Book Review

Legislating Christian Morality

Alison M. Parker
State University of New York at Brockport

Gaines Foster has written an important contribution to the history of American reform at the turn of the twentieth century by charting the role and influence of the Christian lobby Ð those reformers who tried to pass federal legislation that would enforce personal morality and religion. Foster notes that "[m]any Progressives supported Prohibition and other of the Christian lobbyists' legislation. Neverthe less, the lobbyists should not be subsumed under the rubric of Progres sive reform." He claims that their efforts began earlier, in the 1870s, and did not include central Progressive concerns such as "expanding democracy, increasing efficiency, or limiting the power of monopolies" (5). Although this might overstate the differences between the two Ð and certainly underestimates how strongly Christian activists like Frances Willard worked to expand democracy by gaining women the right to vote Ð his point that there is something to be gained by looking separately at the Christian lobbyists makes good sense.	1
Foster argues that from the founding of the New Republic and through the antebellum era, most Americans embraced the founders' separation of church and state, delegating the enforcement of morality to the individual states and to the nation's churches. After the Civil War, he argues, more Americans began to call for a role for the central state in reform. He adds to our understanding of how, when, and why northerners and southerners moved away from a solid opposition to federal reform legislation towards favoring some significant laws, including prohibition.	2
During the antebellum era, Foster suggests that there were few moments when Americans expressed an interest in wanting the federal government to play a stronger role in enforcing Christian morality. One was the episodic antebellum campaign to force the government to stop the transportation and delivery of the mail on Sundays. In 1828, for instance, a group of mostly Presbyterians and Congregationalists formed the General Union for Promoting the Observance of the Christian Sabbath. Attempts to enforce a Christian Sabbath were unsuccessful until 1912, when delivery of the mail was stopped, primarily because postal workers protested their long work hours and days, rather than on truly religious grounds.	. . .