Might a person’s theology, whether a Calvinist understanding of evangelical faith or an Arminian one, affect how that person experiences conversion?  Might our varying concepts of God condition not just our thinking and our interpretation of Scripture, but our experience of God as well?  At this moment in evangelicalism we have tremendous forces of homoginization at work--how many of us learned how to do evangelism with the 4 Spiritual Laws, or through training given to counselors at Billy Graham crusades?--so different strands of evangelical thinking are submerged or denied.  Perhaps it is helpful to let the voices of our evangelical brothers and sisters of a different era help us understand the relationship of theology and Christian experience.

Let’s step back to the early nineteenth century (when this area was still referred to as the western frontier) and listen in on some conversations.  One often-noted feature of religious life in the early nineteenth century was the proliferation of religious papers and magazines.  Whereas the almanac had been the most popular form of periodical literature in colonial times, the opening decades of the nineteenth century saw the development of the first enduring popular religious periodicals.^[1]  These ranged from official denominational publications to those affiliated with no church body but circulated for the purpose of promoting a Christian cause, e.g., anti-slavery, foreign missions, etc.  As new religious groups emerged, as various Christian bodies moved westward, and as groups of immigrants settled in the U.S. they launched publications to define themselves vis-a-vis the larger evangelical subculture, to advance their particular brand of the faith or their cause, and to foster a following among people who were separated geographically but who identified with the publication’s outlook.  Ironically, they also contributed to the increasing privatization of religious experience, since articles could be read and reflected upon in the isolation of the home.^[2] 

These evangelical periodicals functioned not simply as purveyors of religious information or encouragement but also as a source for general news, called “intelligence,” and often advice.  Thus the pieces in an issue of a larger paper might range from a theological essay on the grace of God, a poem about the loss of a child, a report of an earthquake and of someone’s death occasioned by an overturned wagon, a depiction of missionary’s labors in some exotic place in the world, an account of denominational decisions or meetings (if it was a denominational paper), a story about social reform efforts (or the need for them), and, in a Ladies Department, instructions for making soap.  Many evangelical publications also included conversion narratives in every issue, for the explicit purpose of convincing readers of the necessity of the experience and to encourage those whose faith was flagging.  It is these conversion narratives that form the core of the data for this study.

Through looking at religious periodicals in the early nineteenth century we can investigate the following questions:

     1.    Was theology a significant aspect of evangelical popular religion in the Early Republic?

     2.        If so, did differing theological orientations affect the experience of or         the articulation of personal conversion?  In other words, was the content of         faith crucial in the experience of conversion?

     3.    Did women and men within similar faith communities express this religious transformation in similar ways, or did women’s ways of experiencing God and men’s ways of experiencing God transcend theological boundaries?

1. The answer to the first question can be found in the editorials and theological articles in virtually every religious publication.  Some scholars have asserted that theological concerns had waned in American conversionist Protestantism by the time of the Early Republic, or that Calvinism had been so Arminianized that theological tension had virtually ceased to exist.^[3] 

Let me take a moment to explain how I am using the terms Calvinist and Arminian.  This study follows the designations that the converts used for their style of belief, whether Calvinist or Arminian, since those were the terms that converts and editors of the periodicals used for themselves.  “Calvinist” was used by those who understood themselves to stand in the tradition of Jonathan Edwards or John Calvin, or both.  These nineteenth-century believers generally affirmed the sovereignty of God’s election in choosing who would be saved and the doctrine of limited atonement, i.e., the idea that Christ’s work on the cross was only for the elect not for the entire human race.  The term “Arminian” was claimed by those who espoused a theology similar to that of John Wesley (and by those who simply objected to Edwards’ or Calvin’s views); these people affirmed the universal welcome of God (rather than limited atonement), the necessity of human agency in the salvation process and the possibility that a person could turn away from God even after a conversion experience.  Even if the groups did not precisely mirror the theologies of Calvin or Edwards, Wesley or Arminius, they represent popular understandings of these theologians’ beliefs.^[4]

What do the periodicals themselves demonstrate about the significance of theological categories for conversionist Protestantism in the early nineteenth century?  They show are high degree of theological awareness and even competition.

For instance, The New-York Evangelist was a weekly Presbyterian publication which, quite naturally held some form of Calvinist views.  For example, they printed an excerpt of Whitefield entitled “The Doctrine of Saints’ Preservation.”^[5]  This is also the publication that carried an article titled “Doctrines of Submission”^[6] in which the Calvinist doctrines of election and reprobation--that God decides who will be saved and who will be damned--are contrasted with the Methodist ideas about salvation.  A certain Methodist writer is quoted calling the idea the “prince of abominations,” that “we must be willing to be damned in order to be saved” (italics theirs), and it is concluded that “the Methodist correspondent is opposed to the justice of God.”^[7]  Another Calvinist example: The Massachusetts Missionary Magazine was a Congregationalist publication launched in 1803 by the Massachusetts Missionary Society for Propagating the Gospel.  The magazine’s theological orientation is demonstrated in an article in the very first issue, “On Divine Sovereignty,” in which a pastor ostensibly answers a parishioner’s request to explain the doctrine in plain terms.  The gist of the piece is that God must reign completely or not at all, and that since he is wise and good, whatever he does is good including deciding whom to save, or more to the point, whom not to save.  Would not every saint want the world to be ordered by God who is infinite goodness and mercy?  Furthermore, “To object against the doctrine of divine determination is to object against the sovereign authority of Jehovah; and to object against all authority of God.  Such an objection if allowed to operate would tear the Almighty from the throne of the universe effectually as atheism itself.”^[8]  In that editor’s view Methodism was not better than atheism.

On the other hand, the Arminian periodicals demonstrated unanimity with regard to doctrines of salvation. That is, they contained articles that argued for the broadness of grace that invites all to respond, and the responsibility of people to appropriate this grace.  They published pieces that railed against Calvinism, particularly the idea that God created some people to be damned.  The differences that these groups may have had they subsumed in their common fight against Calvinism.  For instance, the Free-Will Baptists did not dialogue with the Methodists about their diverse views on baptism, rather they addressed themselves to what they called the Calvinist Baptists. 

The Methodist Magazine was a monthly magazine first issued in 1818 in New York for the Methodist Episcopal Church (MEC) in the United States.  It contained sermons, doctrinal and Scriptural teaching, biographies, acts of God in the natural world, anecdotes, missionary news and obituaries.  The doctrinal pieces were primarily positive explications of Methodist thought, though there were a few direct attacks on Calvinist theology.