The history of Calvinism in the United States begins with the migration of Europeans to North America in the era of colonialism and imperialism. It continues from to with the organization of institutional churches as denominations and adjustments church leaders made to a society governed by secular political institutions and consisting of demographic diversity. That history concludes with the decline of Protestant influence after and the appeal of Calvinism as a set of ideas largely disembodied from the institutions that had sustained it for well over four centuries.
John Calvin — was eight years old when Martin Luther first dissented from the church in Europe overseen by the papacy. The Protestant reformer, who made his reputation in Geneva, did not convert to Protestantism until , a time when the Reformed branch of the Reformation had already achieved success in the cities of Zurich, Bern, and Basel. Along with an effort to overturn a system of sacramental grace that, for Luther, supplied more disquiet than comfort to troubled souls, Protestants also relied on biblical authority to defend their refusal to submit to the Roman hierarchy.
Reformed Protestantism shared these convictions with Lutherans, namely justification and the primacy of Scripture, but differences became apparent when reforms extended to worship and the sacraments.
Both Lutherans and Reformed Protestants attempted to shape liturgies that reflected Protestant sensibilities, such as reducing the number of sacraments from seven to two, and making expository preaching a central part of worship. At that point Lutheranism and Reformed Protestantism diverged. Seven years later, when John Calvin produced the first edition of his summary of Christian faith in The Institutes , Reformed Protestants discovered one of their most important voices.
Calvin also initiated a significant aspect of church reform in his Ecclesiastical Ordinances , which became a blueprint for a form of church government seldom used in the history of the West, namely, Presbyterianism or the rule by elders meeting in councils or assemblies. That form of church administration would further distinguish Reformed Protestantism from Lutheranism and become especially important for the forms of Calvinism transplanted to North America.
Although Swiss cities comprised the original strongholds of Reformed Protestantism, the movement also took root as far east as Poland and Lithuania, and in the north and west of Europe. Indeed, a second wave of reforms, in the s, saw the emergence of struggles for national identity in Scotland and the Netherlands.
By the end of the 16th century, the Protestant cantons of Switzerland, Scotland, the Netherlands, and parts of Germany constituted the principal centers of Reformed Protestant strength. Of the strongest Calvinist ecclesiastical establishments, the English, Scots, Dutch, and Germans were the most active in creating churches and related institutions in North America. The Swiss, thanks in part to a national preference for autonomy and isolation, never replicated their churches in the New World; for Swiss immigrants, the closest church option was usually the German Reformed Protestants.
Small numbers of French Protestants i. The first Calvinists to achieve a relatively colonial presence in North America were the Dutch. Thanks to the exploration of Henry Hudson under the patronage of the Dutch West India Company, in , Dutch colonists began to settle in the territory between the English presence in Virginia and the French in Quebec.
New Netherland established outposts and forts to allow for commercial enterprises to proceed. Religion was not an afterthought but it was also not the chief reason for establishing settlements. The directors of the trading company were conventionally devout and expected inhabitants to conform to Protestant norms. Not until did the Dutch colonists receive their first pastor, Jonas Michaelius —?
The spiritual conditions of his congregation were so discouraging that Michaelius lasted only three years. On a trip back to the Netherlands to resolve their dispute, pastor and magistrate died when the ship sank in stormy seas. Over the next few decades, as the Dutch settlers spread out along the Hudson River and on Long Island, congregations also were formed. But attracting pastors to the conditions of colonial society remained a tough sell. Reformed churches had a monopoly on church life in New Netherland, even after , when the English defeated the Dutch and renamed the colony New York.
Prior to the English victory, Dutch ministers were successful in banning Lutherans and Anabaptists from establishing congregations. When the English took over, the new government decided not to upset the religious structures and continued to rely on the Dutch congregations for church life among the settlers.
Not until , when the Anglican Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts began to support Church of England clergy and parishes, did tensions emerge between the Dutch and English Protestants. Nevertheless, New York refused to make the Church of England the only legitimate ecclesiastical expression, and with the Charter still in place, the Dutch Reformed churches remained a firm part of church life in New York and New Jersey.
Throughout the 18th century, those churches were still under the oversight of Old World ministers and elders in the Classis of Amsterdam. After independence for the United States in , the Dutch churches organized as a separate denomination, the Dutch Reformed Church. Soon after, the Dutch began to settle and organize churches in the Hudson River Valley, English Protestants of a decidedly Calvinistic persuasion began to migrate and form churches to the north, in the colonies later called Massachusetts Bay and Connecticut.
Here the motivation was as much religious as economic or political. Puritanism, an epithet first used in the s against English church leaders thought to advocate a national church thoroughly cleansed of Catholicism, stood for those Protestants who wanted to reform the national church beyond what Queen Elizabeth would allow.
Concerns varied, from reservations about vestments and set liturgies to objections to episcopacy and a heavy handed civil magistrate. When the Stuarts ascended to the throne in , with James I, Puritan discontent became more pronounced. Some committed Calvinists abandoned the state-church model and pursued independency.
