89 - The Democratization of American Christianity

The Democratization of American Christianity
By Nathan O. Hatch
New Haven, Yale University Press, 1989. 312 pp. $25.00.

The Democratization of American Christianity has already won for its author, a professor of history at the University of Notre Dame, the 1988 Albert C. Outler Prize in Ecumenical Church History from the American Society of Church History. The honor is well deserved, for Hatch has written an excellent and provocative account of religion in the first half century of the republic. During those years, America experienced an extraordinary democratic ferment as populist sentiments found expression in the organization of political parties, the creation of mass communications networks, and attacks on the elite professions. Christianity itself was democratized, and a new kind of leader came to the fore. Often lacking formal education and contemptuous of both creeds and learned ministers, that leader mobilized popular support by encouraging others to thumb their noses at ancient authority, to think for themselves, and to examine the Scriptures directly. The new leader's power came from an ability to identify with the common people and to speak in a direct, pungent style to their concerns. Such leaders created a new sermonic genre characterized by a pithy colloquial style, popularized a new gospel music whose roots were sunk deep in folk culture, and pioneered a religious journalism that sought to express and shape the thought of the masses. In particular, Hatch examines representative leaders of five popular religious movements: the "Christian" movement (sometimes called the Campbellite movement after one of its leaders),

90 - The Democratization of American Christianity

the early Methodists, the Baptists, the Mormons, and the black churches. In each instance, Hatch sees these leaders and their movements as the trend setters for antebellum religion. Even when they won only a handful of followers, they nevertheless defined the new democratic ethos with which the more staid churches had to come to terms.

Hatch's revisionist work asks us to put the religion of the early republic in a radically new perspective. Many standard accounts of the era have stressed that the Second Great Awakening was an effort (largely successful) to promote a cohesive evangelical culture. By contrast, Hatch insists that revivalism, under the impact of democractization, did not create a dominant evangelical consensus; it fragmented and splintered American Christianity. In the process, peripheral figures actually occupied center stage, for they were piping the democratic tune to which the allegedly central actors had to dance. Thus, in Hatch's narrative, the eccentric Methodist evangelist Lorenzo Dow and the prophet Joseph Smith are at least as important as the Timothy Dwights, Lyman Beechers, and Horace Bushnells who usually dominate accounts of nineteenth-century Protestantism.

While recognizing that populist impulses have often permitted demagoguery, Hatch argues that democratization has been one of the major sources of the churches' institutional vitality. The fragmentation of Christianity into competing movements has actually strengthened its hold on American society. By allowing the faith to permutate in dozens of ways, the process of democratization has assured that virtually every group can find some version of the gospel to which it can adhere.

Of the many seminal issues raised by Hatch's book, at least two need further exploration. First, the author acknowledges that alongside the impulse to democratize, antebellum faiths also exhibited a drive for respectability. Thus Methodists and Baptists, who initially flaunted their status as faiths of the common folk, were by the middle of the nineteenth century establishing colleges, trying to raise the educational level of their ministers, and erecting imposing church edifices. Precisely how this countervailing trend interacted with the democratic impulse merits additional examination. Second, Hatch rejects arguments that reduce early nineteenth-century revivalism to an instrument of social control. He is surely correct in dismissing the crude forms of that thesis, but there are subtle versions of the hypothesis that deserve consideration beyond what Hatch has given. In order to address the issue, the author probably would have to devote more precise attention than be has done to the problem of defining social class in nineteenth century America. But these issues notwithstanding, Hatch's achievement is beyond dispute. He has written one of the finest books on American religious history to appear in many years. Though others may wish to qualify his argument, they will be not be able to ignore it.

James H. Moorhead
Princeton Theological Seminary
Princeton, New Jersey