Religious History

Episcopalians have built, reimagined, and rebuilt their church at least three different times over the course of 400 years in America. From scattered colonial beginnings, where laity both took major roles in running Church of England parishes and practiced a faith that was focused on worship, pastoral care, and good works, Anglicans created a church that blended hierarchy, democracy, and autonomy. It took time after the disruptions of the American Revolution for Episcopalians to find their place among the many competing denominations of the new nation. In the process women found new roles for themselves. Episcopalians continued to have a large impact on American society even as other denominations outpaced them in membership. As individuals they shaped American culture and became prominent advocates for the social gospel. Distracted at times as they tried to balance catholic and Protestant in their thought and worship, they built a church that included both religious orders and revival gatherings. Although perceived as a church of the elite, its members included African Americans, Asians, Native Americans, and union members. Episcopalians struggled with issues of race, class, and gender throughout their history. After World War II, their understandings of the teachings of Jesus pulled a majority of Episcopalians toward more liberal social positions and created a traditionalist revolt eventually resulting in a schism that required new rebuilding efforts in parts of America.

Historian John Higham once referred to anti-Catholicism as “by far the oldest, and the most powerful of anti-foreign traditions” in North American intellectual and cultural history. But Higham’s famous observation actually elided three different types of anti-Catholic nativism that have enjoyed a long and quite vibrant life in North America: a cultural distrust of Catholics, based on an understanding of North American public culture rooted in a profoundly British and Protestant ordering of human society; an intellectual distrust of Catholics, based on a set of epistemological and philosophical ideas first elucidated in the English (Lockean) and Scottish (“Common Sense Realist”) Enlightenments and the British Whig tradition of political thought; and a nativist distrust of Catholics as deviant members of American society, a perception central to the Protestant mainstream’s duty of “boundary maintenance” (to utilize Emile Durkheim’s reading of how “outsiders” help “insiders” maintain social control).

An examination of the long history of anti-Catholicism in the United States can be divided into three parts: first, an overview of the types of anti-Catholic animus utilizing the typology adumbrated above; second, a narrative history of the most important anti-Catholic events in U.S. culture (e.g., Harvard’s Dudleian Lectures, the Suffolk Resolves, the burning of the Charlestown convent, Maria Monk’s Awful Disclosures); and finally, a discussion of American Catholic efforts to address the animus.

Buddhist history in the United States traces to the mid-19th century, when early scholars and spiritual pioneers first introduced the subject to Americans, followed soon by the arrival of Chinese immigrants to the West Coast. Interest in Buddhism was significant during the late Victorian era, but practice was almost completely confined to Asian immigrants, who faced severe white prejudice and legal discrimination. The Japanese were the first to establish robust, long-lasting temple networks, though they, too, faced persecution, culminating in the 1942 incarceration of 120,000 Japanese Americans, a severe blow to American Buddhism. Outside the Japanese American community, Buddhism grew slowly in the earlier decades of the 20th century, but it began to take off in the 1960s, aided soon by the lifting of onerous immigration laws and the return of large-scale Asian immigration. By the end of the 20th century American Buddhism had become extremely diverse and complex, with clear evidence of permanence in Asian American and other communities.

The history of Calvinism in the United States is part of a much larger development, the globalization of western Christianity. American Calvinism owes its existence to the transplanting of European churches and religious institutions to North America, a process that began in the 16th century, first with Spanish and French Roman Catholics, and accelerated a century later when Dutch, English, Scottish, and German colonists and immigrants of diverse Protestant backgrounds settled in the New World. The initial variety of Calvinists in North America was the result of the different circumstances under which Protestantism emerged in Europe as a rival to the Roman Catholic Church, to the diverse civil governments that supported established Protestant churches, and to the various business sponsors that included the Christian ministry as part of imperial or colonial designs.

Once the British dominated the Eastern seaboard (roughly 1675), and after English colonists successfully fought for political independence (1783), Calvinism lost its variety. Beyond their separate denominations, English-speaking Protestants (whether English, Scottish, or Irish) created a plethora of interdenominational religious agencies for the purpose of establishing a Christian presence in an expanding American society. For these Calvinists, being Protestant went hand in hand with loyalty to the United States. Outside this pan-Protestant network of Anglo-American churches and religious institutions were ethnic-based Calvinist denominations caught between Old World ways of being Christian and American patterns of religious life. Over time, most Calvinist groups adapted to national norms, while some retained institutional autonomy for fear of compromising their faith.

