Article Analysis Essay Hawter Religious freedom was something America struggled to completely achieve for many years. Historians have written articles that explain why it was so hard to achieve religious freedom in America in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. One of the historians was Maura Jane Farrelly, who wrote the article “American Slavery, American Freedom, American Catholicism”. In Farrelly article, she” explores the relationship between American slavery and American Catholicism”(Farrelly, 69). Another historian would be Charles H.
Lippy who wrote “Chastized by Scorpions: Christianity and Culture in Colonial South Carolina, 169-1740”. In Lippy’s article, he writes about “religious diversity and religious tolerance and how it extended to Trinitarian Christians”(Lippy, 270). Farrelly’s article was very clear and also used many primary and secondary sources, while Lippy’s article also used many sources it was not very clear and had me confused a couple of times. Which is why I would recommend Farrelly’s article instead of Lippy’s to students who are taking History-131. In Farrelly article, “American Slavery, American Freedom,
American Catholicism” she addresses how Catholics in nineteenth and twentieth centuries America were told to “protect themselves from their country’s cultural obsession with liberty”( Farrelly, 72). And how the separation was a “mutual partnership”( Farrelly, 72) between Catholics and Protestants because “Protestants did not want slavish Catholics mucking up their supposedly liberal society”( Farrelly, 72). Catholics “ghetto mentality”( Farrelly, 72) had them “send their children to catholic only schools, and take jobs which were dominated by by people with the same religion and sometimes the same ethnic heritage”( Farrelly, 72).
Farrelly also addresses that Catholics were not always like that and that “the years before the Church was taken over by immigrants from Ireland”( Farrelly, 73) Catholics “often worshipped in Protestant churches, arranging to have the itinerant priests who served them say Mass in the empty chapels when Presbyterians and Methodists were not using them”( Farrelly, 73). Farrelly also writes about how Catholics in America ” were influenced by border American notions of authority”(Farrelly, 75) and how” They were accustomed to the republican idea that ordinary people such as themselves were the source of power in civil society”(Farrelly, 75).
Farrelly also writes about how most Catholics in America “lived in communities where slavery not only was legal but was also the foundation of the economy and the framework on which all social relations were built”(Farrelly, 76). Their environment not only” made republicanism and individual freedom safe for eighteenth and early nineteenthcentury Catholics to embrace by ensuring that the bonds of hierarchy and reciprocal obligation that were so important to the Catholic understanding of human relations remained intact”(Farrelly, 77).
Farrelly, also writes about Catholic republicanism and how it “was a racialized republicanism, built on a foundation of ordered relationships that were defined and defended by the institution of race-based slavery”(Farrelly, 85) and how “Republican society for southerners and early national Catholics alike”(Farrelly, 85)” was one in which communal obligations were honored and relationships were ordered in such way as to allow for the basic human needs of all individuals to be met, while at the same time giving a growing number of men- white men- the freedom to cultivate their individual talents”(Farrelly, 85-86).
Farrelly also mentions that “The key to success in a free society was to keep the people who made up this menial class away from the decision-making process. The south enjoyed an extent of political freedom, combined with entire security, such as no other people ever enjoyed on the face of the earth, according to Hammond, because the region had found a race… eminently qualified in temper, in vigor, in docility to serve as the very mud-sill of society and of political government”(Farrelly, 95-96)
In Lippy’s article, “Chastized by Scorpions: Christianity and Culture in Colonial South Carolina, 169-1740” he writes about Whitefield and how he and “countless others overlooked the religious life of Carolina”(Lippy, 254) and that he contended “that it was not an innate religious indifference that made Whitefield’s sojourn less than ideal in his mind, but a complex religious and ethnic diversity that had brought many peoples and many faiths together in one colony-and a southern one at hat. “(Lippy, 254).
Charles also writes that ” Neither Whitefield nor most later historians have recognized the richness of religious life in early Carolina or celebrated its diversity”(Lippy, 254-255). Charles also writes about the difference between how Pennsylvania and Maryland treated non-Trinitarians and nonChristians. And how” On the surface, Carolina’s approach seems extraordinarily inclusive, more so than Maryland’s and Pennsylvania’s”(Lippy, 258).
Charles then writes about how “Throughout the eighteenth century, Scots and Scots-Irish immigration to Carolina mushroomed, as it did throughout the English colonies. Scores made their way southward from Pennsylvania through Maryland and Virginia into Carolina. In time, the Scots-Irish presence buttressed the increases acceptance of an evangelical style of Christianity that in turn pushed toleration in yet other directions”(Lippy, 260-261).
Charles then writes about how in “Less than half century after the proprietors opened Carolina for settlement, those forced to migrate from Africa as slaves made up a majority of the population”(Lippy, 262). And ” Although the Fundamental Constitutions had granted slave owners the right to control the religious activity of those they held in bondage, that in Carolina there was a far greater likelihood that those in bondage would have ongoing association with others from their own native tribes or at least kindred tribes”(Lippy, 262-263).
In conclusion, I find Maura Jane Farrelly’s article “American Slavery, American Freedom, American Catholicism” more effective than Charles H. Lippy article “Chastized by Scorpions: Christianity and Culture in Colonial South Carolina, 169-1740″, because it showed me the relationship between “American slavery and American Catholicism”(Farrelly, 69) in a very clear way. And while Lippy’s article did show how “religious diversity and religious tolerance extended to Trinitarian Christians”(Lippy, 270), the article could have used less biased sources.
