by Susan Ritchie
The Established Church/Churches of the Standing Order
In colonial America, the government established churches, supporting them financially, mainly through taxation used to pay the minister’s salary. Most New England colonies established Congregational churches, while the Southern colonies along with New York, New Jersey, and Maryland established the Anglican Church. Many Unitarian Universalists like to refer to the Cambridge Platform organizing the Congregational churches in Massachusetts as a gold standard in the development of congregational polity. But in that it did not insist on the separation of church and state, it was a far less democratic governance scheme than that articulated by the Dissenters in England, or for that matter, the Pilgrims of the Plimoth Plantation.
After the American Revolution, while the constitution prohibited Congress from establishing a national church, there was nothing to stop states from continuing to support established churches largely through county (parish) taxes. But support for established religion was waning, alongside the increasing diversity of the American religious landscape. The rise of Unitarianism in the early nineteenth century particularly contributed to disestablishment as many of the orthodox were not interested in seeing public funds distributed to a heretical group. Massachusetts, with its strongly entrenched “Standing Order” was the last state to officially disestablish in 1833 (“The Standing Order” referred to the congregational ministerial association of Massachusetts).
Unitarian churches of course, benefited from the wealth of the established churches as individual congregations won the legal right in 1821 to withdraw from the Congregational Church while maintaining ownership of the building and the church coffers. And of course, for many years, liberal Congregationalist churches had been Unitarian in theology and inclination long before they officially split, benefitting that whole time from public funds.
Universalists congregations, of course, as non-established churches, were mainly reliant on the voluntary support of their members. One of the ways that Universalist churches made ends meet was by paying their ministers far less than the established churches did.
Before disestablishment, one concession some localities made to increasing religious pluralism was to experiment with allowing taxpayers to direct their monies to the church of their choice. Some Universalist churches benefitted from this practice, but it was short lived. Most affluent taxpayers did not want to see any public funds going to the uneducated, ungentlemanly ministers of the dissenting traditions (Baptist, Universalist, Methodist). On the other side, the dissenting churches were eager to see how the staid ministers of the Standing Order would compete for members in a free market.
After disestablishment, all churches were now totally reliant on raising funds from the voluntary contributions of their membership in the free market of 19th century American religion. Prior to disestablishment, congregations had sometimes raised funds through the mechanisms of pew sales/rentals and subscription books, but after disestablishment they would be entirely reliant on these schemes for their financial support.
With disestablishment, ministers were concerned about the resultant loss of prestige, income, as well as the practical necessities of relying on the positive goodwill of the members for their livelihood. Could you speak prophetic truth to the very people who were paying your salary? Historian Ann Douglas, in her problematic book The Feminization of American Culture (1998), argued that disestablished ministers, once respected civic officials moving in a world of important men, were now forced to spend most of their time with the women of the congregation. She attempts to illustrate how the culture created by these liberal, disestablished ministers and women acting in concert led to the “feminization” of religion and ultimately, to the mindless sentimentality of American mass culture in general. While the sexism of Douglas’s work is now widely understood, the matter of fact is that disestablishment did definitely result in a decline in the social prestige and economic position of ministers.
Read More About Disestablishment: Peter Field, The Crisis of the Standing Order: Clerical Intellectuals and Cultural Authority in Massachusetts, 1780-1833 (Amherst, University of Massachusetts Press, 1998)
Pew Sales/Rentals
Some congregations rented pews by auction each year, while others sold them to pay for the building and then taxed the value of the pew to the owner for annual revenue. The most expensive seats were in the front, and the cheap seats were in the back. Church deacons would assign the value of the pews based on their relative social prestige, and then families would pay that fee. Free seats were available in the back or the balcony of most (but not all) churches, but a free pew carried a social stigma. While pew sales and rentals were common before disestablishment, disestablishment caused congregations, especially in urban areas, to convert more interior real estate than ever before into revenue generating seating. The result was to limit the class diversity of those congregations.
