Loyal to the South: Nativism and Anti-Catholicism in the Nineteenth Century South (original) (raw)
International Journal for History, Culture and Modernity, 2021
This article examines the convergence between clerical fascism and proto-fascism in the Antebellum South of the United States. The author employs Roger Griffin’s theories of palingenetic ultranationalism and clerical fascism to understand the worldviews of Southern intellectuals. The author argues that a cadre of Southern theologians rejected the liberal heritage of the United States and redefined the relationship between the individual and state. Southern clerical fascists reconceived of an alternative modernity that reflected God’s precepts. Slaves, laborers, and slave masters all had a mandate to guide secular and spiritual progress. Furthermore, these Southern clerics believed the best hope for securing God’s order was to be found in the birth of a new Southern society – the Confederate States of America. This study builds upon the works of other historians who discerned the illiberal and authoritarian qualities of the American South while also contributing to delineation of the...
USURJ: University of Saskatchewan Undergraduate Research Journal, 2018
In the centuries following the Protestant Reformation, religion was a point of contention between Catholic and Protestant nations. These contentions are reflected in literature that was produced during colonial disputes between opposing Catholic and Protestant imperial regimes. Academics including Johnathan Clark have described the significance of religion in times of warfare, in spurring the support of the masses and providing a rallying cry for troops. Scholars that study 18 th-century conflicts in North America, including the Seven Years' War, often do not consider the significance of religious affiliations in this age of empire. Despite this lack of attention, in the years leading up to and including the Seven Years' War, British North American settlers employed anti-Catholic rhetoric to demonize their French Catholic neighbours to the north. This article considers published letters, sermons, and legislation from the mid-to late-18 th century in order to describe how terms including "papist" and "catholic" became synonymous with "French" in the North American context. These texts suggest that the Seven Years' War was conceived as divinely ordained and justified by British settlers as the defense of Protestantism in North America. Protestant denominations overlooked the differences that had historically divided them in the face of this common French Catholic "enemy."
Anti-Catholicism and Race in Post-Civil War San Francisco
Pacific Historical Review, 2009
In San Francisco during the 1870s, conflicts over public schools, immigration, and the bounds of citizenship exacerbated long-simmering tensions between Protestants and Catholics. A surging anti-Catholic movement in the city-never before studied by scholars-marked Catholics as racially and religiously inferior. While promising to unite, anti-Catholicism actually exposed splits within Protestant San Francisco as it became utilized by opposing sides in debates over the place of racially marked groups in church and society. Considered neither fully white nor fully Christian, many Irish Catholics in turn demonized Chinese immigrants to establish their own credentials as patriotic white Christians. By the early 1880s the rising anti-Chinese movement had eclipsed tensions between Catholics and Protestants, creating new coalitions around Christian whiteness rather than broad-based interracial Protestantism.
"By virtue of one presidential candidate in particular, the United States' primary season has shown that immigration, even when legal, remains an issue of concern to a large segment of the American electorate. To historians, inflammatory remarks concerning Muslims and migrants of Hispanic heritage recall immigration "restrictionists" long past whose jingoist rhetoric might have seemed buried for good. As scholars and general readers seek to contextualize this revival of xenophobic sentiment, Mark Paul Richard enters the conversation with a serious study of Ku Klux Klan activities in New England. Billed as "a regional story of national phenomena" (p. 6), Not a Catholic Nation appears at an opportune moment and, though it eschews lofty claims, promises to shed light on more recent tensions. [...]" Full text: https://networks.h-net.org/node/15697/reviews/117687/lacroix-richard-not-catholic-nation-ku-klux-klan-confronts-new-england
Dr. Mackey never hesitated to answer questions, read drafts of my work, write recommendation letters for scholarships, or to chat about history, historiography, the academy, politics, or life after graduate school. I owe Dr. Mackey my sincerest gratitude for guiding me through the process of writing this thesis and for improving its arguments and prose along the way. In addition to Dr. Mackey, I thank Dr. A. Glenn Crothers for encouraging me to pursue the topic and for agreeing to serve as the second reader on my thesis committee. Dr. Jasmine Farrier also deserves recognition for serving as the third reader and for agreeing to join the committee late during the semester. I also want to thank other members of the University of Louisville Department of History, especially those who served on the Graduate Committee and awarded me a Graduate Teaching Assistantship during the 2014-2015 and 2015-2016 academic years. v The GTA position afforded me the opportunity to gain post-secondary teaching experience as well as provided a generous stipend that allowed me to focus on research and writing. Furthermore, I want to recognize Drs. Malissa Taylor and John McLeod, both of whom accepted me as a teaching assistant and served as valuable mentors. As I have learned during the final weeks of my graduate career, the reading, research, and writing components of the M.A. degree often constitute the "easy parts" of the process. Completing paperwork, organizing committees and defense dates, and formatting the thesis to the required style have produced several "hiccups and headaches." Fortunately for me and my classmates, Dr. Daniel Krebs, Director of Graduate Studies, and Lee Keeling, Senior Program Assistant, offered timely and invaluable assistance throughout the process. In fact, I doubt any department has a more efficient and accommodating administrative duo than the Department of History. Robin Carroll and Lee Keeling have been remarkable in helping me allocate funding for research trips and ensuring that I adhered to all required deadlines during the last two years. I also thank Lee for her "motherly" attributes and regular treats. In addition to the faculty and staff in the department, members of my cohort-especially Hannah O'Daniel[s], Benjamin Gies, and Eric Brumfield-helped make my experience worthwhile and enjoyable. Together we learned much about history and historiography, engaged in thought-provoking political discussions, and shared an inordinate number of laughs but not enough beers. I would not have succeeded at the University of Louisville without the guidance and tutelage I received while earning my B.A. in History at Murray State University. Drs. Duane Bolin and James Humphreys, and Mr. Ted F. Belue have and continue to be great friends, teachers, and mentors. In particular, Dr. Humphreys encouraged me to vi pursue graduate studies in History, seek publication opportunities, and present papers at academic conferences. I thank him for his guidance and for helping me "build a C.V." before beginning graduate work. In writing this thesis, I have relied on several professionals outside of the academy, particularly staff members at The Filson Historical Society, the Kentucky Historical Society,
