Presenter: Kyle Belanger
Authors: Kyle Belanger
Faculty Advisor: Paul Kerry
Institution: Brigham Young University
Through archival research and transcription, George Bancroft’s early papers from 1816-1823 have been brought to light and reveal his early years first as a student at Harvard and then as a Unitarian Minister in Boston and the surrounding areas. Providing a new glimpse into ordinary intellectual and religious life in Boston at the time, Bancroft’s theology demonstrates the religious underpinnings of his later contributions to the conceptualization of liberal democracy and American historiography. His well-known and optimistic teleology of the destiny of the human race carries over as well in his doctrine of human deification, which he taught in a sermon based on his philologically-informed reading of Matthew 5:48. His theology of human deification parallels those found in patristic literature and provides a new vantage point from which to examine the milieu of Anglo-American religious thought during the late 18th and early 19th centuries, especially in light of sermons from more famous religious contemporaries of his, such as William Ellery Channing in his sermon, “Likeness to God.” Where may Bancroft, Channing, and others have derived such an idea? Why did it fail to gain traction in broader American religious discourse? And especially in the context of Mormon studies, how may this movement in New England religion, contemporaneous to Joseph Smith, speak to the latter’s own theological developments concerning human teleology, which have often been cast as being radical and deviant? George Bancroft’s contributions as a theologian, even if it was a brief time in his life, are evident by the rich and enigmatic theology of deification that he presented before a mainstream Boston audience. The location of Bancroft’s early papers is identified on the website of the Massachusetts Historical Society.