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Amnesiac evangelicals
Washington Monthly, June, 2006 by David Belden, P.M. Lawrence
Major thanks are due to Steven Waldman for his illuminating article about the passion of 19th-century evangelicals for separation of church and state ("The Framers and the Faithful," April). I would like to comment, though, about his statement that the Great Awakening "seeded" the "revolutionary idea" of religious opposition to an established church and royal tyranny. Let's not forget that sectaries in the English Civil War had been deeply involved both in Cromwell's armies and in pressing for the King's head to be cut off. The Massachusetts Puritans did establish their own church, but they were religious and in many cases were actual blood descendants of the English regicides, and memories were strong. The seeds were already there.
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DAVID BELDEN
Accord, N.Y.
There is something missing from Waldman's account of events. The established churches did not rely solely on funding from tithes and similar compulsory contributions. They also had assets such as glebe land. Practically all of this was stripped from them, notably in Virginia, so it was not merely a matter of whether the churches should receive funds but also of whether they could even retain what they already had. Taking the whole picture together, it wasn't about giving them more, but about letting them even maintain their position.
P.M. LAWRENCE
via email
COPYRIGHT 2006 Washington Monthly Company
COPYRIGHT 2008 Gale, Cengage Learning
