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    Church History 77:4 (December 2008), 80 1- 87 6.I : 2008. American Society of Church H istorydoi:l0.10I7/S0096407(I8016L Printed in the USA

    EXTENDED ARTICLEEvangelical Secularism and the Measure ofLeviathan

    JOHN LARDAS MODERN

    Infidelity is a system of negations; it is nothingbelieves nothingdoesnothing good.Beware of Bad Books (New York: American Tract Society, 1826)By Systems; I understand any number of men joined in one Interest or oneBusiness. Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan ( 1651 )Steam has of course been noticed ever since the heating of water andboiling of victuals were practiced. The daily occurrence implied by theexpression "the pot boils over" was as common in antediluvian as inmodem times. . . . From allusions in the most ancient writings, we maygather that the phenomena exhibited by steam were closely observed ofold. Thus Job in describing Leviathan alludes to the puffs or volumesthat issue from under the covers of boiling vessels.^ Th o m a s Ew b a n k , A Descriptive andHistrica! Account of Hydraulicand Other Machines for Raising Water, Ancient and Modern: withObservations on Various Subjects connected with the MechanicArts: including the Progressive Development of the Steam Engine,12th ed. (1851)

    I. P R O L O G U E : A M E R I C A ' S GODStatistics point to a "surge" in evangelical publications as well as in thepractices of evangelical piety in the first half of the nineteenth eentury.^ Inorder to explain these parallel trends, however, mere measurement falls short

    'The author would like to thank A nnette Aronowicz, Stephen Cooper. David McM ahan, TomasMatza, Kerry Mitchell, Finbarr Curtis, Gabriel Levy, Mark Ehtiorc. and the participants inAuthorizing Inscriptions: Religion, Acithetics. and Global Media at iho University ofCalifornia Davis on April 11 12. 2008. for their feedback on this project.""Mark A. Noll, America's God: From Jonathan Edwards lo Abruiuim Lincoln (New York:

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    80 2 CHURCH HISTORYin adequately addressing the strange power evangelical media institutionsassumed during this period. In 1825, for example, the American TractSociety announced its agenda of "systematic organization," a directive thatapplied equally., and simultaneously, to words on the page, to readers on theground, and to the airy abstractions of the nation-state.

    So long as public opinion maintains its existing supremacy, who does notfeel the immense importance of moulding it by a moral and religiousinfluence, and of securing and augmenting our civil and politieal libertiesby the most unconfined diffijsion of the lights of seienee and religionthroughout a community whose political existence depends on theintelligenee, and, more especially, on the integrity of the people.'In this essay., I will approach the "imm ense" project of "moulding" public opinionby focusing on the combinatory effects of speeifie evangelical media praetices."*These praetiees ineluded the representation of the population as an objeet ofredemption and religious inquiry; the promotion of a subjeet-centeredepistemology as prerequisite for being included in sueh a large-seale project ofredemption; the differentiation of "tme religion" from imperfect or eorrupt formsof politieal behavior; the deployment of mass media to shape the meanings ofdemoeratie progress and soeia! transparency; and finally, the sensuouscultivation of rational reading habits in light of these meanings.

    Each of these media practices was double-edged, targeting "'ihe localSituation and habits of (he people." And each revolved around the desire forsystematicity^not in the sense of direct control but in "securing andsystematizing the exertions of others." For example, both major evangelicalmedia organizations, the American Tract Society and the American BibleSociety, subscribed to a "practical system" of "doing good which is level toevery capacity, and adapted to every condition." The conditions that"demand[ed] the employment of a system combining catholicity, itinerancy,direetness. and permanenee" were matters of dmographie ealculabiiity.These conditions included "the vastness of our territory and the sparseness ofthe population; the enormous increase of foreign emigration; the inadequaeyof ministerial instruction and other means of grace; the meager supply ofreligious reading; the prevalence of vicious books; the neglect of Christianduty in visiting the abodes of the destitute; [and] the existence of error in

    f Ihe E.xecuti\'e Committee of the American Thict Society to the Christian Public

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    THE MEASURE OF LEVIATHAN 80 3numberless forms." Such issues, however, could only be addressed "on a vastscale" by addressing individuals "a t the fires ide, through the eye and the ear."**

    Consequently, evangelical media practices were not related to individuals inan essential way but nonetheless affeeted individuals in a particular way.^ Incoordinating the production of information about "true religion" withintbnnation they had previously gathered about intimate, domestic details,evangelicals made their calculations in terms of "the masses [who] have theirrights, as well as individuals.'"^ To be sure, the statistically driven efforts ofevangelical media did not seek to eradicate the idiosyncrasies of everydaylife (sin was, after all, originary). On the contrary, they sought to accountfor the private realm in such a way as to bring it into the orbit of aeommunity that was in the process of being imagined. Such efforts wereeffective inasmucb as they made the imagination of the social the primaryfimction of each and every individual/' Evangelical publishers, in thisscheme, were "a mighty throbbing heart gushing [their] thrilling thought-currents through all tbe swelling arteries of the world's life.'"'" Individualreaders, in turn, were conduits of this "life blood" pouring into them "withaccelerated force."

    Despite evangelical claims to the contrary, "systematic organization" did notyield hard data. It was, however, tangiblein the same way a child'simagination of God's omniscience or the adult imagination of his or hercomplicity in an invisible network of social vectors has affective and lastingresults. Or as the children's tract Hie Histoiy of Jonah (1833) suggests, its ownpower of instruction was not coercive but ever a looming prospect. For toinvite the reader to imagine how God knows "all things that all the people in' 'A Brief Anafyxix of the System of the American B ible Society^ Containing a Fuli Account of itsPrinciples and Operutions (New York: Daniel Fanshaw, 1830). 29; Address of he ExecutiveCommittee, 5. See also Brief Analysis of the System of the American Bible Societ}\ 126-127;Twentv-Fiflh Annual Report of the American Tract Society (New York; American Trad Society,1850)", 62.^Michel Foucault, Security. Teirifon: Population: Lectures at the Collge Je France. 1977-978. ed, Michel Scncllan. trans. Graham Bell (New York: Paigrave, 2007), 12. For Foucaull,the inessential niilure of the human w:is laid bare in liie process of discourse analysis.**[R. S. C oo k] . Home Evangelizalion: A View vfthe WiuU.'i and Prospects of Our Counliy. Basedon the Fads ami Re lations of Colportage (New York: American Trad Society, 1849), 111.""See Michel Foucault, "The Subject and Power." in Michel Foucault: Beyond StructuniUsm un dHermeneuiics, 2nd ed.. eds. Hubert L. Dreyfus and Paul Rabinow (Chicago: University of ChicagoPress. 1983). 208-226. The American Bible Society, for example, premised ils project of "moralpurification" on llie syllogism that "society [was] composed of families, and families of

    individuals. Improve ihe moral charader of individuals, and families will be virtuous and happy;and the divine declaration will be illustraled and confirmed, thai 'righteousness exalteth anation'": W. P. Strickland. History- of the American B ihlc Society from ils Organization to the

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    804 CHURCH HISTORYthe world, are now thinking, feeling, saying, and doing" was to "promote ...active piety" and "call into exercise the reflecting and reasoning powers"'"^ {fig. I ).

    According to contemporary testimony, the "moral power of the [evangelical]press" consisted of something more than the formal properties of Latin letterslying flat. Rather, the power consisted of the active residue of signification thataccom panied these letters: from the desire that suffused their com position to thegears and steam that produced them to the intricate strategies that marked theirdissemination, delivery, and reception. Descriptions of "the machinery of thissystem" were pervaded by the language of indeterminacy, incandescenee,and automation.'^ As Henry Ward Beeeher noted, the experiential form ofthe first convention of the American Bible Society anticipated its flinction. Itwas a "sublime spectacle," he wrote. Each attendee had "had his own mindprepared by an agency which he had scarcely recognized, and of whoseubiquitous influence he had no knowledge.'"'"^ In "bringing the Gospel intocontad with those who absent themselves from the sanctuary," tract societieswould "be the means of incalculable good."'^ The "power of the press" was"resistless." Its "mechattical arrangements for multiplying" and the"magnitude" of its operation guaranteed its "indefinite expansion."'^ Evencritics could not help but be impressed by the organizational effects ofevangelical media. As Unitarian William Ellery Channing wrote, "an eleetriccommunication [was] established" between the members of voluntarysocieties that enabled them to accomplish "wonders." But Channing alsoexpressed concem over the "minute ramifications of these societies,penetrating everywhere," noting that "one of the most remarkablecircumstances or features of our age is the energy with which the principleof combination or the action by joint fores, by associated numbers, ismanifesting itself ... This principle of association is worthy the attention ofthe philosopher, who simply aims to understand society, and its mostpowerful springs."'^

    '^T. H. Gallaudet, The Histuty nf Jonah, for Children and Youth (New York: American TractSociety, 1833), 10,4,^-^Tlif Bible Agent s M anual {Uew York: American Bible Society. 1856), 3. The A merican TractSociety is now based iti Garland, Texas. Us motto: "Always Telling Someone."Roben Baird, The Chrislian Reiroxpect and Register; A Sum mary of ihe Scientific, Moral, andReligious Progn-s.s of the First Half of the X/Xlh C entury (New York: Dodd, 1851), 237.Instructions of the Executive Committee of the American Tract Societ}- to Colporteurs amiAgents (New York: American Tract Society. 1848), 9 9 - 100.'^Cited in Nord, "Religious Reading," 247.[R. S, Coo kj, Ho/ne E vangelization: A View of the Wants an d Prospects of Our Country, Based

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    THE MEASURE OF LEVIATHAN 805

    Fig. I. Tlw Hi.siiirv if .lomih. for ChiUln-n tiiiil Yoiilh (American Tract Society. 1833). Used bypermission of the American Tract Society.

