Protestantism in America: A Narrative History by Jerald C. Brauer
Chapter 10: Source of Sects
Early in 1805, three strangely dressed men set out on a journey from Mt.
Lebanon, New York, to southern Ohio and Kentucky. They took
nothing with them and traveled only on foot. They were ambassadors of the Shaker community seeking new converts. Whenever a revival was successful they were successful, so they turned their steps toward Cain Ridge and Gasper River.
As they traveled westward they recalled the story of the Shaker growth.
In 1774, Mother Ann Lee, accompanied by her husband and seven followers, landed in New York. In England she had belonged to a group of radical Quakers who expressed their religious feelings through
physical shaking; hence they were called Shakers. In America they quickly found several places in which to settle, but they had little success in winning converts.
In 1779 the revivalistic Baptists had a very successful revival in New Lebanon, New York, but the Shakers walked off with many of the converts. This was their first great triumph. Revivalism brought them increased growth. Many folks converted from a life of sin sought a higher, more satisfying experience than the regular Churches seemed to offer. The Shakers were similar to a monastic order that absorbed all those who wanted to live an especially strict life.
Under the leadership of Mother Ann Lee they worked out a position that was very strange for most Protestant Churches. They stressed the
operation of God as the Holy Spirit. Mother Lee argued that in her the feminine side of God took flesh just as in Jesus Christ the masculine side became man. So God was thought of as both male and female, but God’s last revelation was through a woman.
As a consequence, Mother Ann Lee felt herself to be possessed of God’s Spirit, and she had visions and trances that revealed God’s will for man.
She was the first result of the new outpouring of God’s Spirit, and when God’s Spirit had finished his work, there would be a new heaven and a new earth just as the book of redemption promised.
Under the guidance of the Spirit of God who dwelt in man’s heart, a person was driven to do God’s will. Because the person was united with the Spirit, he or she could do no evil. A new spiritual life in full unity with God was lived. The Shakers were spirit mystics because they believed they were in union with God’s Holy Spirit.
They developed a full program of twelve virtues to be practiced by all those dwelling in the Spirit. High on the list of these virtues was the abstinence from marriage, or from sexual relations on the part of those already married. The flesh had to be denied because the Spirit was in total opposition to the flesh. On earth very few people could attain to the perfection of the Shaker virtues, for they were God’s elect, the
forerunners of the life of perfection. Therefore, they were satisfied that their Church was not large. In God’s own time all people would be saved; meanwhile the Shakers stood as a demonstration of what the saint was like.
In order to live the life in the Spirit, the Shakers perfected their community life and worship. Mt. Lebanon became the pattern for all their other groups. In order to guide and develop the spiritual life of the group, oral confession of all sins was practiced by those entering the group and periodically by members within. Strict discipline was
maintained for all within the organization. Before one could enter such a strict life, he had to pass through a series of different stages of
membership. Only the final stage, Senior Order, represented the full and complete membership. Anyone was free to remit the order or to be expelled at any time.
The Shakers lived a community life in which the membership was
divided into various families that were responsible for doing the work of the group. Men and women worked separately, except where heavy
work for women required male help, and they entered the church by separate doors. Though male and female were strictly separated, there was absolute equality of the sexes, even in the ministry.
Their dress was very plain and practical, similar to that of the Quakers.
Everything on the premises, from the buildings to the furniture, was of the utmost simplicity and practicality. Today many artists look on
Shaker work as the forerunner of modern functional design. In their day the Shakers wanted to stress only cleanliness and practicality.
Everything had to be neat, clean, and in place. Little pegs in the wall provided both coat hangers and a place from which to suspend the furniture while they scrubbed the floors.
The most peculiar side of Shaker life was their worship service. Prayer, preaching, song, and dancing made up the worship. Every medium of expression was employed. Their favorite practice was to form a series of concentric circles that moved in opposite directions as they chanted a tune. The motion would grow in intensity and violence as they danced and sang. At first these dances were quite solemn and subdued; later they became quite agitated. The important thing to note is that
everything in life from their economic activity to their worship was centered in the community and not in the individual.
