Protestant Dominance in 19th-Century America and Stone-Campbell Churches

During the nineteenth century, Americans could hardly fail to notice that although Protestant Christianity was officially non-established, it was the unofficially-established religion of the United States. Most American Jews and Roman Catholics simply tolerated its dominance.[1] The supremacy of Protestantism showed up at every turn. Buildings that belonged to Baptists, Congregationalists, Presbyterians, and Methodists could be seen on street corners in virtually every town in America. Members of these and other sizable Protestant groups, like Lutherans and Episcopalians, participated in countless inter-denominational and non-denominational voluntary associations. These included the American Bible Society (established in 1816), the American Sunday School Union (1824), and the Evangelical Alliance (formed in the U.S. in 1867). In addition, a wide variety of educational and journalistic institutions served to reinforce the cultural influence of Protestantism. For example, from the 1636 founding of Harvard, America's first college, until the late nineteenth century Protestant higher education was nearly synonymous with American higher education. Even state universities operated much like Protestant schools. Finally, extended networks of business owners, ministers, educators, government officials, and benefactors created a sort of Protestant fabric that covered the entire country.[2]

Nineteenth-century Christian Churches and Churches of Christ--congregations affiliated with of the Stone-Campbell Movement--were part of that tapestry. It is true that some of these churches were prone to a sectarian spirit, and that the strict independence of all those churches created a situation in which congregations were so autonomous the movement was nearly anonymous. Yet they still made up a part of American Protestantism.

Notes

[1] William R. Hutchison, Religious Pluralism in America: The Contentious History of a Founding Ideal (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2003), 59-60.

[2] Ibid., 61. See also W. C. Ringenberg, “Higher Education, Protestant,” in Dictionary of Christianity in America, ed. Daniel G. Reid (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1990), 530-32.