Since 1970, when the United States entered an era sometimes called post-Protestant, Calvinist churches and institutions have either declined or become stagnant. But in certain academic, literary, and popular culture settings, Calvinism has for some Americans, whether connected or not to Calvinist churches, continued to be a source for sober reflection on human existence and earnest belief and religious practice.

The Catholic Church has been a presence in the United States since the arrival of French and Spanish missionaries in the 16th and 17th centuries. The Spanish established a number of missions in what is now the western part of the United States; the most important French colony was New Orleans. Although they were a minority in the thirteen British colonies prior to the American Revolution, Catholics found ways to participate in communal forms of worship when no priest was available to celebrate Mass. John Carroll was appointed superior of the Mission of the United States of America in 1785. Four years later, Carroll was elected the first bishop in the United States; his diocese encompassed the entire country. The Catholic population of the United States began to grow during the first half of the 19th century primarily due to Irish and German immigration. Protestant America was often critical of the newcomers, believing one could not be a good Catholic and a good American at the same time. By 1850, Roman Catholicism was the largest denomination in the United States.

The number of Catholics arriving in the United States declined during the Civil War but began to increase after the cessation of hostilities. Catholic immigrants during the late 19th and early 20th centuries were primarily from southern and Eastern Europe, and they were not often welcomed by a church that was dominated by Irish and Irish American leaders. At the same time that the church was expanding its network of parishes, schools, and hospitals to meet the physical and spiritual needs of the new immigrants, other Catholics were determining how their church could speak to issues of social and economic justice. Dorothy Day, Father Charles Coughlin, and Monsignor John A. Ryan are three examples of practicing Catholics who believed that the principles of Catholicism could help to solve problems related to international relations, poverty, nuclear weapons, and the struggle between labor and capital.

In addition to changes resulting from suburbanization, the Second Vatican Council transformed Catholicism in the United States. Catholics experienced other changes as a decrease in the number of men and women entering religious life led to fewer priests and sisters staffing parochial schools and parishes. In the early decades of the 21st century, the church in the United States was trying to recover from the sexual abuse crisis. Visiting America in 2015, Pope Francis reminded Catholics of the important teachings of the church regarding poverty, justice, and climate change. It remains to be seen what impact his papacy will have on the future of Catholicism in the United States.

The Latino/Latina or Hispanic Catholic presence spans the colonial era, the period of U.S. expansion during the 19th century, and the waves of new immigrants in the 20th and 21st centuries. A long-standing element of Latino Catholic history, the struggle for justice both in church and society, became even more prominent during the 20th century.

While Catholics in the thirteen British colonies were a minority in a Protestant land, in Hispanic settlements from Florida to California, Catholicism was the established religion under Spain and, in the Southwest, under Mexico after it won independence in 1821. Spanish subjects founded numerous missions intended to Christianize and Hispanicize native populations. They also established parishes, military chaplaincies, and private chapels to serve the religious needs of Hispanic settlers. From the standpoints of original settlement, societal influence, and institutional presence, the origins of Catholicism in what is now the United States were decidedly Hispanic.

The first large group of Hispanic Catholics incorporated into U.S. territories was Mexicans in the Southwest, who, as a common adage puts it, did not cross the border but had the border cross them during U.S. territorial expansion. When military defeat led Mexico’s president to cede nearly half his nation’s territory to the United States in 1848, Mexicans underwent the disestablishment of their Catholic religion along with widespread loss of their lands, economic well-being, political clout, and cultural hegemony. Many continued their traditional expressions of faith, which enabled them to defend their sense of dignity, to collectively respond to the effects of conquest, and to express their own ethnic legitimation.

Nascent 19th-century Latino immigration to the United States quickened over the course of the 20th century, expanding the diversification of national-origin groups among Latinos in the United States. Mexican immigration increased substantially after the outbreak of the Mexican Revolution in 1910 and has continued into the 21st century. Significant numbers of Puerto Ricans, Cubans, Dominicans, and Central Americans have also come, along with some South Americans. Each group of Latino newcomers has fostered ministries and church structures that served the needs of their compatriots.

