The Religious Amendment Movement: God, People and Nation in the Gilded Age. (Volumes I and II) (National Association, Reformed Presbyterian Church).

Abstract

The National Association to Secure the Religious Amendment of the Constitution (later the National Reform Association) has not been studied despite its importance during the 1870s. As a result, we lack underst and ing of the continuity and importance of conservative Evangelical thought during the Gilded Age. Conceptually, the study combines examination of the ideas of the movement with consideration of the social context that made them particularly convincing between 1863 and 1876, and argues that while the ideas underwent little change, public interest in them rose and fell in response to current events. It was the ability of the movement's ideology to explain the crises of the Civil War that first attracted broad public support. and after 1869 many Americans feared that democratic forms and values were threatened by secularization and political corruption, and supported the Religious Amendment effort in response. By 1876 the Association dwarfed better-known reform efforts. It was strong enough to block the Sunday opening of the Centennial Exposition, and large enough that President Grant predicted the onset of a new American civil war, divided along religious rather than regional lines. As an institutional study, the work highlights the relation between the Reformed Presbyterian Church and the National Association, arguing that the growth of the movement depended upon the ideas and efforts of Reformed Presbyterians, and to some degree upon the leadership's ability to hide that dependence. It develops the Association's organizational tactics, particularly its commitment to strong local rather than central control. Finally, it traces both the transformation of the Association as it deemphasized its unique crusade and became part of the Temperance coaliton, and the crisis of the Reformed Presbyterian Church as it sought to preserve its doctrine from the perils of success. The work is based on the journals and records of the Association and the Reformed Presbyterian Church, unindexed midwestern religious and secular newspapers and journals, monographs, pamphlets, sermons and the records of Congress.