How Did American Christianity End Up Like This?
Key takeaways
- Colonial authorities in Virginia apprehended him repeatedly for being, as one magistrate put it, in 1773, a “preacher of the Gospel of Jesus Christ.” This was a true statement, but incomplete.
- Moore played an early role in the making of American Christianity.
- Discover notable new fiction, nonfiction, and poetry.
From one view, the so-called separation of church and state only incentivized religion’s creep into public and political life.Illustration by Tyler Comrie Save this story Save this story Save this story Save this story Jeremiah Moore was an irritant to the Crown. Colonial authorities in Virginia apprehended him repeatedly for being, as one magistrate put it, in 1773, a “preacher of the Gospel of Jesus Christ.” This was a true statement, but incomplete. Moore was a Baptist evangelist, admired for his knowledge of the Scriptures and for his satirical edge from the pulpit. Brook Wilensky-Lanford, the author of “A God-Shaped Nation: Five Hundred Years of Religion in America” (Atlantic Monthly Press), describes Moore as “large and gregarious, and always spoiling for a fight.” He ranged all over Fairfax County and, at one point, pastored in a place called Difficult, in between Falls Church and Leesburg. His alleged crime was preaching without the authorization of the Church of England, the colony’s official church. An exasperated judge told him, “You shall lay in jail until you rot.” Yet Moore, imprisoned in Alexandria, remained full of zeal, preaching through latticed windows to crowds outside.
Moore played an early role in the making of American Christianity. At the time of the country’s founding, the church was experiencing an ebb tide, as the rejection of organized religion became more commonplace. Nevertheless, Christianity was enmeshed in public life. Most of the new states mandated that officeholders be Protestant; many still had officially recognized churches, sanctioned by the government. Moore and his fellow-Baptists were religious dissenters. In the fall of 1776, a petition complaining of the “Burden of an ecclesiastical Establishment,” signed by ten thousand men, arrived at the newly constituted Virginia House of Delegates. Moore later said that he’d presented the petition directly to Thomas Jefferson, who at the time represented Albemarle County. Around this period, Jefferson was closely studying the political philosopher John Locke’s arguments for religious freedom. He drafted a pioneering bill that barred the punishment of individuals for their religious beliefs, but failed to get it through the legislature. In 1786, Jefferson’s protégé, James Madison, successfully passed a slightly modified version of the measure, enshrining a watershed idea in America: the withdrawal of state control of religion.
Discover notable new fiction, nonfiction, and poetry.