This was the type of life carried west by the Shaker missionaries. They met with huge success. Their membership went as high as 6,000, and they soon developed as many as twenty communities. One of their strongest settlements was to be in Mt. Pleasant, Kentucky. Revivals gave them fertile fields for growth. Several of the leaders of the New Light Presbyterian schism in Kentucky became Shakers.
Though their growth was astounding from 1800 to 1830, they developed no new communities after 1830, and they slowly died out. Because they had no children, their growth had to be through conversions or
adoptions. As long as they represented a strict conversion position and offered moral as well as physical security on the frontier, they had appeal. But as soon as revivalism began to channel its effects into reform and humanitarian activity, it offered the possibility of a life of service and discipline.
Meanwhile, a number of other unusual religious groups developed in various places on the frontier, but none of them grew out of the revivals.
However, in common with the Shakers, they also originated not on the
frontier but in Europe, and they stressed community living. Whenever religious leaders and followers encountered difficulty in Germany or other European nations, they always looked to America for refuge. In the promised land there was freedom and plenty of rich soil and timber -- a perfect place for a new Church.
In 1803, George Rapp, a German farmer, and his son sailed for
America. They were the advance guard for six hundred German Pietists who were seeking a haven in America. Father Rapp, as he was called by his followers, located and purchased a large tract of land in western Pennsylvania. The next year his followers settled with him there.
The group were soon known as Rappites, and they had many beliefs similar to the Shakers. Under the strict guidance of Father Rapp, they introduced "communityism" and celibacy. All the people pooled their labor and resources to work for the common good. No longer was there private property or private welfare. In place of self-seeking and
selfishness there was instituted the "community of equality." This was possible only on a strict religious basis, for only people committed to a common goal could so carry on their economic life. Furthermore, these strange Germans submitted absolutely to the control of Father Rapp. His sermons and advice controlled the group. Nobody could join except with his consent. All members confessed their faults to him. But under his leadership the group flourished and prospered.
In 1815, Rapp and his followers moved to New Harmony, Ind. There they repeated their Pennsylvania success. After a number of years they again moved, this time to Economy, Pennsylvania. Wherever they went, they made the ground produce rich and plentiful harvests, but the group were doomed to extinction. Because they were not interested in making converts and because they had no children, they had no source of new membership. They gradually died out.
The Rappites were not the only religious group transplanted to America in order to find freedom to carry out their principle of holding all things in common. In addition to them there were such groups as the followers of Joseph M. Bäumler, who settled in northern Ohio and developed a very successful community called Zoar. Still others came from
Germany to found the New Community, later called the Amana Society.
First they settled in New York, but they later moved to Iowa.
So it was that American Protestantism of the nineteenth century
witnessed the emergence and growth of many religious groups that did not originate in America. Nevertheless, they put into practice the
principles over which many reform battles were waged. They may not have been large in numbers or influence, but they did represent one concern of American religious life -- the need for moral fervor and reform.
Meanwhile, American religious life itself had brought forth several movements of similar tendency. It was not surprising that revivalism produced such fruits. It stressed the necessity of personal conversion from sin and the consequence of living according to God’s will. The man converted from sin should sin no more. There was a possibility of becoming a perfect Christian, or so some thought. Perhaps one could not become absolutely perfect, but at least one could become as perfect as his talents and possibilities allowed.
But how could one practice the perfect moral life when society itself was evil? Men lorded it over women and considered them as inferior creatures. Economic and personal life were built on greed and
selfishness. Only the person who sought his own selfish end could succeed. Money and power controlled the world. Human beings were only tools to be used in the game of gain. Against all this, revivalism protested. It cried for reform.
What a country to reform! Was not America a new land, with vast creative possibilities? Was not the Christian Church responsible to check the evil that was undermining the nation? So those converted from sin were made soldiers of the good cause fighting under the leadership of the Beechers and Finneys.
