Benevolent Societies in the Early USA

The following is from the Library of Congress web article called "Faith of our Forefathers." In this section, we learn about the importance of benevolent societies in our early history. Note that some of the societies, even as they worked to convert people to Christianity, thought that they were "doing the work of patriotism no less than Christianity."

This is very much in keeping with the words President Washington used in his farewell address, excerpted below from the LOC article:

The first president advised his fellow citizens that "Religion and morality" were the "great Pillars of human happiness, these firmest props of the duties of Men and citizens." "National morality," he added, could not exist "in exclusion of religious principle." "Virtue or morality," he concluded, as the products of religion, were "a necessary spring of popular government."

The section on benevolent organization is below:

Benevolent societies were a new and conspicuous feature of the American landscape during the first half of the 19th century. Voluntary, ecumenical organizations devoted originally to the salvation of souls, but in due course to the eradication of every kind of social ill, the benevolent societies were formed by the pooling of resources of evangelicalism's legions. The benevolent societies were the direct result of the extraordinary energies generated by the evangelical movement, specifically, by the "activism" resulting from conversion. "The evidence of God's grace," the Presbyterian evangelist, Charles G. Finney insisted, "was a person's benevolence toward others."

The earliest and most important of the benevolent societies focused their efforts on the conversion of sinners to the new birth or to the creation of conditions (sobriety sought by temperance societies) in which conversions could occur. The six largest societies in 1826-27 (based on their operating budgets) were all directly concerned with conversion: the American Education Society, the American Board of Foreign Missions, the American Bible Society, the American Sunday-School Union, the American Tract Society and the American Home Missionary Society.

Three of these groups subsidized evangelical ministers, one specialized in evangelical education and two supplied evangelical literature that the other four used. In seeking to convert the American people, the benevolent societies were consciously trying to create, simultaneously, a moral and virtuous citizenry on which republican government was thought to depend. They proudly asserted that they were "doing the work of patriotism no less than Christianity."

Read the entire article in context here.