    In light of such testimony, this essay will address, rather than quantity, thecumulative etTect of evangelical media practices. As 1 will dem onstrate, the"systematic organization" of media in the form of information as well asthe bodies and imaginations that encountered such infonnation was. indeed,"immense." Evangelical media practices. I argue., made possible particularconceptions of the self, the social, and the means to understand them both;manufactured somewhat narrow definitions of "true" religion and interpretivepropriety: shaped characters who readily adopted these conceptions, assumedthese means, and adapted themselves, in practice, to these definitions.Simply stated, the power of evangelical media must be approached in termsof the conceptual spaces they helped initiate and foreclose in antebellumAmerica. For in structuring both the meaning of "true religion" and thesubsequent expectations of mundane life, evangelical media practices helpedmake salvation a matter of "national safety" rather than simply or solely amatter of faith.''*

    Evangelical media practices,fi-om his perspeetive. were neither religious norsecular. Their significance, instead, lies in the power they assumed in defininga particular symmetry between piety, epistemology, and polities. Like theScottish Sunday School teacher in Catherine Warden: or, the Pious Scholar,evangelical media institutions "aim[ed] to make [students] understand what

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    806 CHURC H HISTORYtbey committed to memory, not only as subjects of belief, but as incitements toac tion ^sub jec ts that directed them in their eonduet towards God, towards theirfellow-men, and in the manner in which they ought lo attend to the eternalsalvation of their own souls."^" Within tbe strange loops professed heretheback and forth between memory and action., reading and belief, piety andsocial ethicsevangelicalism was baptized in the spirit rather than in thename, of secularism.

    In conceptualizing the essence of religion and promoting this essence interms of private reason and social ethics, evangelical media practices bothcontribLited to and were informed by the discursive formation of secularismin antebellum America."' Rather than being the antithesis to religiosity,evangelical secularism was constituted by those feelings, attitudes, andpractices that animated definitional categories about religion and wasmanifest in the deployment of those definitions at the level of the population.To frame evangelical media practices in terms of secularisma "conceptualenvironment that presupposes certain ways of defining how religion, ethics,the nation, and politics relate to each otber"shifts the analytical emphasisfrom the meaning-making activities of evangelicals to the question of howevangelicals (and others) were made meaningful to themselves."^'' To frameevangelical media practices in terms of secularism also serves to illuminatehow media forms do not simply deliver messages to tbe masses who, in turn.

    ^"William Dunn, Catherine Wa rden: on the Pious Scholar (New York: The American TractSociety, ca. 1841). 4." Secularism, here, does nol refer lo a proce.ss of secularization ora decreasing influence of thereligious. On the contrary, I use the analytical category ofsecularism to encompass a field of tropes,styles, and sensibilities ihal not only generated a particular distinction between the religious and thesecular but also made this distinction a matter of common sense. Protestant Christianity,colonialisin, and capitalistn each played a significant role in the emergence ofsecularism in thenineteenth century. Most notably, each has been integral in the process of defining religion as amatter of interior and, more often ihan not. highly rationalized belief- The discursive formationof secularism is also constituted by new forms of economic exchange, speculation, production,and consumption; new fotnis of governance and statecraft; new technologies and technics ofmedia; new conceptions of personhood and human rights; and finally, new ideals of cpistemicvirtue. There is, of course, a Foucauldian lineage to the relatively recent and ongoingrecognition of secularism as a disciplinary structure that Is, first and foremost, invested in Itsown evolutionary progression and naturalization. For incisive works on secularism, see WilliamE. Connolly, Why I am Not a Secularist (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1999),Talal Asad, Formations of the Secular: Christianity; slam. Modernity (Stanford, Calif.: StanfordUniversity Press, 2003). and Gil Anidjar, "Secularism," Critical Inquiry 33:1 (Autumn 2006):5 2 - 7 7 , On secularism in the American grain, see Tracy Fessenden. Culture and Redemption:Religion, ihe Secular, and American Literature (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press,2007); as well as my essay, "Ghosts of Sing Sing, or the Metaphysics of Secularism.'" Journal of

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    THE MEASURE OF LEVIATHAN 80 7discern their meaning. On the contrary, media forms are, first and foremost,mediating. So while evangelical letters (and printed numbers) described aworld in which there were clear lines between private and public, subjectand object, true religion and false, their circulation added up to nothing lessthan a dissolution of these categorical boundaries.

    R. S. Cook, secretary of the American Tract Society, suggested as muchwhen he described the formation of printing presses at the Society'sheadquarters in New York City^"Twelve of these oracular machines pursuetheir endless task, without weariness or suffering; preaching more of Flavel'ssermons in a week than he preached in a lifetime dreaming Bu nyan'sDream over a thousand times a dayreiterating Baxter's 'Call' until itwould seem that the very atmosphere was vocal with, Tum ye, turn ye; forwhy will ye die?"""'^ Cook voiced no qualms about the fact tbat thebiological presence of either Flavel or Baxter was no longer necessary forIheir words to be meaningftil, that is, effective. Neither did those Americanswho were converted, in the tield. by agents and their encomiums to thewonders of the American Tract Society. A worldthis world in whichmachines (and institutions) possessed not simply a logic but an agency oftheir ownwas strangely reminiscent of the determinism of Calvinist creedand the animism of savage superstition, those terms that marked theconstitutive outside of evangelical piety. In this scheme, "true religion" wasnot unrelated to mechanical saturation, dependent on technologies ofreproduetion as well as readers who encountered their ambience with thetum of every page.

    At mid-century, evangelieal secularism was quite literally amorphous,haunting words, animating ethical sensibilities, motivating and coordinatingpractices without announcing itself as such. Consequently, evangeliealsecularism must be approached indirectly. A metaphysical solvent rather thana substantive ideology, evangelieal seeularism was a highly chargedatmosphere in which epistemology continuously dissolved into polities,politics into epistemology. Because evangelical secularism eannol be reducedto any one thing and, for that matter, did not even exist at the level ofcmpirieal reality, this essay will move across a number of interrelated sites,no single one of which captures the phenomenon in question: evangelicalreviews of "infidel" fiction, evangelieal histories of evangelicalism,evangelical representations of Iruc and false religion, the logic, practices, andstatistical presentations of evangelical media institutions, and finally,evangelieal instructions on how to read, what to read, and why. Together,

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    80 8 CHURCH HISTORYII. READING MELVILLE AND THE QUESTION OF MEDIATION

    Evangelieal secularism becomes something other than translueent duringmoments of transgression. These are times when evangelicals must defendtheir claims to truth and reason in light of them being marked as artifactualand wholly unreasonable. Given his firsthand encounter with both themissionary cause and evangelical media. Herman Melville's fiction may beas good a place as any to begin e.xploring what he once referred to as"evangelical pagan piety."^"^ Melville's first novel, Typee: A Peep atPolynesian Ufe during a Four Months ' Residence in the Valley of theMarquesas (1846), was about the specter of cannibalism. It was alsocondemned by evangelical, and in Melville's words, "senseless" reviewerswho "go straight from their cradles to their graves & never dream of thequeer things going on at the antipodes."^^

    Typee is told in the first person by Tommo, a young sailor who abandons hiswhaling ship and ends up chronicling the customs, laws, and habits of theMarquesan islanders. Tommo pays particular attention to the "Typee," whieh"in the Marquesan dialect signifies a lover of human flesh." The question ofwhether the Typee are really cannibals is integral to both the substance andarc of his narrative. At the beginning of the novel, for example, Tommorecounts his conversation with the "natives of Nukuheva" and writes that itwas "quite amusing" to "see what earnestness they disclaimed all cannibalpropensities on their own part, while they denouneed their enemiestheTypeesas inveterate gonnandizers of human flesh; but this is a peculiarityto whieh 1 shall hereafter have occasion to allude." And allude he does tothis disclaimer, comparing the "system" of Typeean ritual to the praetices ofProtestant missionaries and suggesting that accusations of camiibalism werewholly ironic. Throughout his narrative, Tommo juxtaposes the humanity ofthe Typee with the "death-dealing machines" of "white civilized man" andthe abuses committed in "the business of mission." Having "evangelized intobeasts of burden" everyone in their path, the "eruelty" of missionaries was"remorseless," According to Tommo, the "atmosphere" of the Typee was"cool [and] delightful." The "tainted anosphere of a feverish civilization"had become self-eonsuming. This process of turning life against itself, likecannibalism, was literally unspeakable. "How feeble is all language todescribe the horrors.""*'

    ^*Herraan Melville, Moby-Dick; or. the Whale, eds. Hershel Parker and Harrison Hayford