William Bradford — was one such church leader who fled, in , along with others of similar convictions, to the Netherlands.
For more than a decade these earnest Protestants lived as exiles. These exiles, later known as Pilgrims, landed at New Plymouth in the fall of , just north of Cape Cod.
The second group of Puritan settlers waited longer before leaving England. After , Charles, son of James I, took a heavier hand in church life and prompted Puritan leaders to look for New World outlets. Led by John Winthrop — , a lawyer and property owner, in roughly 1, Puritans arrived in Massachusetts Bay.
Equally serious about church life and society, the Puritans sought to affect a comprehensive way of life consistent with Scripture and its implications. These ideals prompted a recognition of equality among the saints, who granted remarkable access to political and ecclesiastical power for those settlers who met the religious and economic requirements.
Not only sin, but also political and church dissension proved to be a stumbling block for the godly in Massachusetts. Among those reforms were the Cambridge Platform of , which ratified a congregationalist polity, or rule by local church members rather than a Presbyterian system , and the Half-Way Covenant of , which allowed for children of baptized residents who had not made a profession of faith to be baptized.
Puritan idealism also inspired a number of institutions including Harvard College, founded in , which would have significant influence beyond the region, time, and religion of the original settlers.
The third Puritan colony emerged in , when Thomas Hooker — led a group of Massachusetts Bay settlers south to form the Colony of Connecticut. Trained as a minister at Cambridge University and settled in North America in , Hooker regarded Massachusetts as too restrictive.
Hooker advocated greater access to civil and ecclesiastical structures among all the godly residents, but not to the point of breaking ties with Puritans in Massachusetts. Connecticut retained a separate status even after when political upheavals in England led the crown to reform the administration of its colonies in North America.
Under the Dominion of New England, Puritans lost the independence that had given life to their attempt to establish a godly society. Not only did Massachusetts eventually lose its charter, but Plymouth Colony also became part of Massachusetts. However, Puritan belief and practice would remain in the established churches of Massachusetts and Connecticut. The ideal of setting an example for the old country did not. Another group of English speaking Calvinists arrived later than either the Dutch or the English and with fewer resources.
Scottish Presbyterians were not by any means victims in the political turmoil of 17th-century England and Scotland, but neither did they have the power that allowed control of their own fate. Presbyterians were themselves partly to blame, because they chose sides in the English Civil War — , which in turn had consequences for church life in Scotland.
Only by did the rule of William and Mary grant Presbyterians favored status within the Kirk, or the Church of Scotland. One of those migrants was Francis Makemie — , a Presbyterian minister who grew up in Ireland, received his training in Scotland, and in , left for North America.
Although ordained by Ulster Presbyterians, Makemie started to plant churches almost entirely without support from the Old World. He worked among settlers in Maryland and Pennsylvania, two colonies that tolerated a diversity of Christians. Makemie also engaged in trade to support himself and his family. By , he had established ties with a half-dozen other Presbyterian ministers in the vicinity to form the Presbytery of Philadelphia, a body with power to credential ministers and oversee congregational life.
Thanks to the arrival of other settlers and the work of additional ministers, the colonial Presbyterian church grew throughout the region between the Hudson River and the Chesapeake Bay.
In , Presbyterians established the theological identity of their communion by adopting the Westminster Confession of Faith though allowing for dissent on its teaching about the civil magistrate.
Presbyterians experienced their version of growing pains when, in , the First Great Awakening, led by the evangelist George Whitefield, split the communion into pro- New Side and anti-revival Old Side. But the two sides reunited in , against the backdrop of the French and Indian War, a conflict that had direct bearing on Scotch-Irish settlers in western Pennsylvania. That merger signaled that Presbyterians might achieve even greater solidarity with the War for Independence and the creation of a new nation.
John Witherspoon — , a Scottish Presbyterian minister who settled in New Jersey to preside over the College of New Jersey, was the only clergyman to sign the Declaration of Independence, and his support for the United States was indicative of Presbyterians who had long been suspicious of rulers in London.
Furthermore, political independence prompted Presbyterians after the war to organize themselves into a communion with the capacity for national reach. The first General Assembly, which met in , organized the church as the Presbyterian Church in the U.
With notable reforms in parts of the Holy Roman Empire, such as Heidelberg whose name graces one of the most used catechetical devices from the Reformation, German Calvinism, thanks to politics and war, could not achieve the stability that other Reformed churches did.
Depending on the prince, such German-speaking territories as the Palatinate, Nassau-Dillenburg, and Saxony turned Calvinist rather than Lutheran during the 16th century. But the sons of princes also switched ecclesiastical sides.
The Thirty Years War would change the landscape dramatically. After , with the exception of the Palatinate, the best German Calvinists could manage was toleration.
