Evangelical Images and the American Tract Society

Abstract

Abstract with the disestablishment of religion in the early nineteenth century, New England clergy and laity who had enjoyed in statesanctioned Christianity a vision of a nation with a divine purpose were faced with the challenge of preserving their sense of national mission in a state that no longer officially authorized the practice of the Christian faith. Facing the steady growth of non-English-speaking, nonProtestant immigrants and the expansion of a frontier populated by unchurched whites and non-Christian Indians, a number of evangelical clergy, Christian professionals, businessmen, and well-stationed women formed benevolent societies such as the ABS (1816) and the ASSU (1824). These benevolent associations worked to reform the expanding American populace by producing enormous amounts of literature such as the Bible or Sunday school instructional materials and distributing them as widely as possible. The ATS was established in 1825 when the American Tract Society of Boston, formerly called the New England Tract Society, and many other smaller tract societies in the northeast merged with New York’s Religious Tract Society to form a national organization based in New York City on Nassau Street. Composed primarily of Presbyterians, Congregationalists, and Baptists, the ATS set itself the task of distributing tracts throughout the United States and around the world. Yet its greatest efforts were domestic.