The papers in this panel examine the relationship between religion and national formation in the nineteenth century. One paper shows how early nineteenth-century theological affirmations (or negations) of hell correlate with ideas of U.S. republican governance, specifically regarding concepts of legal punishment and the need for imprisonment. Another paper examines the transatlantic correspondence between ex-Jesuits John Carroll, the first American Roman Catholic bishop, and Charles Plowden, Stonyhurst rector and English Provincial, with a focus on the question of intra-Catholic toleration.
This paper shows how early nineteenth-century theological affirmations of hell sutured ideals of U.S. republican democratic governance to ideas about prisons and punishment. Influential New Divinity theologians rhetorically integrated hell and prisons into their idealizations of the United States as a Christian democratic nation. Responding to Universalist arguments against the idea of hell, traditional proponents of hell argued for the necessity of hell in God’s moral governance; to do so, they made analogies to imprisonment in human moral governance. The paper analyzes sermons by Lyman Beecher and Moses Stuart that present prisons and hell as fundamental to human and divine governance. Both prisons and hell are said to keep rebels and unwanted passions in check and produce public and cosmic safety. Fear of wickedness and criminality is rhetorically assuaged by images of sublime safety. In response, Universalists imagined other ways of creating public goods and dealing with social harm.
This paper examines the transatlantic correspondence between ex-Jesuits John Carroll, first American Catholic bishop, and Charles Plowden, Stonyhurst rector and English Provincial, from Thomas Jodziewicz’s recent critical edition. After the Suppression of the Society of Jesus and American Independence, they articulate a realist theology of intra-Catholic toleration: Rome, via the Congregation for the Propagation of the Faith, must tolerate “institutional Jesuit Catholicism” (ex-Jesuit properties, missions, schools, and clergy) in the nascent United States to avert spiritual ruin. They framed the Suppression, under Pope Clement XIV (Ganganelli) and perpetuated by perceived CPF corruption, as intra-Catholic intolerance threatening apostasy and decline. Carroll emerges as a nationalist clergy mobilizer, embracing republican pluralism to envision Catholicism as contributing to the new nation’s religious fabric. This minority-Catholic perspective illuminates religious freedom, institutional integrity, and future-oriented visions at the Revolutionary founding, aligning with the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence and the presidential theme “FUTURE/S.”