually date – did it really spread in a “logical” way?

• it missed most of the colonies

• supporters didn’t question all authority – only certain kinds

• Historian that supports this view:• Jon Butler – 1st in a 1982/83 article in Journal of American History – then in

Awash in A Sea of Faith, Christianizing the American People (1990)

Credulity, Superstition and Fanaticism. A Medley18th century.by William Hogarth

• depicts a preacher – possibly George Whitefield• His text is opened at a page which reads "I speak as

a fool“• He is holding a puppet of a devil with a gridiron in

his left hand and a puppet of a witch suckling an incubus in his right hand.

• His wig is falling off to reveal a Jesuit's tonsure underneath.

• To the right, the "scale of vociferation" measures his oratory, rising from "natural tone" to "bull roar“

• The print includes visual references to more than a dozen reputed instances of witchcraft or possession in England

• For more -https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Credulity,_Superstition,_and_Fanaticism

A word about Wikipedia . . . .

• Launched in 2001

• After 2005, Wikipedia changed the rules• Required contributors to cite published materials and established other policies• In response to major Wikipedia scandal

• a well-known figure was found to have a vandalized biography which had gone unnoticed for months

• On October 24, 2005, British newspaper The Guardian published a story titled "Can you trust Wikipedia?" in which a panel of experts was asked to review seven entries related to their fields, giving each article reviewed a number designation out of ten points.• Scores ranged from 0 to 8, but most received marks between 5 and 8. The most common criticisms were:• Poor prose, or ease-of-reading issues (3 mentions)• Omissions or inaccuracies, often small but including key omissions in some articles (3 mentions)• Poor balance, with less important areas being given more attention and vice versa (1 mention)

• The most common praises were:• Factually sound and correct, no glaring inaccuracies (4 mentions)• Much useful information, including well selected links, making it possible to "access much information

quickly" (3 mentions)

What are the religious “divides” in America today?

Church, synagogue, or mosque attendance by state (2009)See http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2016/02/29/how-religious-is-your-state/?state=alabama for more

The Final Phase -Enlightenment in the USA

Early 19th century United States

The Bible and temperance by N. Currier, between 1835 and 1856https://www.loc.gov/resource/cph.3b49894/

Scottish “Common Sense” Philosophy

• Also called - Didactic Scottish Enlightenment – 1800 – 1815• Opposed skepticism and revolution

• Believed in an understandable universe, clear and certain moral judgements, progress

• Intellect should produce practical benefit for the individual and society as a whole.

• According to historian Henry May • Enlightenment merged with American religion to produce the largely religious

attitudes of the 19th century

In the early years of 18th century in the new USA . . .

• Americans conscious of living in a new period - but hadn’t fully defined it

• Population was growing• Moving westward• 9/10ths were farmers

• Cities growing slowly, manufacturing still on a small scale• Economy was still mostly colonial (held back by War

of 1812)

• The most positive claimed that soon USA would surpass Europe and be the center of republican science, art, literature – but really not happening • European travelers saw America as crude backwater of whiskey-

drinking, tobacco-spitting democrats with big hopes but not much to show for it

Daniel Boone Escorting Settlers through the Cumberland Gap By George Caleb Bingham, oil on canvas, 1851–52

American colleges becoming strongholds of religious orthodoxy and moderate revivalism

• Strongest holdout of Enlightenment ideals in the South • College of William and Mary• University of Transylvania in Lexington

• Since 1794 - fight between • Bluegrass republicanism and aristocratic liberalism

• VS• Presbyterian orthodoxy

• Finally in 1829, William Ellery Channing (a Boston Unitarian and Enlightenment supporter) was forced out of the presidency at Transylvania College

Most learned men were moderately conservative and believed:

GOOD

• Locke

• Newton

• Montesquieu

• science

• progress

• intellectual freedom

• republicanism

BAD

• Voltaire

• Hume

• Rousseau

• religious skepticism

• radical innovations in politics or social order

• undisciplined emotion

• the French Revolution

2 kinds of moderate conservatives

• Presbyterian clergy – who ran most of the colleges• Didn’t like extreme revivalism and egalitarian anti-intellectualism

• Unitarian clergy and laity of the Boston area• Didn’t like extreme religion

Example: Samuel Miller• (1769 –1850) • Prominent New York Presbyterian clergyman• leader at Princeton Theological Seminary in 1813• Author of Brief Retrospect of the Eighteenth Century (1803, 1805)

• In election of 1800, he supported Jefferson . . . • “Because Mr. Jefferson is suspected of Deism, are we to raise a hue and cry

against him, as if he ought to be instantly deprived of his rights of citizenship ? If he be an infidel, I lament it for two reasons: from a concern for his own personal salvation, and that a religion, which is so much spoken against, does not receive his countenance and aid. But notwithstanding this, I think myself perfectly consistent in saying that I had much rather have Mr. Jefferson President of the United States, than an aristocratic Christian.”

