These debates might sound like theological hair-splitting, but in fact they had a profound effect on how people imagined everyday life, including the economy. Because Anglicans, Quakers, and a few radical Congregationalists saw humans as free agents, they do not seem to have been troubled by the implicit approval of individual free choice that supported the emerging capitalist order. Their religious and economic values subtly reinforced each other: in church they learned that they could choose to be saved, and in the marketplace they learned that they could choose how to fashion their personal identities. Samuel Johnson, an American Anglican, described humans as “intelligent free Agents” who were motivated by “the Pursuit of true Happiness.” Guided by “that great Law of our Nature (which may be called the Law of Self-Love or Self-Esteem . . .),” we are “laid under a Necessity of valuing ourselves and our own Interest, and of seeking and preserving our own Preservation and Well-being or Happiness, and whatever we find tends to it or is connected with it.” To be sure, Anglicans remained committed to a Christian ethic of charity, and they often preached against the excesses of wealth. Johnson denied that individuals could be happy unless they were serving the public good: “Self and social Good must not be considered as at all interfering, but as being entirely coincident, and subservient to each other.” Nevertheless, Protestants who preached a gospel of free will and self-interest seem to have unintentionally contributed to the triumph of a capitalist ethic. By 1776, when Adam Smith published The Wealth of Nations, many people in the Anglo-American world had already accepted his bold defense of self-interest as a positive good. “It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker, that we expect our dinner,” Smith wrote, “but from their regard to their own interest.”54
In contrast, evangelicals were deeply troubled by self-interest. Because of their conviction that humans were innately and profoundly sinful, they scorned the argument that “self love” (little better than “atheism,” in Gilbert Tennent’s view) could promote the public good. In a sermon on the “Sin of Extortion,” Jonathan Edwards warned merchants not to raise their prices simply for the sake of personal profit. They had to be guided by a commitment to the common good: “Whenever men in their dealings seek their own private Gains in such a manner and measure as apparently tends to the injury of the public society, then [their] Gains are unreasonable Gains.” Sarah Osborn’s church, like many others, vowed to punish members who were guilty of “Oppression, Extortion, Engrossing Commodities to enhance the Price, and manifest acts of Covetousness,” but the congregation could not control what happened outside church walls. Repulsed by the brutishness of economic life, Edwards even toyed with the idea that the government should regulate prices—this despite his fear that magistrates would not be any less rapacious than individual merchants.55 (New England Puritans had regulated both prices and wages in the 1630s, but they eventually abandoned their experiment because of their inability to control economic ambitions.)
Merchants displayed their goods at the Brick Market, which was completed in 1762. Courtesy of the Newport Historical Society.
Samuel Davies, an evangelical in Virginia, argued that merchants were the worst “Enemies” of Calvinism, and though he exaggerated, he had a point. Prosperous men who built their fortunes through hard work and self-discipline found it hard to accept the notion that they were powerless to sway God’s will. But it would be a mistake to argue that economic considerations determined people’s religious decisions, as if religion served as nothing more than a screen for class interests. There were many evangelicals like David Moore, a member of Sarah’s church (she had tended his shop before her second marriage), who worried about mistaking their economic success for God’s favor. “O pray for me that I may not Deceive myself with false hope,” Moore wrote to the Reverend Eleazar Wheelock. “I am Rich and Increased in Goods and have Need of Nothing, and at the same time I may be wretched and Miserable and poor and blind and naked.” Religious sensibilities were shaped not only by rank but by intangible factors of psychology and temperament. Yet it is clear that many wealthy Christians in the eighteenth century had begun to chafe under the yoke of Calvinism, and they chose to worship in churches that affirmed human goodness and agency. In Newport there were unmistakable class distinctions between those who worshipped at Trinity Church, an Anglican congregation, and those who attended the First and Second Churches of Christ. Among the people who paid the highest taxes in Newport in 1760, 45 percent were Anglicans, 20 percent were Quakers, and 15 percent were Congregationalists. (From a different angle, 53 percent of the people who paid the lowest taxes were Congregationalists, 18 percent were Quakers, and 1 percent were Anglicans).56
Evangelical ministers never explicitly rejected the concept of choice, and they tried to turn commercial language to their own ends by intensifying their calls to come to Christ. “Is Jehovah infinite in his Being and Attributes?” Gilbert Tennent asked. “Then how worthy is he of our highest Love, entirest Confidence, and freest Choice?” Yet evangelicals’ understanding of choice (like their understanding of freedom) bore little resemblance to the assumption of individual agency that held sway in the marketplace. Sarah Osborn promised God to “choose thee alone for my dear and only Portion,” but she thought that she could “choose” only what God had already willed for her. “God knows what is best for us,” Tennent explained. “If we were left to our own Choice, we should certainly ruin ourselves.” His words may have sounded counterintuitive to people who prided themselves on the tasteful, refined choices they made in the market, but that was precisely the problem: How could ministers convince their congregations that they lacked the power to control their ultimate economic or religious destinies? Concerned that a commercial sensibility had begun to erode older teachings about human sinfulness and helplessness, Jonathan Edwards warned that Christians could not “buy” salvation in the same way that they could buy things in the market: “True Wisdom is a precious Jewel: And none of our fellow Creatures can give it to us, nor can we buy it with any Price we have to give.”57
Ironically, however, evangelicals were pioneers in using commercial techniques to spread the gospel. Like merchants who advertised their goods in local newspapers, they publicized their meetings in order to attract as many people as possible. George Whitefield arranged for the serial publication of his writings, enabling readers to buy sections of his books each week for a small price, and he offered booksellers a discount for buying in bulk. His output was prodigious: he published the first volume of his Journal in 1738, three more volumes in 1739, the first part of his autobiography in 1740, and the continuation of his autobiography in 1747. By the time he was in his mid-twenties, he had published an astonishing six hundred pages of life writing.58 Like other evangelical ministers, Whitefield often sounded like a prophet denouncing luxury and corruption, but he was also an entrepreneur who knew how to “sell” religion.