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    TI IE MEASURE OF LEVIATHAN 80 9Melville's "voluptuous" prose struck a chord atnong American evangelicalleaders. They responded quickly, attacking Melville for his "slurs and flings

    against missionaries" as well as his "utter disregard of truth.""^ A commonrefrain among evangelicals was Melville's "flagrant" infidelity. Althoughnever defined with any theological rigor, such infidelity was assumed to beanathema to piety and. tnore significantly, detrimental to the cultivation ofeivilized sensibility. For example, in William Oland Bourne's "Typce: TheTraducers of Missions," there is more at stake than Melville's "pertinacity ofmisrepresentation." For as Bourne insisted, his rather lengthy review inChristian Parlor Magazine was not an "analysis of [Typee''s] contents, itsliterary execution, or its claims to fidelity." Bourne, instead, took issue withthe threat that 7i7)t'i'"s circulation posed. Despite the fact that Typee was a"work coming from the press of one of the first houses in this country., andpublished simultaneously by the same house in London," it was nonetheless"an apotheosis of barbarism! A panegyric of cannibal delights. Anapostrophe to the spirit of savage felicity!" If left unaddressed, in pubhe,Bourne suggested. Typee threatened to infiltrate sensibilities, to mediate themasses "like the ominous characters of blood" traced by primitive tribes.Attempting to invert Melville's inversion of cannibal and Christian, Bournelikened Typee to an "omnipotent and talismanic 'TABU'" object, one borneof deceit and obfuscation. Typee was a violation of the kind of eirculationguaranteed by dmocratie exchange. In its animistic allure, the very languageof Typee could corrupt the eapaeity of individual readers to make judgmentsby and for themselves.""*

    Bourne, it should be noted, did not fit neatly within evangelical categories ofself-identification. On one hand. Bourne was a self-styled refonner He calledfor the "brilliant establishment of Christianity in the hearts of people" of"insulated tribes" and believed that "the presentation of a written and printedlanguage" was essential to the task. Bourne also promoted the "Liberty thatangels use" and argued for the abolition of slavery based on what he viewedas the republican-inflee ed teachings of Jesus. On the other hand. Bournewas a member of the National Institute for the Promotion of Science. He was

    excellent tiisctission of the Irope of cannibalism in Typee. sec Geoffrey Sanbom . The Sign of theCannibal: Melville and the Making of a Postcolonial Reader (Diiriiam. N.C.: I^uke L'niversilyPress, IWti), 75-118. For a defense of missionary activity in ihc Marquesas, sec Marian Page.

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    810 CHURCH HISTORYalso a poet of some renown and the author of works that owed much to theliberal currents of Transcendentalism and "free-thinking" sensibilities.^^

    What bound together Bourne's allegiances was his commitment to languageas a source of metaphysical truth and his interest in shaping the context inwhich language was practiced, that is, produced, disseminated, andreceived."*" Words, in both the evangelical and Romantic register, couldembody the immediacy of truth, whether that truth referred to tbe divine orhuman condition. In Bourne's idealistic rendering, language was notnecessarily a process of mediation but could function as a natural expressionof metaphysical order. It could be relied on to provide certain knowledge ofGod, the world around, and the self. Bourne inhabited a space in whichideological currents of evangelicalism and Romanticism interseeted. Hiscommitment to a particular kind of social space and linguistic practiceswithin it undcrgirded Bourne's apostrophie condemnation of Typee^n publicity.Bourne's commitment also explains his choice to riff on Melville's morevoluptuous phrasings and narrative threads, re-presenting them as anegregious example of what did not count for either divine or human truth.Stringing a random selection of Melville's words together with his own.Bourne distilled what he believed to be the essence of Typee's literary

    "abandon." Assuming the voice of Tommo as he sueeumbs to the "beauteousnymph Fayaway," Bourne writes:Come, oh Celestial Spirit of Primitive Bliss! and waft me on thy goldenpinions to the lovely abodes of the Typeans! ... Come, oh yearning soulof the angelic Fayaway! let me henceforth be the chosen partner of thytabued pleasures! let me bask beneath the mild ray of thine azure eye, andrepose on the swelling oval of thy graceful form! ... With thee let mesport on the mirror-surface of thy sacred waters, and ramble beneath tberefi-eshing shades ofthe cocoa and the ^'

    In his deliberately outrageous impersonation, Boume plays on the doublemeaning of infidelity, depicting Tommo"s penetration as a modality of sinand pleasure and not of truth. Tommo rambles beneath. Tommo isintoxicated by the beauty of natural form. He loses himself to nature butgains no know ledge of its secrets. ~ Tomm o's interpretive gaze, it seems,^''ibid., 74: William Oland Boume, "The Divine Mission." in Poem.-! of Hope and Action(New York: George P. Putnam, 1850), 99. See also "The Doom o f the Children," SouthernLiteraty Messenger 10 (April 1844): 201-206.'"William Oiand Boume. "Sonnets to Franklin's Printing Press," Southern Literary Messenger

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    THE MEASURE OF LEVIATHAN 811was a perversion of Bourne's evangelical and Romantic sensibilities, eachdepending on a wholly unified subject and a eoneeption of Nature thatcorresponded to this unification.The infidelity that Bourne ascribed to Typee evoked disunity, bodily andpsychic penetration, the excessive emotionality of the feminine, and all thatthreatened to infringe on the lugged and autonomous reason of the solitaryreader. By contrast. Boume's re-presentation of Typee relied on theassumption that his imagined audience would be able to distinguish theconstitutive outside of tiaith (and themselves) when it was presented to them.All publicity was good publicity when there existed ontological distinctionsbetween self and other, private and public. All publicity was good publicitygiven that individual readers could potentially exercise their commoncapacity for rational discernment. Deliberate promotion, in other words,rather than prohibition was the most effective response to Melville'sitifidelity. To secure Typee'a presence in public as an object of collectivediscrimination would ensure that its "tabu" powet^ were kept in cheek.

    The decision by Bourne (and his editors) to publicize a fictional and carefullyconstructed "extract" from Typee was indicative of their faith in a publie sphereproperly constituted as republican. For as Christian Parlor Magazine insisted,"the American Christian Citizen" possessed "reverence for the laws of hiscountry, and a scrupulous submission to them ... Liberty in its Justdefinition, the liberty for which our fathers struggled, is not freedom fromlaw, but freedom according to law. and on this point it is to be feared weneed instruction and warning. The theory of republicanism is eminentlybeautiful,""^'' Republicanism, in other words, was not a theory but asystematic reection of moral law. It was that which regulated reasonedexchange and democratic dialogue, lt was, for all intents and purposes,a mediating principle that guaranteed epistemolgica! immediacy.Consequently, Bourne could be confident that his "extract" of Typee wouldbe received and understood according to certain tendencies, particularstructures of feeling that would render obvious Melville's infidelity. "To givecirculation to such statements as our author makes may seem unwise." wroteBourne, "but as extracts from it of the nature we eondemn are obtaining

    ''"Then a shoreless, ladianl sea," wrote Bourne in "The Atheist World-Builder." "stretchedbeyond Thought's farthest verge. / Fnim whose deep infinity / World.s on worlds 1 saw emerge."Bourne's assumption thai language could be used to secure the unification of seif was poignanilyon display in 1865 when he established the "Left-hand Wriling" award for Union soldiers wiio

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    81 2 CHUR CH HISTORYa channel through the public journals, we have determined to do our part in thework of making him known to the public.""*^

    According to Boume. circulation and unimpeded flow of literatureparticularly, but not exclusively, evangelical literaturewould secure theconditions of republican governance."' This version of circulation, however,was of a particular type^words moving through space in a sustained andorderly fashion, empowering individuals rather than compromising (that is.mediating) their individuality. "The Press," argued Boume, now driven bythe "expansive force of steam." had "opened the resourees of science tomillions of thinking, active, aspiring minds, and poured abroad over theworld floods of light which are heaving and swelling in their fullness, aseach new inquirer delves to the nether roek. points his glass into the bluedepths, or touches the unconscious matter with the galvanic probe to learnits mysteries."^'' Like an engine's conversion of steam into a "perpetualcircular movement," mass media would transfomi the world and enact apermanent separation of truth fi-om fiction. It would do so by "converting"individuals who would then convert mystery into reliable knowledge,circulating that knowledge and making it available to the entire populace.^**Print technology, in the right hands, would initiate a mastery of nature at thelevel of public opinion. A massive penetration of Nature's mirrored surfaceswould, in tum, offer a sustained defense of metaphysical truth from theobfliscating (and less weighty) claims of infidel novelists.

    Boume's insistence on the promise of techno-science was not limited torhetoric. In 1857, for example, Boume received a U.S. patent for a machinethat deployed a current of air to separate gold from the quartz matrix inwhich it was found. Later, in 1860. Boume would receive a U.S. patent forhis "improved bed for ore-separators." This invention resembled his"Improved Gold Separator" in producing "an intermittent or continuouscurrent of air or water upward from beneath the bed for the puipose ofeffecting a concentration or separation of the heavier from the lightermaterials." Like Boume's vision of the power of the press to enact a naturalseparation of truth from fiction, both of these machines would rapidly and

    ""[Boume], "Typee." 75.^'"William Otaiid Bourne, "British Oppression," Soulhern Literary- Messenger 9 (Augusl 1843);506-507. A republic was commonly held lo be "a form of govemmenl in which the people, or althe ver>' least a large portion of tliem, are acknow ledged !y the source ofpow er, and have the directappointment of the officers of the legislature and executive": cited in "Principles of CivilGoveminent," in Chamhcrx s Information for the People: A Popular Encyclopedia, vol. 1. 15th

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    THE MEA SURE OF LEVIATHAN 81 3effectively deposit the heavier and more valuable substances "w hile the lighterpass off over the waste edge of the machine""''' (fig. 2),At stake in Boume's "review" of Typee was the impurity of its language,understood as a eonfusion and corruption of the human enterprise."^" As thespace between words and their ultimate referents could be made transparent,so, too, could the space between individuals" self-interest. For Boume, thehamessing of technology would make clear the complementary truths ofevangelicalism and natural seience, revealing them to be bound up in tbe sameseheme of universal order Print technology could also enable individuals tolive their lives in hannony with this order, to align their thoughts and actionswith how the world was in essence.*^' If the "Press" were allowed to performits mission, it would secure the physical conditions of a social space in whichall words could be independently judged according to the degree to whichthey corresponded to the metaphysical order of that space.