• In a “century sermons” were popular on the last Sunday of the 18th

century

• A retrospective of the gains of the 18th century

Miller’s list of great achievements of man in 1800:• Improvements in the physical sciences

• Increasing politeness

• Diffusion of learning

• Intellectual freedom (but sometimes abused by false philosophers)

• An even greater gains expected in the future

• BUT• Makes distinction between the increased recognition of female talent and ability

(GOOD)• VS• the licentious doctrines of Marry Wollstonecraft which aimed at obliterating the

natural differences between men and women and would lead to promiscuity (BAD)

2 central distinctions made by Miller that are constant in the 19th century (and beyond)• Scientific progress (possible)

• VS

• moral progress of humans (required God/religion)

• Progress in human learning (possible)

• VS

• Progress in perfectibility of humans (only God/religion could perfect humans)

Sources used for this presentation• Linda Kerber, “The Republican Mother: Women and the Enlightenment-An American Perspective” (pp. 187-

205) • In American Quarterly, Vol. 28, No. 2, Summer, 1976

• The Enlightenment in America by Henry F. May (1976)

• The Enlightenment by Dorinda Outran (1995)

• “Henry F. May and the Revival of the American Enlightenment: Problems and Possibilities for Intellectual and Social History”

• By John M. Dixon• The William and Mary Quarterly, Vol. 71, No. 2 (April 2014), pp. 255-280

• “A Perishable Commodity, Considerations of body and mind.”• By Lewis H. Lapham• http://laphamsquarterly.org/flesh/perishable-commodity

Some historiography . . .

• Modern conservative critics have blamed the Enlightenment for• fascism, Communism, imperialism, racism, sexism, and moral nihilism

• Historians debate about the • “outmoded” and elitist intellectualist approach • VS• a new sociocultural approach (social or cultural history)

• EXAMPLE• Is the Enlightenment intellectual history • OR• defined by its practices, places, associations, and media (social/cultural

history)

The Enlightenment in America by Henry F. May (1976)• still the most comprehensive overview of the place of enlightened European thought in

America• Lots of interest by historians in the Enlightenment in the 1970s – then waned – new resurgence

• developed a new narrative of American intellectual history centered on a nineteenth-century “genteel tradition”• “Genteel Tradition –

• Defined as a comfortable, stable, middle-class outlook underpinned by core beliefs in three things:• the “reality, certainty, and eternity of moral values”• “the inevitability . . . of progress”• the “importance of traditional literary culture”

• May believed that the Enlightenment could never have been a bottom-up movement the sort• May described the Enlightenment as

• an elite movement largely incompatible with American popular culture.• at odds with American popular culture.

• Most eighteenth-century Americans, May observed, were too provincial and “invincibly Protestant” to be swayed by European philosophy.

For Henry May . . .

• The Enlightenment “remained an intellectual movement and failed to become a religion” in the United States

• because the “independent American people” had no great appetite for a European upper-class culture that was “religiously radical, socially aristocratic, and politically conservative.”

• New scholarship describes the Enlightenment as the product of transatlantic, if not global, circulations of people, goods, and ideas. • Non-elite white men, white women, enslaved Africans, and native peoples as

contributors to the scientific project of the Enlightenment.

Mangel wurzelWeird 18th century word – do you know it?

Mangelwurzel or mangold wurzel

• also called mangold, mangel beet, field beet, and fodder beet

• a cultivated root vegetable

• large white, yellow or orange-yellow roots were developed in the 18th century as a fodder crop for feeding livestock.

Resources

• Enlightenment

• http://worldhistoryforusall.sdsu.edu/units/six/closeup/Era06_closeup662.php

• 1. Describe how democratic thought and institutions were influenced by Enlightenment thinkers

• 2. Analyze the diffusion of Enlightenment ideals and their influence globally.

• 3. Formulate a hypothesis about whether it was an "Enlightenment for everyone" and support their hypothesis using evidence from primary source documents.

EXCELLENT RESOURCE - ELECTIONS

• Have Americans elected past presidents with no political experience?

• What third parties have successfully impacted election outcomes?

• Who were some of the earliest women to run for president?

• What happens when parties and politicians organize around fear of outsiders?

• How have African Americans exercised their political power—as voters and candidates—in presidential elections over the last fifty years?

• https://dp.la/exhibitions/exhibits/show/outsiders-president-elections

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• “Like” https://www.facebook.com/PrimarySourceEmporium/

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• 3 hours graduate HIS credit

• https://ccsa.cc/programs/summer/2017/Scotland