Download or read book Pedlar in Divinity written by Frank Lambert and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2018-06-05 with total page 251 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A pioneer in the commercialization of religion, George Whitefield (1714-1770) is seen by many as the most powerful leader of the Great Awakening in America: through his passionate ministry he united local religious revivals into a national movement before there was a nation. An itinerant British preacher who spent much of his adult life in the American colonies, Whitefield was an immensely popular speaker. Crossing national boundaries and ignoring ecclesiastical controls, he preached outdoors or in public houses and guild halls. In London, crowds of more than thirty thousand gathered to hear him, and his audiences exceeded twenty thousand in Philadelphia and Boston. In this fresh interpretation of Whitefield and his age, Frank Lambert focuses not so much on the evangelist's oratorical skills as on the marketing techniques that he borrowed from his contemporaries in the commercial world. What emerges is a fascinating account of the birth of consumer culture in the eighteenth century, especially the new advertising methods available to those selling goods and services--or salvation. Whitefield faced a problem similar to that of the new Atlantic merchants: how to reach an ever-expanding audience of anonymous strangers, most of whom he would never see face-to-face. To contact this mass "congregation," Whitefield exploited popular print, especially newspapers. In addition, he turned to a technique later imitated by other evangelists such as Dwight L. Moody, Billy Sunday, and Billy Graham: the deployment of advance publicity teams to advertise his coming presentations. Immersed in commerce themselves, Whitefield's auditors appropriated him as a well-publicized English import. He preached against the excesses and luxuries of the spreading consumer society, but he drew heavily on the new commercialism to explain his mission to himself and to his transatlantic audience.
Download or read book Public Relations and Religion in American History written by Margot Opdycke Lamme and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2014-02-18 with total page 218 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Winner of The American Journalism Historians Association Book of the Year Award, 2015 This study of American public relations history traces evangelicalism to corporate public relations via reform and the church-based temperance movement. It encompasses a leading evangelical of the Second Great Awakening, Rev. Charles Grandison Finney, and some of his predecessors; early reformers at Oberlin College, where Finney spent the second half of his life; leaders of the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union and the Anti-Saloon League of America; and twentieth-century public relations pioneer Ivy Ledbetter Lee, whose work reflecting religious and business evangelism has not yet been examined. Observations about American public relations history icon P. T. Barnum, whose life and work touched on many of the themes presented here, also are included as thematic bookends. As such, this study cuts a narrow channel through a wide swath of literature and a broad sweep of historical time, from the mid-eighteenth century to the first decades of the twentieth century, to examine the deeper and deliberate strategies for effecting change, for persuading a community of adherents or opponents, or even a single soul to embrace that which an advocate intentionally presented in a particular way for a specific outcome—prescriptions, as it turned out, not only for religious conversion but also for public relations initiatives.
Download or read book The Methodists and Revolutionary America 1760 1800 written by Dee E. Andrews and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2010-07-01 with total page 384 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Methodists and Revolutionary America is the first in-depth narrative of the origins of American Methodism, one of the most significant popular movements in American history. Placing Methodism's rise in the ideological context of the American Revolution and the complex social setting of the greater Middle Atlantic where it was first introduced, Dee Andrews argues that this new religion provided an alternative to the exclusionary politics of Revolutionary America. With its call to missionary preaching, its enthusiastic revivals, and its prolific religious societies, Methodism competed with republicanism for a place at the center of American culture. Based on rare archival sources and a wealth of Wesleyan literature, this book examines all aspects of the early movement. From Methodism's Wesleyan beginnings to the prominence of women in local societies, the construction of African Methodism, the diverse social profile of Methodist men, and contests over the movement's future, Andrews charts Methodism's metamorphosis from a British missionary organization to a fully Americanized church. Weaving together narrative and analysis, Andrews explains Methodism's extraordinary popular appeal in rich and compelling new detail.
