Awash in a Sea of Faith

Jon Butler. Awash in a Sea of Faith: Christianizing the American People. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1990.

This concise history of some of the larger themes of American religious history up to the Civil War argues that contrary to many traditional beliefs, the United States was not born Christian, nor was its path of religious development clearly founded by the Puritans--or any other singular group. Rather, the "Christianization" of the America people was a product of antebellum forces, playing out the denominational and institutional norms established in the eighteenth century.

The European heritage was less obvious and not as deeply rooted as might be assumed. Very little of the institutional or doctrinal force of European churches survived the seventeenth-century trans-Atlantic crossing. European belief had never been as devout nor deeply rooted as ecclesiastical authorities would have liked; the fact that formal church institutions--even including the Anglican church, which was theoretically the "official" church of the polity--were lacking in the colonies only exacerbated the problem.

And for African-Americans, it was even worse--Butler refers to the experience as the "African Spiritual Holocaust", because Africans lost essentially all of their religious and spiritual traditions, and were forced to deal with the trauma of slavery and dislocation without any institutional or cultural support. When African-Americans began to create social and cultural stability in the New World, they very slowly turned to Christianity, which they borrowed from Euro-Americans wholesale, only later incorporating African elements into their practices and denominations.

Antebellum reformers and denominational growth represented an American diversion from European trends away from church membership and religiosity, but it was not until after the Civil War, roughly, that American society would move towards majority (if not universal) religious participation and explicit belief. The Christianization of America took roughly three centuries to complete.

The Kingdom of Matthias

Paul E. Johnson and Sean Wilentz. The Kingdom of Matthias: A Story of Sex and Salvation in 19th-Century America. New York: Oxford University Press, 1994.

This short volume rescues a near-forgotten episode from the religious enthusiasms of the 1830s--the short-lived nascent cult of Robert Matthews, alias Matthias, who presented himself to his followers (and anybody else within earshot) that he was the living incarnation of the patriarchal God of the Hebrews. Matthias never attracted more than a handful of followers to his authoritarian cult, and the death of his first follower as well as the fallout of his imposed "spirit matches" which ignored existing legal marriages by his command led to the collapse of the tiny "Kingdom" he tried to establish in Sing Sing, New York and a handful of locations in Manhattan.

The authors begin with a brief account of a meeting between Matthias after his fall, fleeing the notoriety of his trial for theft, murder, and finally assault, and none other than Joseph Smith, the founder of the Mormon faith. Smith and Matthias, we will learn, shared much in common; however, Smith was far more successful than Matthias. Ultimately, Smith banishes Matthias; at the end of the book we learn that this is very nearly the last historical trace of this strange, failed prophet.

What makes this story more than a mere footnote to history is the authors' examination of how issues of gender and class were central to this story--Matthews was a failed man of the working class in early Jacksonian America; the sort of man who was losing in the new market economy. The winners, very often, were middle class types who embraced the new, Charles Finney-inspired evangelical faith with it's emphasis on the increased role of women in the church and in the home. For a man who came of age in a stable Scots-Irish backwoods settlement where a stern patriarchy ruled over a rough, modest social and economic equality, this was galling. Like Smith and others, Matthews sought to reject the individualistic market economy and restore an idealized patriarchy through a re-imagining of existing scriptures and dogmas.

The story the authors tell is recreated from a handful of sources--for the most part, this story disappeared from public memory after the trial at the end, as the penny press moved on to the next sensational case. And for the most part, the participants also vanish from the historical memory. Except one--the authors save their big reveal for the very last sentence, when they reveal that Isabella, the former slave-turned-servant who was Matthias' most devoted and dogged believer, would reinvent herself as none other than Sojourner Truth.

It's somewhat surprising that the involvement of such a legendary personage wasn't sufficient enough to make this story more well-known, but it suggests yet another enticing thread to be unraveled. Johnson and Wilentz do a great job of tracing possible connections and resonant echoes throughout this sordid little story.