Religion and Politics 235:
Puritans and Revolutionaries: Religion and the Making of America
Instructor: Mark Valeri
Danforth Center on Religion and Politics
Office hours: M, W 9-10 or by appointment
Office: Umrath 113
phone: 5-9367
[email protected]
Course Description:
This course introduces students to the history of religion and politics in America from the
English settlements of Virginia and Massachusetts Bay during the early seventeenth
century through the constitutional debates of the 1780s. It concerns formal legal issues
regarding religious establishments and wider matters concerning political sentiments and
their relationship to religious ideas or values. There is no defining argument or
ideological “point” to the course but, rather, a series of observations of how different
positions on the role of religion in early America made sense in their respective historical
contexts. Social, political, and intellectual variables made for shifting understandings of
what religious ideas mattered to public life in America and how those ideas ought to
shape civil affairs. As we examine these understandings, we will pay attention especially
to two crucial developments: the rise of a national self-consciousness that invested
America with great historical purpose, and how that consciousness related to the
disestablishment of religion from national political power (encoded in the First
Amendment to the Constitution).
Throughout the course, lectures will provide the background to discussion of important
interpretations and primary sources. Common readings will consist of two important
surveys by contemporary historians (Curry on the legal and constitutional issues, and
Gaustad on the religion of the founders), two seminal historical interpretations (Morgan
on the Puritans, Isaac on Virginia Anglicans and Baptists), anthologies of theological
treatises and sermons (Sandoz and Hall), and, finally, the observations of a French visitor
on the religious mores of common Americans (Tocqueville).
Our approach will not rest on any normative assertions (on what we think the relationship
of religion to politics ought to be) but on historical questions. What did our subjects
think and say? How did their ideas affect political and social decisions and behavior?
How did theologies and politics change in this period?
Required readings:
Thomas J. Curry, The First Freedoms: Church and State in America to the Passage of the
First Amendment (Oxford UP, 1986; pb)
Edwin S. Gaustad, Faith of the Founders: Religion and the New Nation, 1776-1826, 2nd
edn. (Baylor Univ. Press).
Edmund S. Morgan, The Puritan Dilemma (Pearson paper, 2006).
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David D. Hall, ed, Puritans in the New World: A Critical Anthology (Princeton
paperback, 2004).
Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America (several pb versions available)
On blackboard, selections from
Ellis Sandoz, ed., Political Sermons of the American Founding Era, 1730-1805 (Liberty
Fund pb, 1991).
Written assignments:
1. Take-home mid-term exam (30 per cent of the grade)
2. Five-page paper comparing two primary sources from assigned reading (30 per cent of
the grade)
3. Final take-home exam (40 per cent of the grade)
Course Objectives and criteria for Evaluating Student Work:
1. Students should be able to identify the major issues in civic policies that concerned
religion, from the settlement of New England through the making of the United States
federal constitution.
2. Students should be able to explain how political and religious vocabularies defining
the good society were related in this period.
3. Students should be conversant with the most prevalent terminologies that defined the
social meaning of religion, such as covenant, contract, consent, nation, providence, and
virtue.
4. Students should come to a well-documented definition of the relationship between
church and state in early America.
Course Schedule, Topics, and Assignments:
August 24: Introduction to the course and key terms
August 26: Historical survey
August 31: religious developments from the Reformation through the English Revolution
and the Puritan migration to New England. Read Hall, 1-88
September 2: Puritan politics. Read Puritan Dilemma
Sept 9: Puritan social thought. Read Curry 1-28; and Hall 157-200
Sept 14: the southern and middle colonies. Read Curry, 29-77
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Sept 16: southern religion and slave society. Read Sylvia R. Frey, “’The Year of Jubilee
Is Come’: Black Christianity in the Plantation South” (pdf)
Sept 21: the ideal of toleration. Read John Locke on toleration (online)
Sept 23: the ideal of liberty. Read Elisha Williams sermon from Sandoz.
Sept. 28: missions and cultural exchange. Read Linford Fisher (pdf) and Mary
Rowlandson (online)
Sept. 30: Indian affairs and warfare. Read William Pote (pdf)
Oct. 5: the provincial transition. Read Curry 78-133 and Gaustad 1-35
Oct. 7: imperial sentiments: Read sermon on George I (online, TBD)
Oct. 12: revivalism and authority. Read Rhys Isaac, “Evangelical Revolt: The Nature of
the Baptists’ Challenge to the Traditional Order in Virginia, 1765-1775,” William and
Mary Quarterly 31 (1974): 345-368 (online library).
Oct. 14: evangelicalism and politics. Read sermon from Samuel Davies in Sandoz
Oct. 19: the coming of the American Revolution. Edmund S. Morgan, “The Puritan Ethic
and the Coming of the American Revolution,” William and Mary Quarterly 24 (1967): 343 (online library) and Ruth Bloch, “Religion and Ideological Change in the American
Revolution” (1990), (pdf)
Oct. 21: patriot preaching. Read selections from Jonathan Mayhew, John Allen, and
Abraham Keteltas in Sandoz.
Oct. 26: Religion, warfare, and the first state constitutions. Read Curry, 134-192.
Oct. 28: religion and the new society. Read selections from John Witherspoon and
Samuel Wales in Sandoz.
Nov. 2: the new nation. Read Gaustad, 36-109.
Nov. 4: nationalism. Read selections from Stephen Case and Joseph Lathrop in Sandoz
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Nov. 9: debates over the Constitution. Read Curry, 193-232
Nov. 11: the Constitution. Read Gaustad, 141-174 (includes key primary documents).
Nov. 16: churches and people in the new nation. Read Gaustad 110-139
Nov. 18: democracy and religion. Read Tocqueville, Democracy in America (selections)
Nov. 23: rethinking the issues. Read John Murrin, “Religion and Politics in America
from the First Settlements to the Civil War” (pdf).
Nov. 30: reflections and current political discourse. Readings TBA
Dec. 2: final thoughts.