Fortune, Fame, and Desire by Strom Sharon Hartman;

Author:Strom, Sharon Hartman;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield Unlimited Model

Chapter 5

“Self Reliance,” “Universal Redemption,” and “The Obsessed Woman”

Warren Chase, Joseph Osgood Barrett, and Juliet Stillman Severence

As black and white Americans sought new ways to earn livings and promote their public reputations, some turned to philosophical and religious movements that were challenging Protestant orthodoxy to expand their ambitions. Between 1790 and 1830 the Second Great Awakening spawned enthusiastic—and competing—churches throughout the United States. Mother Ann Lee’s Shakers, Elias Hicks’s Quakers, William Miller’s second coming followers, Joseph Smith’s Latter Day Saints, and self-proclaimed African American ministers, some of them women, experimented with radical challenges to the traditional white and male-dominated clergy. The mainstream churches—Congregationalists, Presbyterians, Methodists, Baptists, and African Methodist Episcopalians—all stressed the critical juncture of coming to Christ, being born again, and applying God’s word from the holy text of the Bible to everyday life. Many white and black Americans—like Frances Watkins Harper—continued to immerse themselves in this worldview.

The decades surrounding the American Revolution also saw the emergence of what many perceived to be a more modern and rational path. The Enlightenment—the transatlantic values of Deism, Liberalism, and rational inquiry that underpinned the French and American Revolutions—was often endorsed by the more educated and adventurous, like Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson. The language of the Declaration of Independence and the U.S. Constitution reflected the centrality of the Enlightenment in the founders’ consciousness, with its stress on the separation of church and state, the universality of human rights, full citizenship for white men, and faith in the possibility of social progress.

John Murray, an Anglican convert to Wesleyan Methodism, left London for America in 1770 and challenged predestination by preaching what he called “universal redemption.” Jesus Christ, God’s link to man on earth, died so that all would be saved. The point of sermons was to convince congregants of God’s possible love and to stimulate good works by inspiration, not by chastisement or threats of damnation. The Scriptures were but one revelation of the character of God, not to be read literally. The Universalists created societies and meeting places from Maine to New Jersey but avoided the building of churches or overarching bureaucracies. Mirroring the egalitarian ethos of current day politics, Universalist groups were managed by their members and not only discussed religion but philosophy and science as well. Generals Nathaniel Greene and George Washington heard John Murray preach at Jamaica Plain during the Battle of Bunker Hill and appointed him the Continental Army Chaplin.1

Rationalist, “free thinking” ideas were in the air, developing alongside Universalism and eventually calling even that Liberal view of Christianity into question. Thomas Paine’s radical work, The Age of Reason, encouraged some Americans to abandon traditional religion and seek a scientific approach to evidence and belief that bordered on agnosticism and even atheism. The Boston Investigator was founded in 1831 as an alternative to the stream of Protestant propaganda flooding the reading public. The Investigator’s editor, Abner Kneeland, went from the Baptists to the Universalists and then to Free Thought, arguing that the existence of a Christian God who heard the prayers of churchgoers was wishful thinking.

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