Politics

Abstract Protestant evangelicals were engaged in almost every political debate and controversy in the early republic regarding religion’s prudential and constitutional role in American civic life. Their political activity was motivated in large part by a belief that religion and attendant civic virtue were essential to the success of the American political experiment in republican self-government and by a fear that infidels and deists were seeking to diminish traditional Christianity’s public role and influence. A series of developments in the early republic fed these fears, including the election of President Thomas Jefferson (a purported friend of the French Revolution and advocate for church–state separation), federal legislation authorizing Sunday postal services, and a growing movement toward disestablishment in the states. Many evangelicals believed that Christianity was under assault and that they were facing an existential threat in a new secular order. In response, some religious traditionalists looked to politics to counter the perceived rise of infidelity and secularism, initiating an anti-Sunday mail campaign and proposing a Christian party. Evangelicals, however, were not a monolithic political force. They were represented on all sides of the political controversies that engaged them. This suggests that evangelicals were wrestling with the appropriate role of religion in the American constitutional regime and the propriety of their involvement in politics.