One never knows… Sometimes help can come from some unexpected places. I was talking with a colleague, a literature professor, and he recommended Jacques Le Goff’s Must We Divide History into Periods? It’s a fascinating little book! I have no desire to spoil it for anyone who has not read it, so I will issue a spoiler alert – if you have not read the book and would rather not know what Le Goff said, you may want to skip this post. Otherwise, read on…
The short answer to Le Goff’s question is, yes, we really must divide history into periods. It is one way historians organize and manage large blocks of information. The real issue then becomes seeing historical eras not as clearly defined periods of time, but rather a series of smaller occurrences that led up to a given event. Using the Renaissance as an example, Le Goff observed that while it described a specific, significant period in time, the Renaissance did not simply show up unannounced. That is, there were a number of small “renaissances” before the Renaissance changed the western world.
So, what might this mean for denominational inquiry? Suppose for a moment that we suspend the usual periodization for American history. While we are at it, let’s further suppose that we are talking about Baptists (see blog post 1). If Baptists in early America were a dissenting minority, trying to fit them into a periodization that favors a political synthesis is problematic from the outset. One might be tempted to see Baptist life between roughly 1600 and 1800 as a quest for mere political legitimacy, but there is obviously more to the Baptist story than a group of political “outsiders” looking for political standing, isn’t there?
Now, suppose that instead of dividing early American history into Colonial, Revolutionary, and Early National Eras, one sees only 1 period. Throughout this period, Baptists were looking for acceptance in a broader social, cultural, and political context. Of course, one might make a similar argument under the standard periodization. In fact, most Baptist histories are framed to some degree around this assumption. Yet, if political standing is all one looks for, it may be all they find. Let’s use religious liberty as an example. According to the standard narrative, Baptists were staunch advocates of religious liberty and for good reason; they had been a dissenting minority. If freedom from persecution is all you look for, you miss a much richer, more nuanced understanding of who eighteenth-century Baptists really were. Even more, you might see religious freedom ala the First Amendment as an “end” when in fact it was more of a “beginning,” or a “new continuation” of something older.
That brings us back to Le Goff. Indeed, there were many renaissances before the Renaissance. When it comes to America’s earliest Baptists, it is easy to see that they were interested in far more than merely gaining political acceptance. They also wanted cultural standing and economic viability. In fact, rethinking the commonly accepted periodization of U. S. history allows us to ask new questions of long-familiar sources. When we do, we are likely to find that while they were dissenters, Baptists were not as different as one might think. In fact, one could argue that those similarities played a role in transitioning Baptists into the emerging cultural mainstream.
