Religious Liberty and American Culture

*I'm not sure why but sometimes the font can only be seen by highlighting it with the cursor.




Religious liberty is a liberty that our nation was founded on, and yet some people may not remember that America has not always had these religious freedoms. Today, in the United States, freedom of religion is a constitutionally guaranteed right provided in the religion clauses of the First Amendment of America’s Constitution. Freedom of religion is also closely associated with separation of church and state, a concept advocated by Thomas Jefferson. In the two excerpts that I read, An Appeal to the Public for Religious Liberty by Isaac Backus and The Rights of Conscience Inalienable by John Leland, I noticed the similar feelings towards church and state that Jefferson held. Both Leland and Backus held the belief that religious liberty was necessary for the people of this country to thrive. What frustrated Backus in his appeal for religious liberty was that he didn’t understand how the Great Britain could force people to believe in a certain religion, and thereby taking away a man’s ‘natural right’ to think or believe what he or she desires.

When Backus writes, “…and the requiring of an implicit faith, and an absolute blind obedience, is to destroy liberty of conscience and reason also,” he is saying that he feels the government requiring a religious belief from someone is wrong, but he also feels that those people who blindly follow these rules set by the government without any sort of nonconforming are giving up their reason and liberty of conscience. The liberty of conscience is something that Backus describes as each individual’s right to their own conscious mind, and something that the government cannot and should not be allowed to take away. Leland follows suit in his excerpt by also feeling that governments should not give preference to any religious group.  One reason he says this is so is because every man should be at their own liberty to serve God in his or her own way the best they can, and that unless the government can speak for an individual on their way into heaven, which they can’t, they should stay out of religious matters and let men be free. The second reason Leland says is that it would be sinful to let the government or any other individual take away one’s mind because, he says, “a man’s mind should always be open to conviction.” Leland refutes the idea that conformity in religion is necessary to the happiness of civil government by saying  that instead of discouraging people with fines, confiscation or death, the government should let every man be allowed to bring forth their own idea of religion.

All of these ideas expressed by both Backus and Leland and other early separatists’ and Baptists’ appeals are comparable to modern day America. Here in America we believe that a person has the right to choose how they want to live and that includes choice of religion. In my own opinion I am proud to live in a place where you can choose any religion you want and not be persecuted. America should hopefully keep this attitude towards religion as long as it is around.

Blog 4 and 5: The Great Awakening

Before reading Thomas S. Kidd’s book The Great Awakening: the Roots of Evangelical Christianity in Colonial America I had only heard of the Great Awakening enough to know that it was some type of religious revival period or something. However, after reading some of the chapters in Kidd’s book I now feel as though there was much more to this period of time. After some reading and searching on the internet I have found more information on both the Great Awakening. Apparently, in the mid-eighteenth century, Americans experienced an outbreak of religious revivals that changed colonial society. The Great Awakening was characterized by widespread revivals led by evangelical Protestant ministers, a sharp increase of interest in religion, a profound sense of conviction and redemption on the part of those affected a jump in evangelical church membership, and the formation of new religious movements and denominations. I believe that Thomas Kidd’s book provides a much more complete view of these revivals, now known as the Great Awakening, and their dramatic effects on American culture. Historian Thomas S. Kidd tells the interesting story of early American evangelical Christianity through the lives of influential figures like Jonathan Edwards and George Whitefield as well as many other previously unknown people. In fact, according to the textbook and the two primary sources, George Whitefield had a very large role in the beginning of the Great Awakening.

After reading the two primary sources George Whitefield Comes to Middletown and the Grand Itinerant along with the Colonial Religion and the Great Awakening section in the textbook, I feel as though all three are telling similar stories. The textbook’s accounts of how the Great Awakening was influenced by George Whitefield and others are very accurate when compared to the primary sources. I believe that the textbook rendition of the Great Awakening gives an accurate account that coincides well with the short primary sources, and that the only disconnect between the primary and secondary sources comes from the fact that the primary sources only speak of George Whitefield, whereas the textbook gives a much more thorough account of the Great Awakening.

“One question readers may ask at the outset is why the Great Awakening happened” (xvii). This question is a difficult one to answer because there was no single formal start to the movement now known as the Great Awakening. As far as I can tell, the Great Awakening started when the New England colonies began having a multitude of “free thinkers”. Because of the education that these people received they were able to start questioning England and soon they began revolting. This explanation is as close as I can get to explaining how or why the Great Awakening took place.