    Again. Boume's faith in print technologies was premised on the whollyironic concept of non-mediating mediation. His faith was equal parts "solascriptura," Common Sense visions of ordinary language, and Romanticpoeties., the latter captured most strikingly in Ralph Waldo Emerson'sambiguous notion of the poet as creating the truth of the world bysubmitting to its unmodifiable metaphysics."""^ At root in eaeh was a vision ofautonomy or autonomous meaning achieved through linguistic incorporation,of consciousness merging with the natural or spiritual "facts" that wordssignified. Boume assumed that because words were organie containers oftruth, the perpetual eireulation of them could make universal knowledgeuniversally accessible to all who chose to recognize its universality.'*^

    "'''"Improved Gold Separator." Scientific American Ii;8 (Ifi February 1860): 113. See alsoBoume's "Specifications of Letters Patent No. 30.29 (9 October 1860).M"his was in keeping w ith evan gelical heim eiieutics, Erilightenmenl projects of language reformand political order, and the poetics of .American Rom anticism. For a sermon on the possibility forlanguag e to fulfill "ils designed office as a sign oT realities. ;md as a m edium , or currency , forthoughl," see l~. D. Huntington's defense of the "Businessman's Revival." Pcrmaneni Realitiesof Religion and the Present Religious /merest (Boston: Gould and Lincoln, 1S5H). On thereception of Enlightentnent projects of linguistic and political refonn in America, see ThomasGustafson. Repiesentalive Words: Polilics. Literature, and the American Language (Cambridge:Cambridge University Press, 1992), esp. 137-192. On Emerson's exicnsion of Protestanthermeneuiics in a Romantic key. see Philip . Gura, The Wisdom of W onts: Langua ge. Theology',and Literature in the New England Renaissance (Miildletown. Conn.: Wesleyan UniversityPress. 1981). 75-105.

    "On the imagery of kinesis and motion wiihin Ihe genre of American Romanticism, seeCatherine L. Albanese, Corresponding Molion: Transcendental Religion and the New America(Philadelphia: Temple University Press. 1977).

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    814 CHURCH HJSTORY

    BOHJB'B IBIPE VED GOLD SSPAH TOR. .Fig. 2. Scientific A merican (February 18, 1860). Courtesy Scientific Am erican.

    ihose of immature intellecls and unsettled principles." Greeley, editor o fthe A'Vn' York Tribune, avidreaderof Marx and Engels, a Fourierist, and a political radical, was no evangelical. Bul adopting Ihelanguage of infection, Greeley's concems resonaled with those espoused by Boume as well as others inthe evangelical press. Novels writteii by tbe likes of Melville were considered dangerous, notbecause of tbeir worldliness. bul because tbey resulted in an "ill-regulated and over-excitedimagination." They were not consistent with a properly constituted public because they were notconsistent with themselves. "Unsanctified literature," linked with criminality, unreason, andalcoholism, threatened the "mind" ofthe individual and the "morals" ofthe "population ofthe

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    THE MEASURE OF LEVIATHAN 815In mak ing this wager on the "interplay of reality with itself," Bourne sought toplay the "game" of "not interfering, allowing free movement, letting thingsfollow their course; laisser faire, passer et alier^basicaliy andfundamentally . . . acting so that reality develop s, goes its way, and followsits own course according to the laws, principles, and mechanisms of realityitself." And it was precisely this kind of unmediated state^the natural"option of circulation"that Boume understood as metaphysical truth and.by extension, the fundament of social order and the natural state of humaneonsciousness."*"*

    Despite his flirtations with "free-thinking," Boume's faith in non-mediatingmediation was also in keeping with the home missionary efforts ofevangelicals. Following the legal disestablishment of religion, evangelicalreformers like Boume established a "Benevolent Empire" of voluntaryassociations that approached, "systematically." issues of life, death, and thevarious impediments to salvationrampant materialism, alcoholism, dueling,swearing, and the profanation of the Sabbath.''^ The majority of associationsthat emerged in the first half of the nineteenth century were heavily investedin print media as a missionary organ, an embrace of publicity consummatedin periodicals like the New-York Evangelist and Christian Parlor Magazineand, most significantly, in such print-centered organizations as the AmericanBible Society (1816) and the American Tract Society (1825). In contrast toearlier publishing collectives, the American Tract Society (ATS) and theAmerican Bible Society (ABS) were highly coordinated affairs and nationalin scope.""'

    '''Foucault, Security. Territory. Population. 48, Although Foucault associates this "game oflanguage" witli tiineteenth-century liberalism, ihe imagery of circulation was rampani in avariety of contemporary pcrsua.sions- -Ihc tbnnations of capitalism and democracy. Ihe emergentconcepts of culture and political economy, and the practices of phrenology and spiritualism.Each posited a closed loop between physics and metaphysics, immanent doings and transcendentmeanings. For a discussion of this metaphysical attitude within American history, see Michael T.Gilniore, Surface and Depth: The Quest for Legibility in American Culture (Oxford: OxfordUniversity Press . 2O3)."^See, lor example, Steven Mintz, Moralists & Mndeniizers: Amrica sPre-Civit War Reformers(Baltimore, Md.: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1995); Rotiert U. Abzug. Cosmos Cmmbling:American Reform and the Religiou.s Imagination (New York: Oxford University Press, 1994);and Clifford S. Griffin, Their Brothers ' Keepers: M oral Stewant.ship in the United States. 1800-

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    816 CHURCH HISTORYFinanced by wealthy businessmen, administered by agents at the local level,and rigorously coordinated at the national level, these organizations sought to

    maximize soteriological profits within a "moral economy." In their drivetoward efficiency, the ATS and ABS were interdenominational. They did notinvolve themselves in sectarian debate (all of their publications requiredapproval by each member of a modestly diverse publishing committee) andwere loathe to address hot-button cultural issues like abolitionism. Instead,they concentrated on the bare bones of evangelical pietythat destitute soulswere in need of conversion, that salvation would come in the form ofrecognizing one's destitution and accepting Christ's death as a pardon and,finally, that such conversion signified on e's acceptance into an immortalcommunity. Although the moment of conversion could happen in a varietyof contexts, readingand the kind of cpistemic empowerment instantiatedby readingwas a privileged vehicle for maintaining the emotionalassurance of redemption.

    "Universal circulation" was a common rhetorical theme of evangelicalpublishers as well as an explicit agenda. "Systematic" production anddistribution were pursued in the service of aligning the saving grace of Godand a secular spaee of social interaction. Ever preoccupied with productionnumbers and circulation statistics, evangelical publishers suggested that theso-called secular world {media, technology, and the marketplace in whichpublicity was achieved) would bring about its own transformation,religiously speaking. In 1851, for example, the ATS reported that the ^"powerof the press'' had precipitated the "aggressive movement by which themasses" have been "reached and supplied" with "6.567.795 copies ofstandard religious works," These works (as well as promotional literatureabout the efiReient and effective dissemination of them) were designed forcontinuous circulation (unlike, say, the fleeting circulation of newspapers).The circulating presence of Bibles and tracts would secure "the authority ofthe divine Legislator." Such circulation would also serve to overemepolitical disorder, and make manifest the unifonnity of consciousness. "Wedo believe that if good men beheld each other's goodness through a nearermedium, and one less obscured, they would be more under the direction ofa reciprocated confidence."''''

    The "Benevolent Empire." then, was not simply a matter of brick, mortar, oreven the warm bodies of reformers or church attendees. On the contrary, it wasan empire of media, mediation, and the management of infomiation. Such

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    THE MEASURE OF LEVIATHAN 817"reciprocated confidence" was more ethereal, perhaps, than bodies, butnonetheless tangible. "What elements of power are here entrusted to us!"proclaimed Presbyterian Robert Baird in 1851., the "us" referring toevangelical media organizations in general. "These arts of printing thatmultiply the Word of God literally with every minute; these accumulationsof capital still active, still accumulating; these tneans of communication oversea and land, through the broad earthwho does not hear the voice of Godin all these?"^** Baird. the author of Religion in the United Stales (1843). oneof the first and most comprehensive histories of evangelicalism, was simplyrepeating a common themethe celebration of mass media and the anxiousdenial of the affective role evangelicals played in mediating the messagesthey produced and distributed.'''' The ABS. for example, claimed that "itssole object [was] to promote the circulation of the Holy Scriptures withoutnote or comment" as if their notes or comments or strategies of distributiondid not afteet the community they were promoting.^" Similarly, in their