Out of the bubbling ferment of the revivalistic reform movements arose a series of American attempts to build God’s Kingdom on earth, to achieve a genuine utopia where all the present evils would be overcome, where the first fruits of the new age would be visible. These different groups all had one thing in common. They were impatient with the regular reform movements trying to change society. They scrapped the society of which they were a part and started afresh by creating new communities which embodied the true principles of Christianity from the very beginning. That is what they believed, and on that conviction they staked their substance and their lives.
One of the first such ventures was the Hopedale community established
in Massachusetts in 1841. Its leaders had been connected with the Universalist and Unitarian Churches. They undertook a joint enterprise which was not the same as common ownership but very similar. They wrote into their constitution support of all the great reform movements -- equality of the sexes, temperance, chastity, peace, equality of all races, etc. They were opposed to "all things known to be sinful against God or human nature."
With the aim of a life of perfection as full Christian brothers, the enterprise got under way. Needless to say it failed, as did many others like it. Yet the failure was due not so much to the economic or financial arrangements as to a spiritual or moral failure. Somehow they could not re-create the pristine condition of man. Eden was not re-established.
Hopedale was only one of several such attempts and failures.
The only really successful experiment to create a new society based on religious principles was that started by John Humphrey Noyes, a
graduate of Dartmouth College, who was converted by Charles Finney in Vermont. When Noyes, a licensed divinity student, preached that conversion brought complete release from sin, his license was revoked.
He went out on his own to think through his religious beliefs and came to oppose what he called the "Sin system, the Marriage system, the Work system, and the Death system."
He came to the conclusion that revivalism and socialism had to be blended in order to produce a new society based on Christian teachings.
As his following grew he established a community in Vermont based on his new beliefs. Because of violent opposition from his neighbors, he was forced to find a new home, and the group settled at Oneida, New York.
There they found sufficient isolation to produce their own type of life.
Everything was held in common -- even husbands and wives. They practiced what was called complex life. Noyes argued that the love of one person for another produced jealousy and selfishness. All were partners holding everything in common, but nobody had to submit to another without his or her own full consent. Everything was kept under the strictest regulations of the entire community in order to guard against the abuse of freedom as well as the threat of selfishness.
The Oneida community became very successful financially. It turned from agriculture to industry. First, it became famous for producing steel
traps. Later, it started the manufacture of knives and silverware. Today everyone has heard of Oneida Community Plate. But because of
pressure from the outside the community was forced to give up the complex marriage system, and when this was surrendered the religious basis of the movement seemed to collapse. The community incorporated itself and became a very prosperous business venture.
So revivalism produced a new spirit that moved through staid old New England as well as through the rough new frontier. It encouraged zeal for reform and fanned the flames of hope for a new nation. Not only did it produce all the great missions and reform movements, it also
produced strange and peculiar groups that sought to find more light yet in God’s Word for nineteenth century America.
Strange, was it not, that as groups such as Oneida and Hopedale sought to follow God’s will more completely they often appeared to go
contrary to it in their zeal. In finding release from sin in conversion, many thought they had found release not only from their bodies but also from their every selfishness. And so the movements for perfectionism soon showed how far man was from perfection. They stood as
condemnations against all halfhearted attempts to live the Christian religion. They also stood as condemnation against all illusions and
pretensions that it was possible to live the Christian life without constant forgiveness or to live it in full perfection. The gospel had to grasp a man anew each day -- the struggle between faith and disbelief was not settled once and for all in the blinding burst of the conversion experience.
It was a warm July evening in 1838 as Rev. Ralph Waldo Emerson, onetime minister of a Boston Unitarian church, stood in the small Divinity School chapel of Harvard University to address the senior class. Nothing appeared unusual about the occasion, but it was to be of great consequence for the Unitarian Church.