Subscription Books
Congregations that were opposed to the classist nature of pew sales and pew rentals often raised funds through the use of a subscription book (and some churches raised funds through both pew rentals and subscription books). The “Free” Methodist movement was based on the importance of not charging for attendance at worship through the pew sales or rentals. Pew sales and rentals were not unknown in the Universalist church, especially in urban areas, but many Universalists emphasized the importance of free worship and voluntary subscription giving over pew rentals as an appropriate corollary to the independence of the congregation from state interests. A record book would either be left in the front of the sanctuary or passed through the congregation. The front of the book listed the amount of money that was required to operate the church for the next year (or the amount needed to raise a building—this fund-raising technique was used also for capital expenses). Members were asked to record in the book how much they expected to contribute to the church over the coming year against that total. Only once the total was reached were the pledges then considered to be committed.
The (Re)Invention of Tithing (Second Half of the 19th Century)
The idea of tithing has been around forever in the Christian world, right? Well, not exactly. It was reinvented in the late 19th century as independent congregations struggled with expressing a religious mandate for giving. Early 19th century arguments for giving to congregations were often framed as a call for “systemic benevolence,” which proved uncompelling. So, Protestant preachers, including Unitarians and Universalists, sought to ground giving to the church in Biblical mandate or at least Christian necessity, using the rhetoric of tithing. There was of course an ancient precedence for tithing, but little previous example of using this as an argument for individuals to contribute money to an American church. Why this change from “systemic benevolence” to “tithing?” It wasn’t just about religious mandates proving effective for raising money. Scholars such as James Hudnut-Beumler note that the more directly ministers understood that part of their job was to raise their own salary, the more spiritualized the ask became (less they be perceived as self-serving), creating cognitive dissonances in congregations and ministers that are still with us to this day.
Read more about it: James Hudnut-Beumler, The Almighty’s Dollar: A History of Money and American Protestantism (North Carlonia University Press, 2014).
Collecting the Offering/Donation Envelopes (Late 19th Century)
Does practice of collecting the offering as an aspect of worship feel like an ancient Christian practice? It was largely unknown until late in the19th century, and it only emerged in America after most Protestants had become convinced by the new rhetoric around tithing. Even when collecting the offering was first introduced, it was not a weekly event, and it was often a special collection for a mission project or need beyond that of the congregation’s regular operating budget. But by 1900, most white American Protestant churches, including the Unitarian and the Universalist, took up weekly offerings, making giving an act of worship. Members enclosed their money in preprinted, two-sided envelopes. By this point, churches depended on these weekly offerings for most of their funding.
The Invention of “Stewardship” (Twentieth Century)
Speaking of giving to the congregation as a form of “stewardship” is a legacy of the Social Gospel movement. While we think of the social gospel movement as trying to join progressive politics and religious practice, they also believed that it was possible to unify Christian and post-Christian ethical demands with capitalism. They called on religious people to put aside narrow self-interest and instead be of “service” to larger society (as opposed to, say, calling for redistributive justice). “Stewardship” became the prevalent umbrella term for taking responsibility for everything from (limited) social justice to the congregational budget. Indeed, this logic also becomes the basis for arguing for the possibility of socially responsible corporations. Conservatives such as Reinhold Neihbur critiqued the social gospel used of “stewardship” as ridiculously broad, and impractical (he didn’t think church members resisting greedy impulses would prove an adequate tool of social change).
Read more about it: Carroll, A. B., Lipartito, K. J., Post, J. E., et al. Corporate Responsibility: The American Experience (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012).
All Member Canvasses, etc.… (Mid Twentieth Century)
The mid-twentieth century saw churches using fund raising techniques increasingly derived from commercial sales techniques. Every Member Canvasses began, with the crucial element of getting church representatives literally into people’s homes to make their pitch through the mechanism of requiring the return of “pledge cards” (hence providing a practical excuse for personal visits). The use of literature distributed in advance of the ask overcoming objections to giving, also a sales derived technique, became common, as did a once a year “Pledge Sunday” worship service.