    ''*'Baird. Christian Relrospect und Register. 188.*^lt i.s precisely this affective role that must be accounted for in order tu yain leverage on thepower of evanglica! publishing. Media practices of evangelicals sought to generate habits: "thestate[s] of feeling and action fonned hy the repetition of the same train of thought and the samecoui^e of conduct": T. S. Clarke. "The Power of Habit," Christian Parlor Magazine 1 (July1844): 8fi [86-88]. Consequently. i( is imperative that one read the practices of mid-centuryevangelicals on iheir own terms as well us against the grdin of their own assumptions about theworld, assumptions that were (and are) very much operative within the works of theirchroniclers. Seo. for exatnplo, Candy Gnther Brown. The Word in the World: EvangelicalWriting. Publishing, und Reading in America. 7H9-IH80 (Chapel Hill: University of NorthCarolina Press. 2004), In her exhaustive history of evangelieal media. Brown writes that "TheWord becatne incarnate in American culture by the IX50s as publishers demonstrated itsrelevance to diverse cultural settings, ranging from the refined Victorian parlor to the rough-hewn frontier fann" (fi). This statement is by no tneans incorrect, but it should be noted thatBrown, like the evangelicals she studies, naturalizes the "rclevanee" of the Word while leavingunquestioned the aggressive strategies that invested the Word with an air of verisimilitude acrossa range of contexts, David Paul Nord, by contra,st, has devoted much attention to the stratgiesof persuasion pursued by evangelical publishers. See Faith in Reading: Religious Publishingami the Birth of Mas.^: Media in America (New York: Oxford University Press, 2004), !n thisbook and in a series of substantial articles. Nord has done much to illuminate the motivation andtechnics of tract and Bible societies in antebellum America. Nord's general approach to thehistory of evangelical media, however, avoids genealogical excavation of the categoriesevangelicals used, publicly, to understand themselves and others, David Morgan, in slightcontrast to Nord, argues that in order "not to he swept away by [the] propaganda" of evangelicalpublishers, scholars need to pay closer attention to the reception of tracts, particularly when"matters religious met with resistance or even rejection": sec his "Studying Religion and PopularCulture: Prospects. Presuppositions, Piocedui'es," in Between Sacred and Profane: ResearchingReligion and Popular C idluiv. ed, Gordon Lynch (London: I, B. Tauris. 2007). 3 0 - 3 1 . I take upthe subjects of reception and agency in relation to evangelical publishers later in this piece,

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    CHURCH HISTORYinaugural ad dress, the exeeutive comm ittee of ATS described their enterprise asthe most "practical system" of addressing the "extended population" preciselybeeause it cultivated what was most natural and common within individualstheir eapaeity to "weigh" and "deposit" information directly intoeonseiousness."^'

    Although the evangelieal press may not have been among those included inTommo's critique of "the business of mission," the effects of evangelicalpublishing were as intense, microscopic, and impervious to description. Thisdespite the fact that by the close of 1853, ATS dutifully reported that116,435,00 tracts were in circulation, a total of 982,619,267 individualpages (leaving aside tracts published in foreign languages, broadsheets,or Almanacs! )."* Numbers, however, do not do justice to the power ofevangelical representation. R. S. Cook, for example, in his attempt todescribe the effects of the ATS, struggled to articulate (and justify) its newand seemingly apophatic form of power. It "does not plant churches orsupply pastors; it does not send forth men as public heralds of the Gospel;it does not administer ordinances: it does not advocate or defend thepeculiarities of any particular sect." On the contrary, he wrote, "it paves theway for permanent religious institutions ... It spreads the leaven of truthamong the masses that most need its power. Though restricted in the scopeof its agencies, it is unrestricted in the range of its adaptation. It can goeverywhere [even] if it cannot do every thing; and all its tendencies arepurely evangelical and saving."^"' For Cook, the power of the evangelicalpress was precisely its non-mediating power of mediation. But in Cook'sdescription, however, one senses the will toward a particular kind ofmediationthe desire to condition the reeeption of messages, to chargewords v/ith an aura of facticity, and to generate the range of affectivemeanings upon which the population should act.

    The "system" of evangelical media was, indeed, remarkable in making"personal religion a personal coneem [for] all the millions it reaches."^'' Inrepresenting the essence of "true religion" as it was manifest in bistory aswell as within consciousness and social life, evangelical media promoted(with the peculiar force that accompanies words that announce themselves as

    of public properly that could only be rendered private at ihe whim, and for the benefit of, the stale";see American Literature and the Culture of Reprinting, 834-1853 (Philadelphia: University ofPennsylvania Press. 2003). 48, 63-64.

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    THE MEASURE OF LEVIATHAN 819metonyms of God's will) particular styles of being an ordinary human andparticular strategies for representing Ihis ordinariness to the self Or toborrow a description trom Tommo, mining the wicked ironies of his prose,the power of evangelical media to define the relationship between sacredimportance and secular minutiae was akin to primitive ritual. "So strangeand complex in its arrangements is this remarkable system," he writes, that"I am wholly at a loss where to look for the authority which regulates thispotent institution." "Situated as I was in the Typee valley, I pereeived everyhour the effects of this all-controlling power, without in the leastcomprehending it. Those effects were, indeed, widespread and universal,pervading the most important as well as the minutest transactions of life. Thesavage, in short, lives in the continual observance of its dictates, whichgtiide and control every action of his being."

    in . SYSTEMATICITY AND THE METAPH YSICSOF EVANGELICAL SECULARISM

    My re-presentation of Tommo's description ofthe "remarkable" systematicityofth e Typee valley calls attention to the metaphysics of evangelical secularism,a discursive power that affected the manner in which antebellum Americanssuch as Bourne assumed a range of subject positions. Boume's hybrididentity, for exampleevangelical, reformer, fi"ee-thinker. Romantic poet,engineerbecomes less hybrid when one accounts for his sustainedcommitment to a metaphysieal order, an exterior space of regularity to whicheach of his various practices sought correspondence.*''^ For Boume. as forevangelical publishers in general, there was no essential distinction betweencomponent parts of reality. Everything operated within, and according to, thesame universal pattern. In reflecting the very principles of existence, thisnotion of order made each component part of physical nature appear to workin terms of an overarching network of meaning. This order encompassed life

    "Melville, Typee. 247, 250.^^Michel Foucault. The Archaeologx- of K nowledge

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    82 0 CHURCH HISTORY25 it was in essence. It brought a searing realness of consistency to bear on thepresent and affinned utter continuity hehveen the past and the future. Andfinally, this "remarkab le" systematicity fixed the relationship between thereligious and the secular in such a way so that the "most important" and"minutest transactions of life" became ontologically indistinct.

    For a range of conservative Protestants, systematicity was bound up in a styleof reasoning in which the various possibilities of truth or falsehood had alreadybeen de tennined . On one hand, systematicity had everything to do with the wayevangelicals approached expressly religious issuesGod and providentialhistory, piety as well as the Bible. First and foremost, systematicity was theessence of "'true religion." It was the grammar of piety and resulted in "thevoluntary consecration of one's entire self, body, soul, and spirit, 'a livingsacrifice, holy and acceptable unto the lord.*" Systematicity was also thenexus between human ethics and divinity. "System in beneficence tends tomake free-will offerings the fniit of a more cheerful spirit, and rendersbenefieence a delight, as it is a duty." On the other hand, systematicity hadeverything to do with how evangelicals approached worldly experience., pre-empting any ruptures such experience may have portended. As the principleof life itself., systematicity conferred ^'consistency and ejftciency to thecharacter of Christians, by bringing their life into harmony with theirdoctrines and professions."^'^ Evangelicals also relied on the concept ofsystematicity to distinguish "true religion" from all that was infidelbadreligion, to be sure, but also suspect politics and corrupt epistemologies.Atheism, irrligion, and licentiousness were by definition, asystematic,inconsistent with either "organic laws of the State" or "any lawswhatsoever." That which was "contrary to the nature of religion" was alsocontrary to nature and "subversive" of "virtue, morality, and good manners.""*^*^

    In what follows, 1 will chart the circulating routes through which themetaphysics of systematicity assumed physical fonn. I am particularlyinterested in how the notion of systematieity was represented and deployedby evangelieals in the mid-nineteenth centuryin media representations ofthemselves as well as in their technical deployment of media as a missionarytool. For such categorical dependence on a vision of perfect order alsopossessed a technological hue, a distinct valuation of "systematic treatment"(fixjm the Greek, echnologia). "Systematic organization," for example, wasa wcll-wom phrase among evangelical leaders who embraced technics andtechnologies for missionary purposes. It signified not only the meehanical

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    THE MEASURE OF LEVIATHAN 821forces now at their disposal but also the kind of world these forces would helpusher in. Or as William O land Boum e wrote in the Christian Parlor Bo ok a fewyears after he had reviewed Typee. steam engines were "now moulding theworld to the might of their genius." Although "'ingenious devices" hadhistorically been ""used to operate upon [the population's] ignoranee, theirfears, and their credulity." they would now serve the purposes ofevangelicalism by severing the chains of epistemolgica! and politicaldespotism.

