Church as the New Republican King

Amanda Porterfield in Conceived in Doubt sees the evangelical church establishment in post-revolutionary America as “organs of governance supplementary to a weak state” (Porterfield 13).  Her view is very appealing.  In the vacuum left after the Christian monarchy of Great Britain was toppled, Americans were left to forge their own identity and build a new societal hierarchy based on new values.  In more established New England, the British system of cooperation between church and state lead by an educated class of aristocracy and clergy attempted to maintain the status quo.  On the American frontier English order had not been established and in its absence new systems of order were free for experimentation.

I was initially very uncomfortable with how Porterfield viewed the church during the early Republic.  Porterfield saw a politicized church that people on the frontier flocked to as their new republican king.  The king of the evangelical church could be molded to fit the political aspirations of the new ruling class all the while establishing democratic order among the populous.  However, as Porterfield’s ideas around the American church settled in my mind, I came to a clearer understanding of our present situation.  If many if not most of the participants in the great growth of the American church in the early Republic came to the church to find a new republican king to bless their politics and worldview, then the denominational discord in America makes complete sense.  We’ve been trying to makes churches out of baptized political parties for the last two hundred years.