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RELIGION IN AMERICAN LIFE
RELIGION IN AMERICAN LIFE

A Short History
Updated Edition

JON BUTLER, GRANT WACKER,

and RANDALL BALMER

1
2008
3
Oxford University Press, Inc., publishes works that further
Oxford University’s objective of excellence
in research, scholarship, and education.
Oxford New York
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With offices in
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Guatemala Hungary Italy Japan Poland Portugal Singapore
South Korea Switzerland Thailand Turkey Ukraine Vietnam

Copyright (c) 2000, 2003, 2008 by Jon Butler; 2000, 2003, 2008 by
Grant Wacker; 2001, 2003, 2008 by Randall Balmer
First published in hardcover as Jon Butler, Religion in Colonial America (2000);
Grant Wacker, Religion in Nineteenth-Century America (2000); Randall Balmer,
Religion in Twentieth-Century America (2001); Jon Butler, Grant Wacker, and
Randall Balmer, Religion in American Life: A Short History (2003)

Published by Oxford University Press, Inc.

198 Madison Avenue, New York, NY 10016
www.oup.com
Oxford is a registered trademark of Oxford University Press
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced,
stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means,
electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise,
without the prior permission of Oxford University Press.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Butler, Jon
Religion in American life: a short history / Jon Butler, Grant
Wacker, and Randall Balmer
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-19-533329-9 (pbk.)
1. United States—Religion. I. Wacker, Grant II. Balmer,
Randall Herbert. III. Title.
BL2525.B88 2002
200’.973—dc21 2002014481
Frontispiece: Presbyterian Mission School employees and their children head
home after Sunday church in Oklahoma.
9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Printed in the United States of America
on acid-free paper
To the memory of three wonderful teachers and friends:
Anita Rutman, Darrett Rutman, and Paul Lucas
—JB
For Julia, who turned ideals into deeds
Americorps City Year, San Jose 1998–99
—GW
For Catharine—wife, lover, interlocutor,
best friend, and fellow-traveler
—RB
This page intentionally left blank
 CONTENTS

PREFACE
xi

RELIGION IN COLONIAL AMERICA

John Butler

CHAPTER ONE: Worlds Old and New

1

CHAPTER TWO: Religion and Missions in New Spain and

New France
21

CHAPTER THREE: Religion in England’s First Colonies

47

CHAPTER FOUR: The Flowering of Religious Diversity

71

CHAPTER FIVE: African and American Indian Religion

91

CHAPTER SIX: Reviving Colonial Religion

110

CHAPTER SEVEN: Religion and the American Revolution

132

RELIGION IN NINETEENTH-CENTURY AMERICA

Grant Wacker
CHAPTER EIGHT: Prophets for a NeW Nation
155
CONTENTS

CHAPTER NINE: Awakeners of the Heart

171

CHAPTER TEN: Reformers and Visionaries

185

CHAPTER ELEVEN: Restorers of Ancient Ways

200

CHAPTER TWELVE: Sojourners at Home

212

CHAPTER THIRTEEN: Warriors for God and Religion

231

CHAPTER FOURTEEN: Fashioners of Immigrant Faiths

246

CHAPTER FIFTEEN: Innovators in a World of New Ideas

261

CHAPTER SIXTEEN: Conservers of Tradition

273

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN: Adventurers of the Spirit

291

RELIGION IN TWENTIETH-CENTURY AMERICA

Randall Balmer

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN: A New Century

309

CHAPTER NINETEEN: The Age of Militancy

323

CHAPTER TWENTY: In God We Trust

340

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE: Religion in the New Frontier

360

viii
 CONTENTS

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO: Religion in an Age of Upheaval

379

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE: Preachers, Politicians, and

Prodigals
395

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR: Religion for the New Millennium

