Nathan Hatch’s respected and contested 1989 work The Democratization of Early Christianity argues that similar components of antiauthoritarianism and diffused governance between American Evangelicalism and democracy allowed both to flourish together as the new nation developed its own identity. Much has been written to nuance, complicate, and even upend his thesis in the twenty-five years since, but Hatch’s argument still provides avenues for further exploration today.
One nuance is the notion of rhetoric as warfare against the prevailing religious establishments in the early republic. American preachers appropriated and employed satirical and debasing rhetoric in their sermons to elevate their own denominational goals at the expense of others. This was, in keeping with Hatch’s thesis, a natural outworking of the newly-disestablished country and the open marketplace of religious ideas. The lack of an established center allowed for a broad range of new ideas to emerge, which made an already complicated religious landscape even more chaotic. This presentation explores the rhetoric used by religious leaders in the Early Republic period and the effect their rhetoric had in ostensibly authorizing other viewpoints to be heard as well.