In his social and political study of the United States, Democracy In America, Alexis de Tocqueville wrote, "the religious atmosphere of the country was the first thing that struck me on arrival in the United States." (DIA, 295.)
This pronouncement resonates throughout the book, as Tocqueville repeatedly marvelled at the number of American sects, at their mutual toleration, at the focus on morality almost to the exclusion of doctrine, which he felt together amounted to religious "indifference". Tocqueville visited America at the height of the Second Great Awakening; revivals were sweeping across the country bringing reform to the oldest cities and most primitive frontier areas, and Unitarianism had swayed some of New England's best and brightest.
Attempting a sketch of the America which Tocqueville and Beaumont visited and studied during their famous sojourn of 1831, I have chosen two men who embody the major characteristics of the religious life of the era. Of necessity, many great and influential figures are left out; what lacks will not, I hope, diminish the effect of those represented here.
With the turn of the nineteenth century the focus of American religion shifted from the doctrinal particulars of the various sects to the universal question of the moral character of the believer. Theology took a back seat to faith; the head was subordinated to the heart. However the moralists were, from the beginning, divided into two camps: rational and evangelical.
Of the prominent evangelicals of the period, Charles Grandison Finney rose above the rest as the most influential and the most representative of his time. His rejection of the old notion of conversion as an event at which the sinner passively receives the Spirit signaled the movement away from orthodox Calvinism. His personal charisma and presence set a standard, and his work converted thousands. His rejection of formal theological education in favor of intuitive morality was the essence of Jacksonian America.
The rational moralist position was organized behind the Unitarian Church, with William Ellery Channing as its spokesman. Beginning with his oration at the Baltimore ordination of Jared Sparks in 1819, it was Channing who accepted the task of defining, naming, and giving structure to the new movement. In his belief in man's inherent perfectibility rather than his depravity, and later in his work for social reform, Channing was very much a man of his time.
Charles Grandison Finney |
William Ellery Channing |
Tocqueville and Religion |
