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5 Some Theologies of Class in American Religious History Throughout this work I have argued that class matters in the study of religion in general and American religions in particular. Such an assertion begs the question of how one goes about studying class and religion. In the first chapter I proposed a three-part conception of class that is potentially useful for the study of religion. In part 1 of the book, I suggested that a cultural history of the study of American religion reveals how “class” was tied to classi- fications and explanations of religious preferences. In the next chapter I present an ethnographic study that fronts possible interactions between religion and class at the congregational level. This chapter reflects my initial attempt at identifying some recurrent religious explanations of social differentiation in American history. I call these cosmologies, some of which are explicit and systematic and others that are implicit and fragmentary, “theologies of class.” Specifically, in this chapter I name and describe four recurring theologies of class in American religious history. The first, which I call “divine hierarchies ,” is closely tied to Calvinist predestination and suggests that socioeconomic differences are divinely ordained. The second, “economic Arminianism ,” emerges amidst nineteenth-century Evangelicalism, Republicanism, and the development of industrial class relations. Asserting that all human beings have the free will to progress in both religious and financial endeavors, economic Arminianism is the most dominant class theology today and can be seen in movements as variant as the prosperity gospel and New Age channeling . The third recurring theology, “social harmony,” was represented in many Protestant Social Gospel writings as well as a Roman Catholic statement on labor and capital, Pope Leo XIII’s Rerum Novarum. With roots in antebellum notions of the ideal society as a “harmony of interests” among differentiated unequals, proponents of this class theology argued that laborers and capitalist owners in the emerging industrial economy shared mutual, rather than 106 American Religion opposing, interests and goals. While some criticized Gilded Age robber barons for their exploitative practices, adherents to this view consistently upheld capitalism, private property, and profits as biblically sanctioned. The fourth theology, “the class-conscious Christ,” took a rather different view. Espoused by some Gilded Age supporters of the working class, this theology envisioned Jesus as champion of laborers and enemy of capitalism. Rather than a harmony of interests, proponents of the class-conscious Christ viewed labor and capital relations as inherently conflictual. At times, they even envisioned such conflict as a literal battle between good and evil. In identifying these four recurrent theologies of class, I broaden the term “theology” beyond explicit treatises on the nature of God (or gods) and the universe, to include more implicit and less methodical visions of the world and the supernatural orders revealed in nineteenth-century labor songpoems , early twentieth-century motivational sermons, and twenty-firstcentury channeling websites. Whether book-length works or short songs, these sources are textual and focused on the social order. But, as the religious studies scholar R. Marie Griffith has argued, theologies are not mere textual abstractions; they are also disciplinary implements literally inscribed onto our bodies. In Born Again Bodies: Flesh and Spirit in American Christianity , Griffith states that religion “has been central to the creation of American bodies.”¹ Contesting previous scholarship that ignores religion’s influence on modern American views of and obsessions with the body, Griffith examines religious conceptions of the corporeal body from early modern Puritans to contemporary devotional diet literature. She argues for the influence of New Thought and Evangelical Protestantism, suggesting that religious fascination with the body has not been one of repulsion, as some previous studies have asserted, but rather one of its regenerative possibilities. Making one’s body new, or “born again,” correlates with the belief that physical bodies mirror the state and true character of one’s soul. The connection of inner character and external appearance, Griffith notes, makes the body a historically contested site in which race, gender, and class figure prominently. Taking Griffith’s arguments to heart, I end the chapter by posing the question of how theologies of class might also be embodied. I do this by comparing Peter Cartwright’s and Charles Grandison Finney’s interpretations of antebellum ecstatic religious behaviors. In brief, I suggest that their differing conclusions on what constituted “authentic” and “inauthentic” physical manifestations during the Second Great Awakening revivals...

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