Church and State in America: The First Two Centuries (review)

James Hutson, chief of the Manuscript Division at the Library of Congress and a recognized scholar of church and state matters in early America, has produced a valuable introductory text on American church-state relations to 1833. Part of the "Cambridge Essential Histories" series, Hutson's work successfully offers both a clear overview of the topic and a subtle argument about the continuity of American thought and practice in this period. Throughout, he deals equally with the practical realities of religious life in early America, the politics that responded to that practice, and the ideas that helped people make sense of church-state matters.

Hutson's narrative traces the development of religious diversity and the ongoing conversation about how the government (whether colonial, state, or federal) should treat those diverse groups. During the settling of the British North American colonies in the seventeenth century, the non-interference of English officials produced a "crazy-quilt pattern of state-church relations" (p. 41), which created challenges for subsequent generations. Following the Glorious Revolution, the Toleration Act of 1691 encouraged dissenting churches and defined a colonial ideal of toleration of all Protestant groups under Anglican hegemony. In his third and strongest chapter, Hutson discusses the significance of religion during the Revolution and Confederation periods. He portrays a group of founders — many devout — who created a national government that had no formal power to deal with religion on a national level yet still gave much informal "friendly aid" to religion. Most religious matters were left to the states, of which approximately half maintained some form of church establishment. Simultaneously, dissenting groups clearly articulated a political ideal of freedom of religion that opposed state taxation for either an established church or a "general assessment" to benefit all denominations. In his final chapter, Hutson pays close attention to the historical context of the First Amendment's religion clauses and shows their limited effect in the early republic. Rather than a constitutional challenge to the state establishments, Hutson suggests, state establishments were undone by the surging Second Great Awakening, which produced many more Baptist and Methodist opponents of establishments. Instead of relying on government support, these believers organized voluntary benevolence and mission societies to bring Christianity to the masses.

Hutson's argument is two-fold. First, he argues for the continuity of widely held attitudes to church and state in early America. Contra historians such as Gordon Wood (a scholar Hutson should have identified) who have suggested a radical break in attitudes because of the Revolution, Hutson denies such a revolutionary change occurred. He concludes:

If the American Revolution introduced into American life new ways of thinking about things and new ways of doing them — which it indisputably did — its innovative impulse produced little novelty in the realm of religion and government. There, in the years after the Revolution, ancient ideas [about the public utility of religion] thrived, and old ones [about the rights of conscience and the value of religious voluntarism] were brought to fruition.

(p. 188)

Second, Hutson continues his challenge to those who view the new nation as a secular edifice, privileging Jefferson's "wall of separation" metaphor — whether Supreme Court Justice Hugo Black or contemporary historians such as Isaac Kramnick and R. Laurence Moore. Instead, Hutson describes the Constitution as a "politique" document, setting aside religious debates for national peace and using federalism to assign important decisions about religious matters to the states (p. 144). Hutson believes the compromise of the Constitution and Bill of Rights helped foster a near-universal consensus that voluntary religion would be respected and even encouraged in a non-sectarian manner by the national government. Hutson makes substantial points, and this work should spark further debate on both propositions.

Although meant as an introductory text, the book evinces several problems of content and format. While not everything on the topic could be included, Hutson might have discussed how issues of church and state relations contributed to tensions that produced...