Download or read book Benjamin Franklin written by Thomas S. Kidd and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 2017-01-01 with total page 285 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Cover -- Half Title -- Title -- Copyright -- Contents -- INTRODUCTION -- 1. Child of the Puritans -- 2. Exodus to Philadelphia, Sojourn in London -- 3. Philadelphia Printer -- 4. Poor Richard -- 5. Ben Franklin's Closest Evangelical Friend -- 6. Electrical Man -- 7. Tribune of the People -- 8. Diplomat -- 9. The Pillar of Fire -- CONCLUSION -- Notes -- Acknowledgments -- Index -- A -- B -- C -- D -- E -- F -- G -- H -- I -- J -- K -- L -- M -- N -- O -- P -- Q -- R -- S -- T -- U -- V -- W -- Y -- Z
Download or read book Contested Boundaries written by Timothy D. Hall and published by Duke University Press. This book was released on 1994 with total page 212 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The First Great Awakening in eighteenth-century America challenged the institutional structures and raised the consciousness of colonial Americans. These revivals gave rise to the practice of itinerancy in which ministers and laypeople left their own communities to preach across the countryside. In Contested Boundaries, Timothy D. Hall argues that the Awakening was largely defined by the ensuing debate over itinerancy. Drawing on recent scholarship in cultural and social anthropology, cultural studies, and eighteenth-century religion, he reveals at the center of this debate the itinerant preacher as a catalyst for dramatic change in the religious practice and social order of the New World. This book expands our understanding of evangelical itinerancy in the 1740s by viewing it within the context of Britain's expanding commercial empire. As pro- and anti-revivalists tried to shape a burgeoning transatlantic consumer society, the itinerancy of the Great Awakening appears here as a forceful challenge to contemporary assumptions about the place of individuals within their social world and the role of educated leaders as regulators of communication, order, and change. The most celebrated of these itinerants was George Whitefield, an English minister who made unprecedented tours through the colonies. According to Hall, the activities of the itinerants, including Whitefield, encouraged in the colonists an openness beyond local boundaries to an expanding array of choices for belief and behavior in an increasingly mobile and pluralistic society. In the process, it forged a new model of the church and its social world. As a response to and a source of dynamic social change, itinerancy in Hall's powerful account provides a prism for viewing anew the worldly and otherworldly transformations of colonial society. Contested Boundaries will be of interest to students and scholars of colonial American history, religious studies, and cultural and social anthropology.
Download or read book A Wonderful Work of God written by Robert W. Brockway and published by Lehigh University Press. This book was released on 2003 with total page 244 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "A Wonderful Work of God: Puritanism and the Great Awakening is a survey of the American phase of the Evangelical Revival which swept Britain and her American colonies during the first half of the eighteenth century. Preceded by local revivals, such as the one stirred by Jonathan Edwards in Northampton, Massachusetts in 1734, the Great Awakening exploded into a mass movement because of the itinerant preaching of a young Anglican priest, George Whitefield, and a number of Congregational and Presbyterian ministers who joined him in the evangelical work. However, because of the bizarre behavior of some of the radical evangelicals, such as James Davenport, the movement soon became highly controversial and split colonial ministers and congregations into "Friends of Revival" and "Opposers." As the revival excitement abated, schisms beset congregations in New England and eastern Long Island, resulting in the appearance of separate churches, and the Philadelphia Presbyterian synod was fractured as well." "Drawing on both original sources and a review of the relevant literature, the author places the Great Awakening in the context of the Puritanism of the times, both in Europe and the colonies, and discusses its roots in German Pietism and the Methodist revivals in England. The significant figures of the Awakening and their interactions are brought to life, particularly James Davenport, the Awakening's most bizarre exponent and the preacher who, more than any other, was responsible for bringing it into disrepute."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved
Download or read book Preaching Politics written by Jerome Dean Mahaffey and published by Baylor University Press. This book was released on 2007 with total page 311 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Preaching Politics' traces the surprising and lasting influence of one of American history's most fascinating and enigamtic figures, George Whitefield, and his role in creating a 'rhetoric of community.
Download or read book Forgotten Founding Father written by Stephen Mansfield and published by Turner Publishing Company. This book was released on 2001-05-01 with total page 205 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Whitefield: A Giant Among Leaders As a student at Oxford University, George Whitefield experienced a spiritual awakening under the influence of John Wesley’s Methodists and immediately began tending to prisoners, caring for the poor, and preaching the gospel. He met with astounding success, going on to speak to larger and larger crowds that included some of the largest gatherings in the history of England. He became the most famous preacher of his age. His impact upon the American colonies, however, may have been his most lasting achievement. His preaching from Georgia to Maine was instrumental in the Great Awakening of the 1700s, and when he learned that England tended to tighten her control over the colonies, Whitefield warned his American friends in sermon after sermon, even accompanying Benjamin Franklin on his travels to make the American case in the Court of St. James. Forgotten Founding Father is an incisive look at the qualities of leadership that made him such an effective and powerful figure in both England and America and left a legacy that continues to this day.
Download or read book The Cambridge Companion to Evangelical Theology written by Timothy Larsen and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2007-04-12 with total page 289 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Evangelicalism, a vibrant and growing expression of historic Christian orthodoxy, is already one of the largest and most geographically diverse global religious movements. This Companion, first published in 2007, offers an articulation of evangelical theology that is both faithful to historic evangelical convictions and in dialogue with contemporary intellectual contexts and concerns. In addition to original and creative essays on central Christian doctrines such as Christ, the Trinity, and Justification, it breaks new ground by offering evangelical reflections on issues such as gender, race, culture, and world religions. This volume also moves beyond the confines of Anglo-American perspectives to offer separate essays exploring evangelical theology in African, Asian, and Latin American contexts. The contributors to this volume form an unrivalled list of many of today's most eminent evangelical theologians and important emerging voices.