    Bourne's story of evangelical triumph was also a story of disenchantmentand increasing politieal security. Technological innovationor moreprecisely, the circulation of knowledge about specific innovations pertainingto the "clastic force of vapors"promised to liberate humanity from priestcraft and superstition. It would do so not by argument but by detailing themechanisms of their skilled manipulation of the populace. Citing earlytheorists of feedback technologiesArchimedes and Hero of Alexandria(whose treatise had jus t been translated into Eng lish) Bo um e thencelebrated the "splendid labor agent of Watt" and "the fiery steedof Stephenson" as having brought to public attention the inner workings of"priestly workshops" and "superstitions palmed upon the people." Aceordingto Boume, self-regulating technologies, once "stripped of their coverings,"would reveal the essential order of the universe, "enlighten man, and leadhim onward to his God."^*^

    For Boume, such exposure was but the latest development in the ProtestantReformation, a moment in which the "wonderfijl and ennobling revelations" of"Science" would transform human life into a systematic proposition, akin to"the locomotive of Stephenson." Boume. here, was cribbing from ThomasEwbank's treatise on hydraulics and "air machines." the tweltlh editionhaving been published in 1851.^" Ewbank, the U.S. commissioner of patents{1849 1852), had traced the history of human manipulation of naturalelementswater, fire, and air. In an effort to reveal the "impostures of theheathen priestcraft," Ewbank had celebrated the "diffusion" of technicalknowledge by way of technology. Such diffijsion, he argued, would exposethose "who applied some of the finest principles of science to the purposesof delusion." Ewbank's agenda was to communicate to "tbe GREAT MASSof our species." providing them with "DESCRIPTIONS OF USEFULMACHINES" in order to produce "more useful member[s] of soeiety."Knowledge of air machines would expose the "effectual fi^uds" of heathen,

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    m2 CHURCH HISTORYcivil governors, and all manner of "state tricks."^' In Boume's reading ofEwbank. evangelicalism became the privileged vehicle for applying scientificprinciples to the population in order to secure the humanity of those within it.Boume's insistence on evangelicalism's continuity with technologicalinnovation was neither insignificant nor unique.'*^ In 185K for example, JohnMaltby argued that "Christianity" was not simply amenable to "secularprogress." but that it was an essential component of it. Maltby was aCongregationalist minister and member of the American Board ofCommissioners for Foreign Missions. Earlier in his career he had called for ahome missionary "system" that would "bring the most remote parts of ournation into cordial cooperation, awaken mutual interest in the same grandand harmonious design, produce a feeling of brotherhood, and thus bind usall together by a new chord of union."^"* By 1851, the "grand andhannonious design" had become a first principle. The "nineteenth century,"wrote Maltby, was distinguished by the "engrossing" idea of "Progress," notonly "in one thing" but "in every thing;^Progress in Literature,Progressin Science.^Progress in the application of Science to the arts of life," Asopposed to earlier epochs with other idealsPoetry, Philosophy, NationalGlory, for examplethe age of Progress did not lead "off in a single line ofpursu it" but hurried "m en upon different lines of endeavor." it also had noforeseeable end, "resulting in improvements indefinitely various,inventionsstartling as miracles,and wealth like the golden veins of an exhaustlessmine. '""

    Whether or not this "idea" of the "age" would precipitate an advance in"human welfare," however, depended on "the presence or absence ofChristianity in the counsels that shall guide this Progress." Maltby lashed outagainst those who "flatter" themselves, who tell themselves that they "knowhow to refuse the evil and choose the good," and who are "fool-hardy" and"rash" in believing that Progress has nothing to do with "revealed religion."Such individuals were like children playing with "surgical instruments."

    Ewhank. A Descriptive and Historical Account, 2- 4. 382, Ewbank would make visible theworkings ofpower. guiding ihe reader into "the secret recesses in their temples!places wheretheir chemical proce.sses were matured, their automaton figures and other mechanical apparatusconceived and fabricated, and where experiments were made before the miracles wereconsummated in publie" (viii)." S e e , for example, "Railroads," New-York Evangelist 23 (October 1852): 178.'^Maltby's "Connection between Domestic Missions and the Political Prospect.s of our Country"(1825) is quoted in Michael H, Harris, '"Spiriiual Cakes upon the Waters': The Church as a

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    THE MEASURE OF LEVIATHAN 82 3They had failed to embrace the aile of life itself "They will physic away theirhealth, eut their fingers, and may be, their throats besides!"

    A crass humanism, in other words, was not a viable option in an age ofProgress. It is here that two versions of tbe secular emerge, the first beingthe adjective that refers to the "pennanent good of the world" and the secondbeing the chaotic world of "human passions."*^ This latter version ofsecularity functioned as a straw man for Maltby. This was seeularity as acondition of obtliscation. It was anathema to "secular progress" and was akinto infidelityirrational, senseless, and blind to the object(ive) lesson "on thepages of history." If such seeularity is allowed to triumph, warns Maltby,progress will cease. Americans will be "thrown fatally from the track," theirfossilized fate to be examined by a fiiture generation "as the Mastodon relicsof other ages have been."

    Religion, in this version of modernization, was integral to the progress of"human welfare" yet also dependent on it. Christianity had initiated "thevoyage we are [now] making." It was the only "counsel" that couldeffectively steer the ship of state from the "sou nding s of the lee-shore" andsecure the permanence of present conditions. Yet these conditionsphilosophical, scientific, political, economic, medical, and technologicalprogress^were precisely those which had enabled Christianity to assumecontrol over the present. Anyone who denied this historical fact was "guiltyof bigh treason against the race." Maltby, then, was not simply advocatingthe adoption of Christian principles throughout every sphere of social lifebut calling attention to the principles that made piety and "human welfare"effectively the same. Such principles were primordial. They were outside theflux of time yet extant in the stirrings of the age. And if recognized andembraced for what they weresystematic principles of metapbysieal orderthey would guarantee the prosperity of the age, a time in which Christianityand secular progress would perpetually reinforce one another.

    "True religion," according to evangelicals, not only corresponded todivine script but was also the means of revealing essential principles of the"within evangelieal discourse, the notion of the "secular" was deployed with intenseambivalence. On one hand, the secular world was a haven of infidelity and "terrible moraleonvtilsions." In its inaugural address, for example, the executive commiitee of the AmericanTract Society condemned whal it called "modem liberalily" associated with "Vollairc and hisinfidel associates." This view of the world "discovers no difference between the precious and thevile, and which consists in a virtual indifference to all religious opinions": Address of theExecutive Committee, 11 78. The secular, here, connoted relativism, obfiiseation, anarchyallthat exceeds or. worse, ihreateneii to exceed the promise of order. "Secular pursuits." iticn. werenot simply worldly but undisciplined, un-American, an affront to order itself But on ihe other

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    82 4 CHURCH HISTORYhumanreason, coherency, and legibilityto the human in the name of humanprogress. Because evangelical piety was consistent with principles of universalreason and the principal vehicle for univereal morality, "true religion" wasthat which best reflected the metaphysics that already governed secularexistence. This agendaof reproducing religious life by calling attentionto its "secular" credentials and aspirationswas not contradictory. On thecontrary, this maneuver was incredibly successful and perfectly consistentwith how evangelicals understood themselves to betruly religious ratherthan simply religious or merely Christian.^''

    Gil Anidjar's argument about the way in whieh Protestant Christianity in theage of colonialism "'actively disenchanted its own world" is not unrelated tosuch mid-century collusions between evangelicalism and systematicity/'** Forin their embrace of a particular version of modernization, evangelicalssought to govern themselves "by the deliberate choice of goals and rationalselection of means."""^ In breeding "a judicious concem for the actualworkings of society," evangelicals like Maltby and Boume represented a"different way of thinking power" and "a different way of thinking therelations between the Kingdotn of Heaven and the Kingdom of Earth."Confronted by the anxious prospect of somehow losing reality, evangeliealsmade reality, itself., in addition to God. an object of their belief. In doing so.evangelicals "reincarnated" themselves as secular and elaborated a "peculiardiscourse" about themselves. This discourse was, of course, composed ofsigns referring to the substance of evangelicalismcreeds, practices, history,etc. But in addition to being a group of intertwined representations, this"peculiar discourse" was also composed of practices that systematicallyformed the objects to which these signs referred.^'

    IV. EVERY HO UR THE EFFECTS OF COMM ON SENSEHistorian Mark Noll, more than any other scholar of his generation, has calledattention to the peculiar stories evangelicals told themselves about themselvesat mid-century. In Americas God, Noll charts the making of what he calls the"evangelical synthesis"the integration of Scottish Common Sensephilosophy and republieanism that, by mid-eentury. had become "an ethical

    ' ' 'Anidjar, "Secularism," 60.'^ ' 'Ibid.. 59. - -^ Daniei Walker Howe. "The Evangelical M ovcmeni and Political Culture in ihe North during

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    THE MEASURE OF LEVIATHAN 825framework, a moral compass, and a vocabulary of suasion for much of thenation's public life." Noll argues that antebellum evangelieals were so adeptat promoting this "synthesis" that they forged what he calls "America'sGod." This ethereal object of worship was not simply the province of self-proclaimed evangelicals but. more important, served as an ideologicalhorizon for the majority of Americans, "Theologians," Noll surmises,"translated the historic Christian message into the dominant culturallanguages of politics and intellectual life so successfully that the.se languageswere themselves converted and then enlisted for the decidedly religiouspurposes of evangelism, church formation, moral reform, and theologicalconstruction." By integrating the grammars of piety, politics, andepistemology, evangelieals both reflected and spurred an emergent nationalimaginary. "The key moves in the creation of evangelical America," writesNoll, "were also the key moves that created secular America." "

    According to Noll, evangelicals absorbed Common Sense reasoning as amethod of "examining one's own consciousness as an objeet, treating thedeliverances of consciousness as data, and gathering these data inductivelyinto broader conelusions (even 'laws') about the nature of human existenceitself."'"* Such data, according to evangelical readings of Dugald Stewart,Francis Hutcheson. and Thomas Reid, were reliable, anterior to. andindependent of subjective experience.'"* For evangelicals interested inmaking faith an epistemological proposition. Common Sense offered aphilosophical defense of the immediacy of consciousness and the essentialcontinuity between thinking subject, object world, and divinity. "Such is tbemanner of taie faith; it realizes the fact, that heaven is really engaged aboutus. with us. and in us ... There is a virtue, and there is a power in this faith,not from the logic by which it may be sustained and defended, but" beeause"reason belongs to it, beeause it derives its light from the Divine Logos, thesource of knowledge and wisdom . . . True Christian faith is, therefore,incapable of denial"'^ (italics mine). This style of reasoning was a matter ofgovernance, of cultivating the capacity to observe consciousness and to actdetenninatively on that knowledge.^'' Faith, and the reason that "belongs toit," were potentially in each of us, waiting to be organized.