2011
Directed by Robert M. Calhoon. pp. 488 This dissertation is a study of Covenanter and Seceder Presbyterians in Scotland, Ireland and the American South from 1637-1877. Correspondence, diaries, political pamphlets, religious tracts, and church disciplinary records are used to understand the cultural sensibility, called herein the Covenanter sensibility, of the Covenanter movement. The dissertation examines how the sensibility was maintained and transformed by experiences such as the Wars of the Three Kingdoms, the Glorious Revolution, the 1798 Irish Rebellion, the American Civil War, and Reconstruction. Critical issues involved are the nature of religious and political culture, the role of moderation and religious extremism, the nature of Protestant primitivsm and church discipline, and the political nature of radical Protestant religion. This dissertation looks at Covenanter movements broadly and eschews an organizational history in favor of examining political and religious culture. It labels the broad groups within the Covenanter movement the Presbyterian fringe. In Scotland, the study examines Covenanter ideology, society, church discipline, cell group networks of praying societies, issues of legal toleration and religious liberty, the birth of the Seceder movement and anti-slavery rhetoric. In Ireland it examines the contested legal role of Presbyterian marriages, the controversial arrival of Seceders in Ireland, as well as Covenanters' involvement in the Volunteer movement, the United Irishmen, and the 1798 Irish Rebellion. In America it studies the life of John Hemphill, the retention of exclusive psalm singing and primitive Protestantism, the American Colonization society in South Carolina, interracial religious transfers, and Reconstruction.
The Politicization of Early American Christianity (1760s-1890s)
The Alexandrian , 2017
"The Politicization of Early American Christianity (1760s-1890s)" examines the role that civil religion played in American society during the time frame of 1760-1899. This paper argues that civil religion created doctrinal and ideological issues for both Protestant and Catholic denominations of Christianity. This paper examines five watershed moments in American politics and American Christianity during this time frame, and it argues that the language within civil religion ultimately caused America's identity to be mistakenly conceived as "Christian".
This dissertation will analyse the ideological evolution of nativism in the United States. It will pose a direct challenge to the idea that the American political tradition has been primarily dictated by liberal ideas. Specifically challenging the arguments of Louis Hartz and Samuel P Huntington, two of the most prominent supporters of the liberal thesis. I will argue that nativism should be considered a functional part of the American political tradition because it is rooted in the Founding ideology of the nation. It will investigate three key periods of nativist aggression; The Federalist nativism of the 1790s, the anti-Irish nativism of the antebellum period and the post-1880s racial nativism. It will analyse how the ideology adapted to the current political, social, cultural realities of the period discussed, all while remaining true to its original ideological function. This dissertation will demonstrate how ideas that sound unproblematic in theory can in reality be utilised in a discriminatory and illiberal manner.
The Black American Church: A Reactionary and Ideological Apparatus of Slavery
Journal of Research in Philosophy and history, 2024
This work argues that Denmark Vesey, Nat Turner, Gabriel Prosser, David Walker, Henry Highland Garnet, amongst a few others, were the reactionary (dialectical) exceptions to the black church, not the norm, an (ideological) institution established to interpellate and indoctrinate blacks to accept their conditions in slavery and integrate them into the Protestant Ethic and the spirit of capitalism. In other words, the aforementioned were the enslaved who used Christian dogma to (negative dialectically) respond to the barbarity of slavery by violently convicting white Christian society for not living up to its values, ideas, and ideals given the treatment of African people by so-called Christians. In the latter sense it was reactionary; in the former, it was an ideological apparatus of domination and control for the institution of slavery and black integration into the bourgeois living of the Protestant Ethic and the spirit of capitalism. The contemporary attempt to racially vindicate the black church as a sui generis revolutionary institution overflowing with Africanisms that stood against the Protestant Ethic and the spirit of capitalism is ahistorical and ideological reaped in pseudoscientific propositions stemming from postmodern and post-structural theories.
The US Civil War as a Theological War: Confederate Christian Nationalism and the League of the South
Canadian Review of American Studies, 2002
IntroductionFormed in Alabama in 1994, the League of the South is a nationalist organization that advocates secession from the United States of America and the establishment of a fifteen-state Confederate States of America (CSA) – four states more than seceded during the US Civil War (1861–1865), the additional states being Oklahoma, Missouri, Kentucky, and Maryland (Southern Patriot). With over ten thousand members, the League professes a commitment to constructing this new CSA based on a reading of Christianity and the Bible that can be identified as “Christian nationalist.” This position is centred upon what we identify as the theological war thesis, an assessment that interprets the nineteenth-century CSA to be an orthodox Christian nation and understands the 1861–1865 US Civil War to have been a theological war over the future of American religiosity fought between devout Confederate and heretical Union states. In turn, this reasoning leads to claims that the “stars and bars...