William Apess, Pequot Pastor: A Native American Revisioning of Christian Nationalism in the Early Republic

Ethan Goodnight

doi:10.3390/rel8020018

Abstract

Pequot Native and Methodist Minister William Apess has received growing recognition among historians as a unique voice for Native Americans—and minorities in general—during the early Republic. This essay began by inquiring into Apess’s relationship with the Christian nationalism of his day. Extensive readings of Apess’s works, scholarship on all aspects of Apess’s life, and analyses of Christian nationalism during the early Republic initially revealed severe conflict. Apess is fiery in his critique of Anglo American society and religion; he questions the integrity of Christians who treat Native Americans with a double standard. Analyzing Apess’s critiques and his proposed solutions in depth, however, shows that his main problem rests with faulty implementation of genuinely good ideals. Apess’s solutions actually rest on revising and enforcing, not destroying, the main components of Christian nationalism. This essay concludes that Apess should be read as advancing his own revised form of Christian nationalism; his plan for the future of America and national unity embraced establishing a more perfect Christian union.

Highlights

Master of Arts Program in the Social Sciences, University of Chicago, Saieh 246, 5757 S
In the opening chapters of his monumental work Democracy in America, Alexis de Tocqueville observed how “the social condition of the Americans is eminently democratic; this was its character at the foundation of the colonies, and it is still more strongly marked at the present day” ([1], p. 47)
Tocqueville identified the settlement of New England by the Pilgrims and Puritans in the 1620s as demarcating the beginning of a social trend toward democracy

Summary

Understanding Christian Nationalism in the Early Republic

Before explicating Apess’s stance on America as a Christian nation it is necessary to survey the landscape of Christian nationalism as established in the antebellum period. Story and his contemporaries did not end their historical examination of the roots of America’s legal system at the virtues of the Revolution, They reached further back to establish one of the greatest trademarks of American Christian nationalism: the righteous settlement of America by the blessed Pilgrims and Puritans The Christian nationalism of the early Republic should be seen as originating from the base fears and motives of politicians who saw a fractured, not unified, state, religious leaders who worried about the shifting populace and denominations, and the intelligentsia who desperately desired a national heritage and myth on which to build a history of the United States. Haselby highlights the intense conflict between frontier revivalists and national evangelists, revealing how Christian nationalism was at times a tool for advancing particular denominational concerns over a general Protestant narrative Operating within this sphere of New England evangelicalism, Apess’s contribution to Christian.

Life and Letters of William Apess

William Apess