    " N o l l , America^ God, 9. 443." ibid . , 94.' ' 'On the Common Sense dimensions of American theology, in general, see Sydney E. Alilslrom."The Scottish Philosophy and American Theology," Church History 24:3 {September 1955): 261-^^Georgc Moore, Man and His Motives (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1848), 211. See,

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    82 6 CHURC H HISTORYSubsequently, tbe promise of Common Sense reasoning was also, bydefinition, a public matter. The sense of a latent political order within

    Common Sense resonated with the ideals of republicanism, a mode of politywhose "ideological flexibility" enabled evangelicalsas well as a greatnumber of Americans regardless of religious persuasionto fold "public lifeinto the drama of redemption." In its broad appeal, the republican will tovirtue came to signify not oniy "disinterested service to the common good"and the prerequisite for public morality, but also "a life guided by God's willand cultivated in personal and domestic devotion." In becoming a "publicspirit," virtue would precipitate both political security and private morality,citizenship and salvation. According to Noll, "the ebb and now of meanings"between "the spheres of secular and religious discourse" was a fundamentalsource of American modernity. "Coruscating evangelieat energy"incatalyzing particular approaches to interiority. objectivity, moral agency,soeial ethics, and the marketwas instrumental in the formation of anantebellum public sphere.'''Noll's version of this publie sphere was a space that Americans entered intovoluntarily, a space in which evangelicalism "com municated above all a systemof inner motivation" and "promot[ed] resentment against traditional,

    aristocratic political authority."^** Within this space, Americans couldexercise their rational autonomy, deliberate, and decide what was true, good,and beautiful in a fashion approaching the democratic ideal.^'' Noll, for hispart, is writing against the "social control" thesis as an explanation for howevangelicals beeame so dominant at mid-centuryin religion, in polities, ingeneral cultural significance.**" According to Noll, viewing the evangelicalsurge at mid-century in terms of evangelicals' desire to regulate themselvesand the world around them does not do justice to the complexity of thatdesire or to its effects.*^' Building on scholarship that grants "religious

    Noll, Americas God. 91, 90, .56, 439, 175, Addressing Habermas's discttssion of [he"bourgeois public sphere," Noll writes that this model "fit.s the American situation well" but notperfectly given the overarching emphasis on the rights of the individual (188-189),^''ibid,, 188,"This assumption Is shared by a greal number of evangelical historians, including Nathan O.Hatch In The Dem ocratization of Christianity (New Haven, Conn,: Yale University Press, 1989).See also Sidney E. Mead, "From Coercion to Persuasion: Another Look at the Rise of ReligiousLiberty and the Emergence of Denominationallsm," Church H istoiy 24:4 (Dec. 1956): 317-337."''Noll is responding, in part, to Paul E. ,lohnson's A Shopkeepers Millennium: Society andRe\'ivals in Rochester, New York. I8I5-1S37 {Nw York: Hill & Wang. 1978).Noll rejects any suggestion that mid-century evangelicalism w as a form o f false conscio usness ,

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    THE MEASURE OF LEVIATHAN 827actors" the proper degree of "self-awareness" and "agency," Noll's version ofevangelical dominance is a story of "intuitively persuasive reaso n" taking hold,autonomy being cultivated, and political liberties expanding."^Although Noll's rejection of the "social control" thesis is not unwarranted,his is a mere reversal, foreclosing the very possibility of disciplinary powerin the making of American life.'^^ Ironically, Noll ends up affirming the sameconclusion of those he rejects^namely, that the evangelical will to powerwas successful on its own tenns. Noll accepts, at face value, the stories mid-century evangelicals told themselves in order to be themselves, defininghuman agency according to formal properties of belief and degrees ofIntcriority.**'' Noll's story of individuals achieving both epistemic andpolitical leverage is one that originates and plays out on the level ofconscious choice, conscious action, indeed, on the level of consciousnessalone. The play of ideas happens independently from the bodies and contextsthese ideas inhabit, that is. from the conditions that mediate those ideas.**^Noll's argument, then, is a reception history of evangelical ideals with nocritical discussion of reception: a chronicle of the desire for epistemologicaland political immediacy with no sustained attention to how this desire wasmediated; and finally, a rendition of the antebellum public sphere that leavesunquestioned the historical conditions of its possibility.^'' To be fair, this isnot part of NolTs agenda. But in leaving out those issues that would,perhaps, call into question tbe boundary between the religious and thesecular that underlies his argument about the migration of meanings. Nollmitigates against an exploration of the circumstances that have enabled thestory he is telling to become so persuasive.

    Tracy Fessenden has recently explored what she calls "the Protestant-secularcontinuum," the invisible consensus of American Protestantism that has'*^lio\l America s God. 189.""'AS Paul S, Boyer noted, weil before the publication of Noll's magisterial history, "thedifficulty" with the social conlml thesis is "not that it is wrong but that it obscures importantnuances and necessary qualifications": Urban Masses and Moral Order in America. 820-1920(Cam bridge, M ass.: iJarvard University Press, 1978). 58.'**'"ln the religious life il is by faith we begin, by laith we go on; by faith we stand, by iiuth wegrow: hy fiiith we run, by faith we fight; by faith we endure, by faith we live; by failh we die, byfaith we enter into glory; and without genuine faith we are not, we cannot be Christians": "ThePower of Fa ith ," iVftv-K-Ai'H,W/.v/ 18 (23 Sep tember 1X47): 150,"^"We are conscious of sensation, thought, and volition." wrote Dugatd Stewart, "operationswhich imply Ihe e.xistence of something which fccs. thinks, and wills, Hvery man too is

    impressed with an irresistible conviction ihat all these sensations, thoughts, and volitions, belongto one and the same being; to that being which he calls himself, a heing. which he is led. by the

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    82 8 CHURC H HISTORYenabled histories like Noll's to be written, and more ominously, to beaccurate. Not only do such histories assume a seeularized understanding ofpiety as the meaning-making actions of a lone individual, but they also alignthis piety with definitive versions of human nature and potential. As we sballsoon see in the historical narrative of Robert Baird, representations ofevangelicalism as integral to a democratic soeial space have long served tomediate, seamlessly and all but invisibly, attempts to measure the historicalimportance of evangelicalism. As Michael Wamer has suggested in adifferent context, the appealing ideal of the public sphere as an unmediatedand deregulated space is not of recent vintage but rather found traction in theearly republic and gained momentum throughout the nineteenth century.***^This concept of the public sphere, in addition to being an enabling fiction,leaves little, if any, room to acknowledge the regulatory dimensions of

    No ll's failure to account for issues of mediationthat is, how evangelicalismtook hold at the level of intuitive reason is odd given that the media practicesof evangelieals played such a massive role in promoting the synthesis of theisticCommon Sense and Christian republicanism. For according to evangelicals attbe time, it was in and through media that these styles of reasoning and politicalimagination would be made real. ATS, for example, became a primary vehiclefor disseminating the tenets of Scottish Com mon Sense to the American pu blic.Leading purveyors of Common Sense sucb as Archibald Alexander {whohelped establish Princeton Theological Seminary, a major hub of CommonSense throughout tbe nineteenth century) lent their support to ATS, theireditorial oversight, and even tbeir hand-picked contributions to thepublishing docket.^" Robert Baird, a formidable agent of evangeliealpublicity at mid-century, claimed that the triumph of evangelicalism as

    Fessenden, Cultuiv and Redemption, 9. 'The secularization of American Protestantism,"argues Fessenden, was '"inseparable from its expansion" (59). This "effect of Protestantconsensus" is still very much a reality "for American religious historiography" ( 17)a matter oflooking at religion as a way of orienting oneself to the world, of making meaning, ofovercoming or. at the very least, living within human limilations rather than thinking about theways in which the world orients humans, makes them meaningful lo themselves and others, anddefines for them what is possible, and whal is not. The triumph of "good religion" as both thedefault position of social practice and the default object of academic inquiry is bound up,Fessenden argues, with its compatibility with the liberal state and ils rhetorical accoutrements:democracy, capitalism, autonomy, empiricism (4).""^Michael Wamer, Publics and Counterpuhlics (New York; Zone. 2002), 67-74. See also TheLetters of the Republic: Publication and Ihe Public Sphere in Eighteenth-Century America(Cambridge. Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1990).

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    THE MEASURE OF LEVIATHAN 82 9a republiean power was premised on the "liberty of the Press" and "thesystematic periodical distribution of tracts." Because it was being "driven bysteam," the "great power" of the press to "circulate" would make God'sWord a tangib le entity. It wou ld be made rea l, verifiable, effectiveamiracle Baird himself had witnessed as an agent for the American BibleSociety and American Sunday-School Union.'"