Although evangelicals were profoundly ambivalent about mercantile capitalism, it would be a mistake to argue that they were opposed to a market economy. When historians have argued over how to define capitalism, some have used the terms “market exchange” and “capitalism” as if they are interchangeable, but in fact few people in early America opposed markets, which they saw as good.59 Sarah clearly enjoyed the rare times when she could afford to purchase goods from Newport’s merchants, especially books, and she sometimes used economic imagery to describe God’s majesty. In a letter to Joseph Fish, for example, she prayed that God would comfort him “with the abundant incomes of his Blessed spirit.” She and other evangelicals saw nothing wrong with either making money or buying things in the marketplace as long as they did not idolize wealth.60
Evangelicals did object, however, to the model of selfhood that formed the bedrock of the emerging capitalist order. Capitalism depended on a commitment to the values of acquisitive individualism, benevolent self-interest, and free choice, and it was these values, not the opportunity to buy and sell commodities, that disturbed
people like Sarah Osborn. The challenge for her and other evangelicals was how to welcome the opportunities offered by the market without also accepting the capitalist values that threatened their faith.61
Contentment with My Own Condition
At the end of 1758, with the war still raging, Sarah and Henry had a mounting pile of debts, no house of their own, and few of the consumer luxuries that Newport’s merchants proudly displayed in their homes. Yet if Sarah was ashamed of her poverty she never admitted it in her diary or letters. Because of her belief that God was guiding her life, she was convinced that she had no choice whether to be rich or poor. Although it was sometimes hard to accept, she was free only to become the person whom God wanted her to be. “Do not let me murmur against thee, and grieve thee,” she beseeched him. “Thou requirest full contentment with my own condition.”62
This was exactly the kind of attitude that Enlightenment thinkers wanted to combat. Complaining that Calvinist theology encouraged passivity and hopelessness, they argued that the poor should not be “content” with their situation. God was not a tyrant who predestined some to wealth and others to poverty but a benevolent father who wanted his children to reap the rewards of their labors. Writing as “Poor Richard,” Benjamin Franklin insisted that “God helps them that help themselves.” If poor people worked hard, saved their money, and practiced the virtues of honesty, temperance, and moderation, they could improve their lives.63
Like Franklin, many Anglicans, Quakers, and liberal-leaning Congregationalists were impatient with the attitude that poverty was inevitable, an unavoidable fact of life that should be accepted as God’s will. Because of their faith in human agency and progress, they assumed that poverty could be overcome. In Boston a group of Congregationalists created the Society for Encouraging Industry and Employing the Poor, setting up a linen factory that was designed to help the indigent support themselves, and in Philadelphia, Quakers founded the Pennsylvania Hospital for the Sick Poor. Instead of repeating the dictum that “the poor you shall always have with you,” the founders of these institutions tried to help poor people change their lives through discipline and hard manual labor.64
For some it worked: the “American dream” of upward mobility has its roots in eighteenth-century liberal understandings of freedom and progress. Yet there was also a dark side to the effort to uplift the poor. Reformers inflicted harsh punishments to make the poor conform to a middle-class work ethic; in some cases, as in Philadelphia’s Bettering House, they even incarcerated the indigent. Some reformers also forced parents to indenture their children, breaking up families in the name of “rehabilitation.” Not surprisingly, many poor people ran away from the institutions that were supposedly designed to help them.65
Ironically, many of the ministers who seemed most interested in aiding the poor ended up stigmatizing them as lazy, improvident, and sinful. By insisting that people had the power to change their lives, they implied that the chronically poor could be blamed for their own suffering. As early as 1719, the Reverend Benjamin Wadsworth published a sermon explaining that poverty was almost always the result of “vicious courses”—sloth, intemperance, “filthy unclean practices.” (Wadsworth was one of the “catholick” Congregationalists who embraced the early Enlightenment.) In his closing pages, he assured his readers that if they lived as good Christians, they could shape their own fates. He remained too much of a Calvinist to claim that people could completely determine their destinies, but his words pointed in that direction: “We should be true to our word and promise, Just, upright and honest in all our dealings; readily and seasonably pay everyone his due; do our part honestly to support both church and state, to maintain God’s worship, to relieve the poor and needy; and we should pray to God for his blessing on us. If we take this course, we need not fright ourselves with the fear of distressing poverty.”66 This may have been good advice for an able-bodied man in an economy that offered stable employment, but Wadsworth ignored the structural factors that kept some people poor, such as the unequal wages that made it hard for women to support their families. Even though Sarah Osborn could have been the model for his ideal Christian, she had good reason to be afraid of “distressing poverty.”
