Thomas Kidd on Anti-Catholicism in Early America

Here is an interesting post, by Thomas Kidd, called "Anti-Catholicism:  The Defining Religious Principle of Early America?"  Among other things, Kidd discusses Owen Stanwood's The Empire Reformed:  English America in the Age of the Glorious Revolution.  (ed.:  The "Glorious Revolution" was neither glorious, nor a revolution.  Discuss.)  He closes with this:

When Americans debate the role of religion in the American Founding, they’re often given two stark choices – either it was a religious founding in which religion worked for good, or a secular founding in which secularism worked for good. But in anti-Catholicism, we see a third type of role that religion played in early America, a species of religious opinion that was, from a modern perspective, less than constructive. Their anti-Catholicism may have been understandable, given the background of the Reformation, the serious theological concerns that birthed it, and the interminable wars prompted by the religious alliances of European states. Just ask French Protestants, the colonists would have reminded us, what happens when a Catholic state takes away Protestants’ very right to exist. (Catholics had evidence of such nightmare scenarios, too.)

But for evangelicals today who have grown to appreciate our Catholic friends’ advocacy for life, traditional marriage, and religious liberty, as well as their defense of doctrines such as Christ’s divinity in an era of liberal Protestant heterodoxy, the pervasiveness of early American anti-Catholicism makes one wince. Yes, Christianity played a major role in the founding of the colonies, and of the new American nation, but we should not assume that their religion was always a force for good. . . .