409

EPILOGUE
430

CHRONOLOGY
433

FURTHER READING
437

INDEX
464

ix
This page intentionally left blank
 PREFACE

R eligion—beliefs in supernatural powers, forces, and

beings—powerfully shaped the peoples and society that
would become the United States. That this happened in a society
lacking any official national church after American independence
in 1776 is one of the central themes of Religion in American Life:
A Short History. This book offers a succinct and vivid account of
religion’s astonishing interaction with America’s peoples, soci-
ety, politics, and life from European conquest and colonization
to the beginning of the twenty-first century. In America, reli-
gion would be pursued by an amazing variety of individuals and
groups whose successes and failures across three centuries not
only defined religion in America but America itself.
The story of religion in America thus stands at the heart
of the story of America itself. It is not the story of just a few.
Quite the contrary. It is a story of natives and immigrants, of
the wealthy, the poor, and those in between, of women, men,
and children in families and out, of powerful political move-
ments and parties to highly introspective individuals, of dreams
realized and aspirations disappointed, of bigotry, yet also of
often tender generosity, kindness, and mutual esteem.

xi
PREFACE

Religion in America, therefore, usually stands with the grain

of American secular history, not against it. In America, religion
has been intertwined with immigration from the sixteenth to
the twenty-first centuries. It deals with the American Revolution
and the Civil War, with abolitionism and the corruptions of the
Gilded Age, with American Progressivism, the rise of big busi-
ness, and the response of the labor movement, with racism, anti-
Catholicism, and anti-Semitism as well as with the civil rights
crusade of the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s, with protest against the
Vietnam War and with the rise of a new American conservatism
and the elections of Ronald Reagan and George Bush.
Above all, the narrative of religion in America is a story
about people. It is the story of women—Anne Hutchinson,
Phoebe Palmer, and Dorothy Day—as well as the story of
men—Tenskwatawa, George Whitefield, Isaac Mayer Wise,
and Billy Graham. It is the story of efforts to instruct children
not only in formal religious teachings but also in morals and
ways of behaving, from the Puritans to nineteenth-century
Protestant temperance crusaders, to Buddhist immigrants hon-
oring a traditional infant presentation ceremony. It is a story of
failed preachers—the evangelist Jimmy Swaggart—and of sub-
tly religious laity—Abraham Lincoln. And it is the story of men
and women and, sometimes, children, not only as individuals
but gathered together in that famous American institution, the
“voluntary organization”—religious congregations plus count-
less religiously directed groups—the Women’s Christian Tem-
perance Union, Hadassah, the Moral Majority, Sunday Schools,
the list is nearly endless.
The story of religion in America, then, is not an aberrant
story. In a society so remarkably secular in so many ways—the
American pursuit of wealth, the quest for international leader-
ship, the love of science and technology—religion frequently

xii
 PREFACE

stood at the heart of the American experience itself, guiding it,

underscoring its central themes, providing its often most ide-
alistic—and sometimes its most difficult—expressions. Indeed,
religion’s centrality to twenty-first-century America—especially
its complexity and intricacy—is a virtual invitation to under-
stand the rich and fascinating evolution of religion in the Amer-
ican past. In a brief compass, this is the history that Religion in
American Life: A Short History seeks to tell.

xiii
This page intentionally left blank
 RELIGION IN
COLONIAL AMERICA
This page intentionally left blank
 CHAPTER ONE

Worlds Old and New

T he French Jesuit Pierre de Charlevoix was fascinated

by the religious customs of the Algonquian-speaking
Indians of southern Canada and northern New York and New
England. In his two-volume Journal of a Voyage to North-America
(1761), Charlevoix related many stories about Algonquian reli-
gion that seemed both wonderful and strange. Charlevoix was
especially intrigued by Algonquian dreaming and its dramatic
effect among traditional Algonquian believers. He was partic-
ularly taken by a story told to him by French Jesuit missionar-
ies working among the Algonquian Indians. An Algonquian
man dreamed that he had been a prisoner held by Algonquian
enemies. When he awoke, he was confused and afraid. What
did the dream mean? When he consulted the Algonquian sha-
man, the figure who mediated between humans, the gods, and
nature, the shaman told him he had to act out the implications
of the dream. The man had himself tied to a post, and other
Algonquians burned several parts of his body, just as would
have happened had his captivity been real.

1
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