Wellesley Professor Wins Fellowships to Write About America's Religious Transformation

WELLESLEY, Mass.— As we all know, the Revolutionary War in America was a time of great political change. That the era also produced a remarkable religious transformation has, until now, been largely ignored by history.

This year, Stephen Marini, the Elisabeth Luce Moore professor of religion at Wellesley College, has received two research fellowships, from the American Council of Learned Societies (ACLS) and the American Antiquarian Society/National Endowment for the Humanities (AAS/NEH), to study the depth and breadth of religion in the United States during Revolutionary War times.

Through his research, Marini will produce a book with the working title American Reformation: Religious Cultures of Revolutionary America. He will write what he calls “the first comprehensive treatment of the changing religious culture of the Revolutionary Period, incorporating the beliefs, institutions, rituals, moral and spiritual teachings of every significant American religious community, including crucial but long-neglected regional movements.”

The fellowships are prestigious and not easily won.

 “(The ACLS fellowships) are hard to come by and very generous—$60,000,” he said. The AAS/NEH fellowship includes a $20,000 stipend and six months’ residence at the American Antiquarian Society in Worcester for related research. His work will be based both semesters of the coming year at the AAS, with occasional research trips to other East Coast historical collections. Marini aims to bring a well-rounded picture of American religion to light.

“American historians have typically assigned religion a marginal role,” he said. This is especially true regarding Revolutionary War times, he added; religion’s significance has been downplayed or relegated to political interpretation.

“The developmental pattern of religious culture has accordingly suffered neglect, to the point that not even a comprehensive description of religion during the period exists, let alone a systematic interpretation of its changing shape,” said Marini.

His research will take a first-of-its-kind, thorough look at a uniquely American religious transformation.

“Between the Great Awakening and the Bill of Rights, American religion changed dramatically from a culture of colonial churches derived from Reformation models to a pluralized religious world dominated by Evangelical religious sects, two of which, the Methodists and the Baptists, emerged as the largest communions in the new republic,” Marini explained. “It was a religious transformation unlike any other in Euro-Atlantic history, permanently stamping the new nation’s religious character.”

Marini earned an A.B. degree in history at Dickinson College and studied theology at the University of Chicago as a Rockefeller Fellow. He earned a Ph.D. in religion at Harvard University with specialization in American religious history. He has taught at Wellesley since 1976, offering a wide range of courses in the fields of American religion and ethics.

Since 1875, Wellesley College has been a leader in providing an excellent liberal arts education for women who will make a difference in the world. Its 500-acre campus near Boston is home to 2,300 undergraduate students from all 50 states and 68 countries.

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