The medieval specter: Catholics, evangelicals, and the limits of political Protestantism: 1835--1860

This study is an attempt to broaden the categories that have been used to explain the relationship between theological commitments and political conflict in the United States in the mid-nineteenth century. To this end, it involves the premise that certain proponents of Protestant political theology, namely northern evangelicals, led an aggressive campaign to demonize the place of Catholics and slaveholders in American society. Central to their project was the idea that the United States was to be a nation that championed Protestant values. However, building a consensus about how those values were to be defined proved to be an arduous task given that southern evangelicals frequently disagreed with northern evangelicals over the social implications of Protestant theology. In a theological culture that celebrated both freedom from authoritarianism as well as the right to private conscience, disagreements between southern and northern evangelicals manifested not only over the issue of slavery, but also over the place of Catholicism in a "Protestant republic." This study endeavors to understand how anti-Catholicism came to maturity under the guidance of politically engaged northern Protestant ministers who actively sought to contribute to the idea of what it meant to be a "good American." Specifically, it argues that because the United States had no endearing national identity in the antebellum period one had to be created, and that the culture of northern evangelicalism contributed to this process by positing a carefully constructed historical dualism between the medieval "Dark Ages" and their own "enlightened" age of progress.