Ralph Waldo Emerson was deeply dissatisfied with the religion of his Unitarian brethren. He saw it as something dry and external. A
collection of moral truths accepted only on the basis of a cold, hard reason. It had no life, no real vitality -- it was, in short, worse than the so-called New England Calvinism against which it had protested.
Boston Unitarianism was as lifeless and as formal as its opponents. It was bound to tradition.
Against the rationalistic arguments of his brethren, Emerson bid the
young students turn within and find the divine at work in their own lives. Within the very soul of man is a noble and divine sentiment pointing him to what he ought to do. This inner reality is truly
appealing, "a more secret, sweet, and overpowering beauty appears to man when his heart and mind open to the sentiment of virtue. Then he is instructed in what is above him."
Out of Emerson’s protest against Unitarianism arose a new movement in American Christianity. This movement was called transcendentalism.
It was so called because of its stress on the divine as being at the same time beyond man yet present within man’s soul. As he put it: "Man is a stream whose source is hidden. Always our being is descending into us from we know not whence." Hence, man’s knowledge of God is not confined to the operation of reason and the five senses but is primarily beyond them.
Because of the union between man as divine and God who is yet beyond all men, Emerson had great faith in the ability of man to cast off the shackles of the past, to realize the divine within, and to create a new, fresh life. He had given up his church in 1832 and proceeded to write and to lecture. He traveled around the country preaching his new
message of man’s divinity and limitless possibilities. He was not alone in proclaiming this message.
As early as 1836, a group of men in and around Boston had met in a Transcendental Club which discussed the works of recent German and English authors. In 1840 they published a magazine, the Dial, which, under the editorship first of Margaret Fuller, feminist and author, and then of Emerson, became the leading intellectual journal of America. It published poetry, criticism, articles, and book reviews.
Other outstanding members of the transcendentalist movement were such people as Bronson Alcott, one of the greatest lecturers America produced, Henry David Thoreau, naturalist and philosopher, and Theodore Parker, minister, outstanding reformer, and scholar. There were others too, but the number of the movement was always small, though its influence was tremendous.
One of the most famous of the group was the Unitarian clergyman Theodore Parker. He too broke from the Unitarians and urged men to find truth not in tradition but in their own personal experience as they confronted a changing political and economic order. He fought against
slavery, he accepted women as equal even in expounding theology, and he preached the necessity of bringing the Kingdom of righteousness into fruition.
In addition to the belief in the ultimate perfection of man and the necessity of reform, the transcendentalists also founded a religious community. Brook Farm, their experiment in communal living, was founded largely under the inspiration and direction of George Ripley, a Boston Unitarian minister. But the whole group was interested in it and supported it through money and writing.
Brook Farm was completely democratic in organization. There was no John H. Noyes or George Rapp to control it. It was an attempt to realize through communal living the highest human virtues. It wanted to create a little world in which each individual could realize all his or her powers and gifts. Everybody was expected to do some work to help maintain the group, and all shared in every type of work, so there was no master and servant relationship.
The most remarkable aspect of Brook Farm was its school for children.
Some of the finest families in New England sent their children.
Education was largely through personal contact with some of the
outstanding minds of America. Tutoring, learning through doing things, and participating in discussion, was the method of instruction. Thus the children were really part of a community given to cultural pursuits and learning. Their education was informal but very effective.
In 1845, Brook Farm changed its nature, when it was legally
incorporated in order to become a new type of community. It joined the growing socialist movement known as Fourierism after its French
originator. It became a local group of that movement and in a short time failed financially. Thus the transcendentalist experiment was sidetracked and disbanded. But transcendentalism did not die. It continued to
flourish through literature and lectures. Even more important, it created a tendency in American Christianity which received expression in later years through a marked emphasis on the spiritual and ideal side of life over against the material and the actual.
While transcendentalism represented an intellectual effort to overcome the base material world with all its ugliness, meanness, and disorder, another movement arose among the uneducated which attempted to overcome the sinful reality of life by preaching the immediate coming