Religion in America Theme Analysis

Crèvecoeur was a deist (a philosophy that emphasized human reason and observation of nature and downplayed divine revelation), and that perspective is clear in James’s remarks on religion throughout the Letters. In particular, James sees religious indifference as characteristic of Americans. He explains that when emigrants arrive in America, they’re often fervent members of a specific Christian denomination, but that the more they intermingle with neighbors from different sects, the less religiously distinctive they become. While newcomers might try to settle near others of like beliefs, most don’t succeed in staying isolated from other groups—and anyway, farming is such a demanding life that most people don’t have time to proselytize or persecute others who believe differently. Many continue to attend church, but the more denominational identities weaken, the less they are passed down through subsequent generations. In fact, when James faces the possibility that his family will escape the war by living among the Indians, he takes comfort in the fact that they don’t need a specific church or set of doctrines in order to worship—they just need to believe that God is “the Father of all men” no matter what he is called. This attitude takes James’s admiration for religious indifference to a surprising extreme.

Readers should notice that the author’s deist outlook shapes his opinions about who is a good or bad Christian, and even which details he chooses to emphasize in his religious survey of the American colonies. It wouldn’t be hard to find examples of colonial Americans who weren’t religiously indifferent, and plenty of Christians valued their distinctive teachings much more highly than Crèvecoeur would think appropriate or choose to highlight. Still, the Letters’ overwhelming view is that when religious identities and theologies weaken and fade in the American melting pot, the country benefits in the long run.