In Jon Butler’s Awash in the Sea of Faith, he points out that the “book is an attempt to open up the discussion of the first three centuries of religious experience. In doing so, he reconstructs a more complex religious past, one that reflects the processes of growth and development far removed from the traditional Puritan interpretation of America’s religious origins.” (2) In his analysis, Butler examines the churches, the congregations, who customarily were the focus of “so much of the attention from theologians, ministers, and religious institutions.” (3-4) He adds that from the beginning of the book to the end, it is to depict religion as the belief in extraordinary human powers, periodically humans who influence the trajectory “of natural and human events.” (3) He establishes that the phenomenon of American’s religion method is founded “within the context of the early modern European religious environment.” He added that recent historians have failed to connect the importance of the European/American religious experience. Therefore, he felt obligated to mention that connection, especially the link to English history. (5) Butler remarked that religion was a “learned habit of the mind” and that process derived from Europe. (5) Later he asserts that the majority of America’s lasting “religious patterns were also created, not merely inherited.”(6)
Butler’s daring thesis implies the contemptuous grievances concerning “secular humanism,” and the disintegrating values of religion. More than ninety-seven percent of those polled in America expressed a belief in God, while sixty percent participated in worship services consistently. Butler's European model produced different results from the American model as forty percent of those surveyed revealed they did not believe in God, while less than ten percent attended church regularly. (1) Butler is consistent with his iconoclastic attack on Christian values, their thoughts, theologies, and events. An example is when past historians focused on the “Great Awakening” as a significant religious occurrence in the 1740s, as a prelude to the Revolutionary War. He even substantiates the idea that George Bancroft’s historical writings hardly mentioned the event in his magisterial history of the United States. (165) Butler adds that historian Joseph Tracy first referenced the term in his book titled The Great Awakening, published in 1841 as a supportive term to explain the revivals of the nineteenth century. He enviously added that Tracy’s “interpretative significance had multiplied a thousandfold.” (164) Butler goes on to write that the Great Awakening’s “long term effects have been greatly exaggerated” and consideration as “an interpretative fiction.” Should be taken. (165)
Consider Butler's use of an interpretive term. One entirely out of context, when he used the word “holocaust” for the “annihilation of the African religious system” of the African homeland. Without a doubt, it is as inaccurate as it is misguided. Again a classic example of pejorative etymology; certainly a term I would like to inject when describing Butler’s work on this scholarship. This era in time happened between the years of 1680 and 1760 and during this “holocaust” period Butler stated that “institutional Christianity” returned to the colonies in 1680, along with the rise in slave ownership as both institutions “shaped each other in powerful ways.” His claim that the “spiritual holocaust” permanently “destroyed African religious systems” … and “that left slaves remarkably bereft of traditional collective religious practice before 1760.” Then Butler adds, “that the irony of this holocaust was” that it gave a segue to the “post-1760 slave Christianization whereas the appearance “resembled European expressions of Christianity.” (129-130)
Butler’s main argument is used throughout the book and rarely ventures away from his iconoclastic narrative. From his opening paragraph, Butler writes about a conservative president (Ronald Reagan) who was firmly backed by evangelicals and fundamental Christians. While he permitted his "daily schedule to be guided by horoscopes.” Or Butler’s negative comments about the extramarital affairs of prominent television evangelists to discredit the lifestyle of millions of other Christians. (Jimmy Swaggart and Jim Baker). Alternatively, the revivalists that declared God spoke directly to them. (1) In the final paragraph, Butler expressed that President Lincoln “represented the ambivalent spiritual inclinations among America’s heterodox citizens.” They were also “reshaped by the events of the previous three hundred years.” (295)
In conclusion, when I chose this book to read for a report, I expected to learn something new and exciting. Never did I expect an iconoclastic nightmare where the author dismisses most of our religious history, as we know it. Moreover, speaking of interpretative fiction, I think Butler has achieved his goal. Awash in the Sea of Faith is a classic example of a secular author attempting to put a spin on Christianity by incorrectly employing culturalism as his school of thought. That is indeed a practice of pejorative etymology. In his writings, Butler disregards the influence of the Bible, ignores theology, the overall writing about the Tennent family, Whitefield, William Bradford, Jonathan Edwards, and Christian devotion. Butler seemed to embrace a rancorous attitude towards things Christians cherished. The only recommendations I can give this book is not waste time reading it.
Bibliography
Butler, Jon. Awash in a Sea of Faith: Christianizing the American People. Cambridge:
Harvard University Press, 1992.
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