The social conditions of the Holy Roman Empire were the backdrop for the migration of settlers to North America. By the early18century, between two and three thousand German-speaking immigrants had relocated to the Delaware Valley and farmlands to the west. The heaviest period of migration, around , saw approximately 30, Germans arrive at the port in Philadelphia before searching for land to cultivate.
German immigrant communities included Reformed and Lutherans. The churches that emerged were not branches of Old World national churches, but congregations of people voluntarily forming New World congregations in hopes that a minister might follow.
One such person was John Philip Boehm — , a schoolteacher and son of a pastor in Europe. In , he migrated to Pennsylvania to farm, but his learning set him apart as a potential pastor to German Reformed Protestants who lacked one.
Boehm reluctantly assumed responsibilities for organizing congregations and conducting services, though he would not administer the sacraments. For almost two decades Boehm labored to organize a German communion and defend his standing. Dutch Reformed bodies in New York and in Amsterdam played umpire in these disputes, an indication of how beleaguered the Reformed churches were in the Palatinate. In , Dutch pastors in New York ordained Boehm, and his efforts finally gained a measure of credibility.
For the next two decades Boehm labored with meager assistance to establish a German Reformed communion in North America. The first coetus federation of German Calvinists met in , in Philadelphia, and once again looked to Dutch Reformed for help by adopting the Heidelberg Catechism and the Canons of the Synod of Dort Boehm was its first president.
His death in was a blow to the small immigrant communion, but the evidence of his work persisted. After the creation of a new nation and the severance of ties between New and Old World churches, the German Reformed held their first synod in and took steps to become an independent American denomination. How many Americans are evangelical Christians? The answer depends on how evangelicalism is being defined.
There are a number of ways this can be done. The approach taken in the Religious Landscape Study, for example, focuses only on Protestants. It looks at the denominations and congregations with which Protestants identify, and determines whether these denominations and congregations are part of the evangelical Protestant tradition, mainline Protestant tradition or historically black Protestant tradition. Those who belong to denominations and churches that are part of the evangelical Protestant tradition such as the Southern Baptist Convention, the Assemblies of God and many nondenominational churches are categorized as evangelical Protestants in the study; those who belong to denominations or churches in the other two Protestant traditions are not.
Using this approach, the study finds that Another way to identify evangelicals is to ask people whether they consider themselves evangelical or born-again Christians. The share of self-described born-again or evangelical Christians is very similar to what it was in , even though the overall Christian share of the population has declined.
When Catholics, Mormons and other non-Protestants are excluded, the study finds that three-in-ten U. Another way to define evangelical Protestants is to identify a set of religious beliefs or practices that are central to evangelicalism, and then assess how many people profess those beliefs or engage in those practices. When measured this way, the size of the evangelical population depends on the particular beliefs and practices that are used to define the category.
While this type of analysis is beyond the scope of the Religious Landscape Study, a forthcoming report will examine the beliefs and practices of major religious groups and their views on social and political issues. About Pew Research Center Pew Research Center is a nonpartisan fact tank that informs the public about the issues, attitudes and trends shaping the world. It conducts public opinion polling, demographic research, media content analysis and other empirical social science research.
Pew Research Center does not take policy positions. It is a subsidiary of The Pew Charitable Trusts. Newsletters Donate My Account. Research Topics. Measuring and Categorizing Protestantism American Protestantism is diverse, encompassing more than a dozen major denominational families — such as Baptists, Methodists, Lutherans and Pentecostals — all with unique beliefs, practices and histories. The Terminology of Religious Identity. Of course, some denominations are difficult to classify, and other researchers may prefer to employ alternative strategies for categorizing denominations into religious traditions or use different criteria for sorting respondents who offer a vague religious identity.
As with all Pew Research Center surveys, the raw dataset from the Religious Landscape Study will be made freely available to scholars and others wishing to conduct secondary analysis, providing the opportunity to explore new and innovative approaches to categorizing religion and yielding new insights in this important area. Religious Landscape Study Dataset. Related Publications Nov 3, Database May 12, Publications Jul 16, Publications Nov 20, Publications Nov 13, This devaluing of people of color became known as the doctrine of discovery, and it was used by King Henry VII of England to justify colonizing North America.
Later in , the doctrine was validated by the U. Supreme Court. As a Native American survivor of that doctrine, I ask: Is it any wonder that systemic racism exists today? I believe people are entitled to identify their own ultimate concerns without their critics and opponents reading their minds and divining the contents of their hearts. I think we will all get along better if we engage in good faith and let others speak for themselves.
To the editor: I am a member of a church in Woodland Hills. We voted to call ourselves progressive. Our minister is openly gay, a white man who came to us with his Black partner. We used to have a Jewish congregation renting our facilities on Friday night. Their rabbi spoke to us about the seder that Jesus was celebrating, which is the basis of our communion. Christianity is strong enough to survive. Many atrocities have been committed in the name of Christianity over the centuries.
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