Latino Catholic activist efforts range from local initiatives such as establishing Spanish-language masses and prayer groups to broader endeavors such as the recent National Hispanic Pastoral Encuentros of the 1970s and 1980s, major events that enabled Hispanic leaders to articulate their ministerial needs and demands to Catholic bishops and the wider church. Latino Catholics have also been active in social causes such as the plight of farmworkers, immigration, and faith-based community organizing.

Lutherans are one branch of Protestant Christianity and have been in America for almost 400 years. Historically they have immigrated to America from Lutheran countries in Europe, especially Germany and Scandinavia. Immigrants during the eighteenth century founded Lutheran congregations in the middle colonies, while westward expansion and further immigration from Europe centered Lutherans in the American Midwest. Lutherans formed regional and national denominations based on geography, ethnicity, and theological differences, In the twentieth century they continued to grow, and mergers reduced the numbers of denominations by 1988 to two major denominations: the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America and the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod. In 2015 there were close to seven million Lutherans in America.

The relationship between the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints—commonly called “Mormonism”—and the politics and culture of the United States is both contentious and intertwined. Historians have commonly observed that Mormonism is in many ways quintessentially American, bearing the marks of the Jacksonian period in which it was born. Its rejection of the denominational leadership of its day, its institution of a lay priesthood, and Joseph Smith’s insistence that revelation trumped scholarship and study all marked it as very much of its time and place, an America in which the authority of common people was exalted and tradition authority was suspect. And yet at the same time, Mormonism was suspect almost immediately upon its birth for those things that made it appear distinctly un-American: the divine power of its prophetic leaders, its rejection of the sole authority of the Bible, its clannishness and separatism, and its defiance of 19th-century sexual morality.

The history of Mormonism in America is in many ways a tug of war between these two impulses. At times the Mormons have embraced what makes them American, have proudly claimed elements of national identity, and have claimed that their faith most truly embodies the American creed. At other times, however, either because of hostility from other Americans or because of their own separatism, Mormons have distanced themselves from the national community and sought a separate community and peoplehood. Through the 19th century, because of the practice of polygamy and the theocratic government of the Utah territory, both Mormons and other Americans perceived a gap between their two communities, but that gap closed by the end of the century, when the federal government used force to eliminate those things Americans most objected to about the faith and Mormons began aggressively pursuing assimilation into American life. By the end of the 20th century, however, Mormonism’s cultural conservatism led both Mormons and other Americans to see that gap opening once more.

It is virtually impossible to understand the history of the American experience without Protestantism. The theological and religious descendants of the Protestant Reformation arrived in the United States in the early 17th century, shaped American culture in the 18th century, grew dramatically in the 19th century, and continued to be the guardians of American religious life in the 20th century. Protestantism, of course, is not monolithic. In fact, the very idea at the heart of Protestantism—the translation of the Bible into vernacular languages so it can be read and interpreted by all men and women—has resulted in thousands of different denominations, all claiming to be true to the teachings of scripture.

Protestantism, with its emphasis on the belief that human beings can access God as individuals, flourished in a nation that celebrated democracy and freedom. During the period of British colonization, especially following the so-called Glorious Revolution of 1688, Protestantism went hand in hand with British concepts of political liberty. As the British people celebrated their rights-oriented philosophy of government and compared their freedoms with the tyranny of France and other absolute monarchies in Europe, they also extolled the religious freedom that they had to read and interpret the Bible for themselves. Following the American Revolution, this historic connection between political liberty and Protestant liberty proved to be compatible with the kind of democratic individualism that emerged in the decades preceding the Civil War and, in many respects, continues to define American political culture.

Protestantism, of course, is first and foremost a religious movement. The proliferation of Protestant denominations provides the best support for G. K. Chesterton’s quip that “America is a nation with the soul of a church.” Spiritual individualism, a commitment to the authority of an inspired Bible, and the idea that faith in the Christian gospel is all that is needed to be saved from eternal punishment, has transformed the lives of millions and millions of ordinary Americans over the course of the last four hundred years.