Classicism and the Church: Nineteenth-Century Calvinism and the Rhetoric of Oratorical Culture

Abstract

In the decades after the American Revolution, orthodox Calvinists, followers of the New Divinity, attempted to preserve their vision of an orderly American society. These educated clergymen believed that American democracy could only survive, and survive as a citadel of Christian orthodoxy, if the nation checked populist impulses. Calvinist divines overlooked traditional Protestant scruples, embracing classical culture as a model for the American republic. The Calvinist clergy, better educated in the classics than almost any group in America, hoped to influence the national character of the young republic and to shore up their declining influence in public life by advocating a Christianized form of neoclassical oratorical culture.