Responding to this demand, states established bureaucratic procedures for incorporation to eliminate the favoritism that incorporation through special legislative charter seemed to entail. In the 1840s and 1850s, 13 states introduced laws of general incorporation into their constitutions, and most states enacted statutes establishing uniform mechanisms for attaining corporate standing. According to historian Robert E. Wright, by 1860, nearly 4,000 US businesses had received charters through general incorporation procedures.
Religious corporations matched business growth. Between 1750 and 1850, the number of Congregational churches almost quadrupled, growing from 465 to 1,706. Religious societies funded by Congregationalists established new churches, charities, schools and missionary societies in Ohio, Illinois and Kansas. Presbyterian Church growth was more impressive still, expanding from 233 to 4,824 churches between 1750 and 1850. Baptists surpassed these wealthy rivals during the same period, growing tenfold from 932 churches to 9,375. Even as denominations split up over slavery in the 1840s and 1850s, northern and southern branches strengthened and pushed westward, expanding the geographical reach of religious institutions. These corporate organizations offered moral discipline and purpose, as well as competing religious visions of national identity.
Between 1750 and 1850, American Catholics built 1,200 new churches along with schools, orphanages and convents to serve a fast-growing population of Catholic immigrants and tens of thousands of new converts. By 1860, 4.4 million Americans— one out of every seven— were Catholic. In the new western states, the proportion of Catholics was greater, closer to one in five. On numerous occasions, Protestant preachers broadcast alarm about a flood of Catholic immigrants rushing into the West to take over the country. Coupled with fierce competition for low-wage work in eastern cities, Protestant anxiety about national identity fed the discrimination against Catholics that periodically erupted in violence. Catholics responded with their own ambitious programs of corporate expansion designed to strengthen Catholic identity and insulate members from abuse and discrimination.
Several states supported the growth of Catholic organizations by issuing charters for Catholic religious societies. In 1784, New York State passed a law ending the“ illiberal and partial Distribution of Charters of Incorporation to religious societies” that had created“ great Difficulties” for Catholics. Without proper charters, unincorporated“ religious Societies” lacked“ proper Persons authorized by Law, to take charge of their pious Donations,” the new bill explained, with the result that religious property stayed“ in private Hands, to the great Insecurity of the Society.” Laws expediting incorporation for religious societies followed in other states, and these laws encouraged congregational governance in Catholic churches. Under state charters of incorporation, Catholic congregations became legal persons able to own property and enter into other legal contracts, with lay trustees responsible for managing contracts and various matters of internal governance.
Methodists were the fastest-growing Protestant denomination in the early republic; with Catholics, they set the pace of American corporate expansion. The new denomination was founded in 1784, and by 1850 Methodists had built more than 13,000 churches. With small circles of largely selfgoverning religious societies operating under the supervision of a centralized hierarchy, Methodist leaders firmly grasped the principle of vertical integration as an effective means to horizontal expansion. In frontier regions, Methodist societies operated under the monthly supervision of circuit riders, and in cities, Methodist societies served local communities under the supervision of church ministers, elders and deacons. The Methodist blend of hierarchical supervision and small group intimacy proved highly effective, and Methodist societies offered many people— including women and blacks— opportunities for leadership and decision-making they would not otherwise have enjoyed. Well in advance of commercial institutions, the expansion of Methodist churches demonstrated a highly-successful model of national organization.
Methodists also contributed to the market revolution that enabled small artisans, shopkeepers and farmers to forge respectable lives as middle class consumers. Methodist belief in free will supported this economic activity, as free will was translated into confidence in people’ s ability to surmount difficulties. As Richard Carwardine explained, this religious self-confidence spurred Methodists“ to seek out potential converts under the most daunting conditions and in all corners of the union, however remote, and to get there before their competitors.” Providing emotional outreach to people trapped on the shoals of uncertainty, loss and destitution, the Methodist Church and its publishing house played a major role in the dissemination of inexpensive print media, and in the promotion of reading as a means of communication and social integration.
As they expanded across the nation side by side, religious and commercial corporations developed similarities. Corporate innovations among Catholics, Methodists and other religious groups affected economic activity by supporting labor communities, providing cathartic outlets for emotion and constructing ideals of human personhood to counter the mechanization of industry. At the same time, corporate innovations in manufacturing affected the texture of religious life, imbuing religious institutions and religious practices with elements of machine-like efficiency, and pushing the operations of Christian charity and conceptions of Christian community in the direction of greater calculation and rational organization.
Amanda Porterfield is the Robert A. Spivey Professor of Religion at the Florida State University. She is the author of 10 books, including Conceived in Doubt: Religion and Politics in the Early American Nation and Healing in the History of Christianity. She is also the co-editor of The Business Turn in American Religious History( with Darren Grem and John Corrigan).
This article was adapted from Corporate Spirit: Religion and the Rise of the Modern Corporation, by Amanda Porterfield. Copyright © 2018 by Oxford University Press and published by Oxford University Press. All rights reserved.
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