    In drawing attention to the evangelical penchant for the systematicorganization of mass media, mine is not a subtle reclamation of the socialcontrol thesis. The "industrialization of evangelicalism in America" "resulted in the control of neither society nor self. On the contrary, the mediapractices of evangelicals generated sensual criteria for evaluating the true,the good, and the beautiful for others, to be sure, but, more importantly, forthemselves. America's God, from this perspective, was not simply atheological producta mere representation of the divine passed betweenelites but also a politieal effect of secularism . For in addition to infusingpolitics and reason with a divine imprimatur, America's God also served toauthorize eertain nonns about the human in relation to "true religion,"regardless of whether that human had chosen to be redeemed. Noll, to hiscredit, is ambivalent about the incorporation of piety by the directives ofmodem science and the evangelical preoccupation with issues better leftto those pursuing political security rather than eternal salvation. I, too. amtroubled by the process in which "the notion of government" became the"controlling paradigm to explain what was good or evil about thefunctioning of the universe.""' I am more troubled, however, by the viraleffects of that paradigm and the way in which "the spheres of secular andreligious diseourse" were actively constructed by evangelicals, how theconditions of ebbing and flowing became a primary focus of evangeliealpractice, and, finally, how the concepts of "true religion" and "secularprogress" were aligned in such a way as to become practically equivalent.The remainder of this essay explores the "evangelical surge" in terms of itscapillary effects on the lives of the populace. It charts a process by which themetaphysics of evangelical secularism assumed a degree of physicality. Thisprocess was bound up with the way in whieh evangelicals wielded newtechnologies and oriented themselves vis--vis technology, that is, the"systematic treatment" of the human, by the human, and for the human. Thecorporealization of evangelical secularism may be glimpsed in the historicaltreatments of evangelicalism (both now and then); in the way evangelicals

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    830 CHURCH HISTORYdelimited the concept of "true religion" and legitimated tbe "business ofmission"; through the technological pathways in whieh the message ofevangelicalism arrived and circulated among strangers; and fmally, in theway evangelicals sought to regulate the aesthetics of literary reeeption byframing reading as a biological practice. By taking seriously the mechanicsof coruscation and the logic of intuitive persuasion, one may begin toappreciate the strange contours of secularism and its reverberations ineveryday life. Consequently, mine is an attempt to reassess the role mediarepresentations and practices played in the making of an evangelical publicsphere. These representations and practices, I argue, were an instantiation ofsecularism to tbe extent that they naturalized hierarchical patterns implicit inthe equation of saved souls and "best subjects" of civil society.^''

    V. A CONVER SION NARRATIVE OF EVANGELICAL SECULARISM1 began this essay with reference to Noll's magisterial treatment ofevangelicalism not simply to point out its limitations but to evoke apersistent desire among Protestants to represent themselves vis--vis theAmerican population. 'TAf Christian History of Society has never yet beenwritten" wrote reformer Thomas Grimke in 1833. "When the pen of somefuture Luke shall record its eventful scenes, that Christian History will befounded, not so much on the annals of Churches, as on those of socialinstitutions, whose spirit is regenerating the nations, whose influence ispervading., with life-instilling energy, all the classes, and the very depths andrecesses of society."^^ Protestant reformers like Grimke were becomingextremely self-conscious about their own history and the way in whieh thisparticular history related to the evolution of American society in general. Forin addition to becoming rather adept in the technological aspeets ofrepresentation, Protestant leaders aspired to make their story public, to getthe word out In an increasingly saturated media environment, and to makethose words part of the story they were telling. For Grimke, the "energy" ofChristianity, its power and para-institutional scope, the way it flowed in andthrough an entire population, had become an issue in need of historiealexplanation. , . . . . .

    ' ' '"The Science of Sciences," opined the New-York Evan gelist, "as far as it prevails, [] producespeace and happiness .. . When the knowledge ofthe Lord shall fill ihe earth, peace and plenty willsucceed to poverty and disorder. If statesmen were not blind, they might see that the disciples o fth e

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    THE MEASURE OF LEVIATHAN 831One of the first and most comprehensive histories to proffer sueh anexplanation was Robert Baird's Religion in the United Slates of America

    (1843). Baird graduated from Princeton Theological Seminary in 1822 andremained active in loeal affairs as both a tutor and occasional minister. WhenPrinceton's first printing press went into operation in 1824, a "blaze ofphilanthropic zeal [broke] out" and a number of organizations were formed."The Bible cause, the Colonization scheme, the Sunday Schools, the causeof popular educationthe Tract causethe Missionary cause, were allespoused by organization and received the aid of the new press." Assuperintendent of the Nassau Bible Society, Baird helped coordinate thestatewide effort of Bible distribution by inserting circulars into "almost everynewspaper in the commonwealth." He also advised loeal agents in collectinginformation on "several important topics not immediately connected withtheir Biblical operations"age., literacy rates, educational status, anddisabilities. As a member of the Philadelphia Soeiety. a Presbyteriancooperative. Baird continued his domestic missionary outreach and helpedsurvey "the whole territory of the State" in order to "ascertain the destitutionof the schools." Baird "was one of the most efficient agents employed in thisenterprise" whose work led to the allocation of state funds to support publicschools.^*' Soon after, Baird became an agent for the American iiibleSociety, traveling around New Jersey and distributing Bibles to the destitute.He performed similar work for the American Sunday-School Union andbecame involved in the transatlantic Evangelical Alliance, A.s secretary ofihat organization, Baird pertbrmed missions in southeni Europe and wrotenumerous works to promote its cause and to position evangelicalism as aglobal phenomenon.

    Baird composed Religion in the United States while living in Geneva. Firstpubiished in Glasgow, Baird's work was directed at both European andAmerican audiences. It was representative of the evangelical desire toorganize religious identity as something that could be narrated, historicallyand progressively. Baird's explanation of evangelical power, in other words.,possessed an air of inevitability. According to Baird, evangelical piety was

    ""'John Fretinghuysen Hageman, History of Princeton and its instituUons. vol, 1 (Philadelphia:J. B. Lippincott. 187S), 238-239; Henry M. Baird, The Life of the Rev. Robert Baird. D.IX(New York: Anson D, F, Randolph. I8fi6), 44-45.' For other historically minded , taxonornic. yet less comprehens ive accoun ts of evange licalismas "agreeable to the doctrines of Christianity," see Charles Buck, A Theological Dictionary:Containing Definitions of all Religious Terms (Philadelphia: W, W, Woodward. 1825), 170;

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    83 2 CHURCH HISTORYtaking hold among the populace not simply because it provided the most directaccess to divinity but also because it complemented the pursuits of liberty,virtue, and knowledge, ln framing the progress of evangelicalism as both anepistemological and political matter, Baird's history defined religion as anessentially interior phenomenon that was essentially related to the evolutionof civil society. In its detailed account of what evangelicals viewed as theinspired movement from "religionism" to "true religion," secularismemerged as the effective subtext of Religion in the Utvted States!^^

    Baird's treatise on the political aspects of "true re ligion" m ay be read, in part,as a response to tbe "fanciftil conjecture" of Alexis de Tocqueville. ^ Bairdrejected Tocqueville's suggestion that democracy could be compromised by"complicated rules" of "public opinion." Such rules, wrote Tocqueville, "areboth minute and uniform" and constituted a disciplinary "network" that does"not break men's will, but softens, bends, and guides it."'"** Baird tookparticular issue with Tocqueville's suggestion that religion was a "ready-made opinion," adopted by Americans "without examination" and, therefore,not subject to rigorous philosophical debate. In Baird's estimate, Tocquevilledid not appreciate the subtlety of republican governancethe way in whichit promoted the free exchange of individual opinions, thus guaranteeing thatpublic opinion would be an organic representation of the whole."" It wasobvious to Baird what was happening in America: a full-scale reformation inwhich "true religion" would finally and fully triumph precisely because thepeople, as a whole, were allowed to exercise their freedom to practice it.

    Such wide-scale fieedom was made possible by Scottish Common Sense,what Baird referred to as the "handmaid" of evangelical piety. According toBaird, Common Sense was not equivalent to piety but offered a convincingexplanation of the mechanics of piety to those who practiced it.Consequently, evangelicals proficient in the writings of "[Thomas] Reid.""Dugald Stewart," and other Scots could rest assured that their faith operatedin accordance with "the faculties and powers of the human mind, and of theprinciples which govern its operations." In this reading of Common Sense,piety was a wholly voluntary process consisting of the investigation of

    fVhich have Transpired from ihe Comm encemen t of the Christian Era to the Present Time (Boston:L. P, Crown and Co.. 1S48); Charles A. Cioodrich, The Bible History of Prayer, wiih PracticalReflection (Hartford, Conn.: Case, Tiffany, and Co., 1850).'"'Religion and Religionism." New-York Evangelist 2\ (29 August 1850): 138.

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    THE MEASUR E OF LEVIATHAN 833"facts, or the relations of phenomena, respecting the operations of mind itself,and the intercourse which it earries on with the things of the external w or ld ." '" 'Or as the Rev. Albert Barnes wrote, "Christian piety" was the "index ofintellectual advancement" and integral to the advance of "modem seience."Because piety called "forth Ihe active powers of the mind" it produced "trueindependence of thinking and investigation."'"^ As Baird and leaders likeBarnes attested, faith was, first and foremost, a matter of securing knowledgein the immediaey of the moment.

    Within Baird's sweeping narrative there existed a deep interdependencybetween "principles that guide the operations of the human mind" and "thelaws of our moral con stitution."'" Comm on Sense, in other words , was notsimply consistent with evangelical piety but was, by extension, an eftcetiveand just means of governance. Or as Thomas Reid, one of Baird'sacknowledged sources, wrote, it was not "impossible that reasonable menshould agree in things that are self-evident." It was. therefore, "desirable"that the "decisions of eommon sense ... be brought into a eode, in whieh allreasonable men should acquiesce."'"'' The uniformity of consciousness, inother words, guaranteed the potential dmystification of social relations (notto mention just leadership and civil obedience). For Baird, "sympatheticfeeli