Religion and racism in US primary

One hundred and seventy-eight years ago, in the little Massachusetts town of Charlestown, a mob of Protestant evangelicals burned to the ground a Roman Catholic convent and school.

In spite of incontrovertible evidence of their guilt, 12 of the 13 men charged with instigating and participating in the riot were acquitted. Recommendations that the state recompense the Archdiocese of Boston for its loss were repeatedly voted down in the Massachusetts legislature.

I retell this long-forgotten tale of religious bigotry and violence for two reasons. First, it is a useful corrective to the common belief that this sort of behaviour is confined, historically, to the states of the American south – the so- called “Bible Belt”. Second, it reveals the crucial role evangelical Protestantism has played, and continues to play, in the history of the United States.

As the 1834 Convent Riot shows, the volatile mixture of politics and religion that so baffles foreign observers of the United States is nothing new; indeed, in the opinion of at least one American historian, David Goldfield, it has been one of its principal drivers.
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