Catholics, Slaveholders, and the Dilemma of American Evangelicalism, 1835-1860

Chapter Two

C H A P T E R T W O Taking Aim at Europe and the Middle Ages Europe in the Northern Evangelical Mind In 1840 Francis Wayland visited Paris and was not impressed. He wrote to a friend that France was a nation bowed down “in form to the Romish Ceremonial,” yet without “a God in the world.” “If France is a Christian nation,” he continued, “what are we, then, to say of the millions and hundreds of millions of Heathendom and Mohammadeanism?” To another friend Wayland wrote that the more he saw of France the more he believed himself to be a Puritan. Catholicism, he alleged, had paralyzed all potential for progress. On the same visit and to the same friend he lamented that while palace after palace had been raised in Paris, “there is no railroad yet from Paris to the sea, nor any railroad in the kingdom, except from Paris to Versailles.”1 After the European revolutions of 1848, Wayland’s children reported that their father was hopeful for France. He was optimistic that “the overthrow of dynasties” and “the change in forms of government” would lead to “the enlargement of intelligence, the elevation of moral principles, and the increasing supremacy of the religion of Christ.”2 By the religion of Christ, he of course meant Protestantism. “Popular institutions,” he declared earlier in his career, “are inseparably connected with Protestant Christianity. Both rest upon the same fundamental principle, the absolute — 39 — freedom of inquiry . . . the doctrines of Protestant Christianity are the sure, nay, the only bulwark of civil freedom.”3 Horace Bushnell sympathized with Wayland’s assessment of Europe. In the spring of 1843, Bushnell and an acquaintance from Italy collaborated with other Connecticut Protestants to form the Protestant League. Bushnell told his wife that the lofty purpose of the organization was to “move on Rome itself, and to overthrow the Papacy.” He later informed the League that even if Americans could not be united against Romanism , at least “we can unite Protestants in a movement to complete the Reformation in Italy.”4 In 1845, while traveling in Italy, Bushnell wrote to his wife that Rome was impressive, but the “grandeur of human power” he saw could not erase his cynicism toward the Catholic faith. After observing the Christmas Mass at St. Peter’s, he scoffed that the “exalted savior” would regard it as nothing more than a sad compliment. “I looked round upon the vast assemblage,” he wrote, “asking what is the real power of this?”5 Similarly, while passing the Coliseum, he witnessed a company of chanting monks tending various shrines around the landmark, “a contrast,” he said, that highlighted “the imbecility of religious superstition and the ferocity of the old time.”6 On the same trip Bushnell went to France, where he observed that, unlike Italy, or even England, “the French character is undergoing a thorough change. Every department of life and society is improving.” The French experienced such change, Bushnell believed, because in France more than in any other European country, “the masses are more” and “the aristocracy less.” He credited this progressive spirit to “the Revolution and all the tremendous experiences through which France has been carried in the last fifty years.” The one thing lacking, however, was a true religion.7 The New Englander, a journal dedicated to promoting the “public sentiment of New England” and “evangelical truth” and that regularly published essays by Bushnell and other northern clergy, also weighed in on the European revolutions of the 1840s.8 The German antipapal movement was heralded by the journal as a congregational revolution. To those Germans who supported the movement the journal advised that the only way they would succeed would be “for the people to fall back upon their own natural, primitive, scriptural and inalienable sovereignty.” A free Catholics, Slaveholders, and the Dilemma of American Evangelicalism, 1835–1860 — 40 — people with a free Bible “will prove a solvent at once for hierarchic and ceremonial Catholicism.” Even more, the people of New England “have always maintained . . . that Romanism must be modified, softened, and eventually worn away by contact with our free spirit.”9 In 1848 New England evangelicals had reason to cheer. On March 12, after learning that King Louis Philippe had been overthrown in France, workers and students rampaged through Vienna and invaded the imperial palace. Austrian emperor Ferdinand I conceded to the demands of the...