Evangelicals could also sound harsh when discussing the poor, but because of their belief that God controlled everything, including economic status, they removed some of the stigma of poverty. The dispute, once again, was about choice. Although they assumed that those who were obviously immoral—the lazy, drunken, or debauched—were poor as a result of God’s wrath, evangelicals also insisted that God sometimes afflicted people with poverty for his own mysterious reasons: to make them more compassionate or to teach them greater trust. Because of their circumscribed understanding of freedom and choice, evangelicals assumed that poverty could be the result of God’s will instead of individual failings.67
To be clear, neither view of poverty was the “right” one (and it is hard to imagine what such an ideal would look like). While Enlightenment thinkers and Protestant liberals may have made the poor feel ashamed, evangelicals may have made them feel hopeless. Even though evangelical ministers insisted that hard work was a religious obligation, their theology could be twisted into a justification of passivity.
For Sarah Osborn, though, and for many others like her, the evangelical movement offered an appealing balance of resignation and exertion. Sarah had no doubt that God wanted her to be diligent, and she believed that if she worked hard, he might bless her labors with prosperity—or at least with a comfortable living. But she also assumed that an all-powerful God sometimes ordained poverty for his own reasons. As Susanna Anthony explained, the poor as well as the rich could serve God’s purposes. “Blessed be God, the cause of Truth and the advancement of the redeemer’s Kingdom don’t absolutely depend on worldly prosperity,” she wrote. “Had it done so, it had died with Him . . . who had nowhere to lay his head.”68
Sarah believed that her benefactors learned something about Christian love whenever they gave her money, food, or firewood. Although her poverty was not good in itself, it enabled others to practice the virtues of compassion and generosity. Her suffering was a reminder of Christ’s suffering on the cross—an invitation to “do unto others” as they would have done for him.
Historians have argued that as attitudes toward the poor became increasingly hostile in the mid-eighteenth century, poor people tried to resist their degradation by refusing to indenture their children, flouting codes of discipline in workhouses, and moving from place to place.69 What they have rarely noticed, however, is that religion also helped the poor preserve their sense of dignity. Sarah knew that some people looked down on her, but when she remembered that Jesus had been born in a stable she held her head high. As long as she worked hard at her calling, she believed that there was no disgrace in being poor.
Chapter 8
Love Thy Neighbor, 1759–1763
O Let us build upon the dear the sure foundation Christ Jesus all the Good works we can O Let this be ever as oile to our wheels to make them run swift inasmuch as ye did it unto them ye did it unto me O may God reward Every kind benefactor He has rais’d to me in Every time of distress o may they never Loose their reward tho they did it to the Least of thine Let them Hear thee say dear Lord to them Precious souls Even Here in as much as ye did it ye did it unto me o reward them a thousand fold into their own bosoms and may Gratitude Ever Glow in my breasts to God and them and as I Have freely receiv’d in times of my distress so Let me freely Give as God Enables and occasion offers Lord Ever open my Hand and Heart to the sick poor and needy and make me a blessing in my day o make me extensively useful in my family in my school in the dear Dear society to all arround me Oh Let the Lord God almighty delight to own me to use me to set me apart for Himself in secret in Private and in Every way my Proper station admits.1
Sarah wrote these words in the midst of the Seven Years’ War, a time of devastation in Newport. The war was in its fifth grueling year, and every day br
ought terrible news of battles lost, soldiers wounded, and loved ones killed. As food supplies dwindled and prices rose, many families were left destitute. The almshouse was filled with widows and orphans who lacked food, clothing, and a safe place to sleep.
Sarah spent many sleepless nights worrying about whether she and Henry would fall into bankruptcy again, but even though she could barely pay their rent, she was determined to help the hundreds of other impoverished and distressed people in Newport whose lives had been disrupted by the war. Praying to God in the pages of her diary, she promised to open her hand and heart to the “sick, poor, and needy”—a description that easily could have been written about Sarah herself. She, too, was chronically ill and had little money to spare, but inspired by Jesus’s injunction to “love thy neighbor as thyself,” she resolved to emulate characters in three biblical stories who sacrificed their own needs for the good of others: the Good Samaritan who tenderly bathed a stranger’s wounds, the poor widow who gave away her last two mites to the public treasury, and the “righteous” in the Parable of the Sheep and the Goats who treated the hungry, naked, sick, and imprisoned as if they were Jesus himself. Inspired by the words of Jesus to his disciples, she transcribed them in her diary: “Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me.” If she could not afford to give money to the poor, she could visit the sick, comfort the dying, and share the gospel with others, and if she felt too weak to leave her house she could still pray. “Make me a blessing in my day,” she implored God.2
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