Download or read book George Whitefield written by Thomas S. Kidd and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 2014-10-28 with total page 340 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the years prior to the American Revolution, George Whitefield was the most famous man in the colonies. Thomas Kidd’s fascinating new biography explores the extraordinary career of the most influential figure in the first generation of Anglo-American evangelical Christianity, examining his sometimes troubling stands on the pressing issues of the day, both secular and spiritual, and his relationships with such famous contemporaries as Benjamin Franklin, Jonathan Edwards, and John Wesley. Based on the author’s comprehensive studies of Whitefield’s original sermons, journals, and letters, this excellent history chronicles the phenomenal rise of the trailblazer of the Great Awakening. Whitefield’s leadership role among the new evangelicals of the eighteenth century and his many religious disputes are meticulously covered, as are his major legacies and the permanent marks he left on evangelical Christian faith. It is arguably the most balanced biography to date of a controversial religious leader who, though relatively unknown three hundred years after his birth, was a true giant in his day and remains an important figure in America’s history.
Download or read book Vanity Fair and the Celestial City written by Isabel Rivers and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2018-07-25 with total page 511 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In John Bunyan's The Pilgrim's Progress, the pilgrims cannot reach the Celestial City without passing through Vanity Fair, where everything is bought and sold. In recent years there has been much analysis of commerce and consumption in Britain during the long eighteenth century, and of the dramatic expansion of popular publishing. Similarly, much has been written on the extraordinary effects of the evangelical revivals of the eighteenth century in Britain, Europe, and North America. But how did popular religious culture and the world of print interact? It is now known that religious works formed the greater part of the publishing market for most of the century. What religious books were read, and how? Who chose them? How did they get into people's hands? Vanity Fair and the Celestial City is the first book to answer these questions in detail. It explores the works written, edited, abridged, and promoted by evangelical dissenters, Methodists both Arminian and Calvinist, and Church of England evangelicals in the period 1720 to 1800. Isabel Rivers also looks back to earlier sources and forward to the continued republication of many of these works well into the nineteenth century. The first part is concerned with the publishing and distribution of religious books by commercial booksellers and not-for-profit religious societies, and the means by which readers obtained them and how they responded to what they read. The second part shows that some of the most important publications were new versions of earlier nonconformist, episcopalian, Roman Catholic, and North American works. The third part explores the main literary kinds, including annotated bibles, devotional guides, exemplary lives, and hymns. Building on many years' research into the religious literature of the period, Rivers discusses over two hundred writers and provides detailed case studies of popular and influential works.
Download or read book The Lost Soul of American Protestantism written by D. G. Hart and published by Rowman & Littlefield Publishers. This book was released on 2004-08-27 with total page 238 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In The Lost Soul of American Protestantism, D. G. Hart examines the historical origins of the idea that faith must be socially useful in order to be valuable. Through specific episodes in Presbyterian, Lutheran, and Reformed history, Hart presents a neglected form of Protestantism—confessionalism—as an alternative to prevailing religious theory. He explains that, unlike evangelical and mainline Protestants who emphasize faith's role in solving social and personal problems, confessional Protestants locate Christianity's significance in the creeds, ministry, and rituals of the church. Although critics have accused confessionalism of encouraging social apathy, Hart deftly argues that this form of Protestantism has much to contribute to current discussions on the role of religion in American public life, since confessionalism refuses to confuse the well-being of the nation with that of the church. The history of confessional Protestantism suggests that contrary to the legacy of revivalism, faith may be most vital and influential when less directly relevant to everyday problems, whether personal or social. Clear and engaging, D. G. Hart's groundbreaking study is essential reading for everyone exploring the intersection of religion and daily life.
Download or read book Revival written by Michael A. G. Haykin and published by Reformation Heritage Books. This book was released on 2024-02-19 with total page 267 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Historian Michael Haykin stokes a passion for revival by investigating the history of spiritual renewal in the Reformed tradition. After examining the Holy Spirit’s outpourings during the Reformation and English Puritanism, Haykin focuses on two remarkable moments of renewal in the eighteenth century: the Great Awakening and the revival of the Particular Baptists in the British and Irish islands. By looking back at revivals from the past, we can develop a biblical framework for expectant prayer for revival in our day.
Download or read book The First Great Awakening in Colonial American Newspapers written by Lisa Smith and published by Lexington Books. This book was released on 2012-02-27 with total page 195 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Gathering the attention and excitement of American colonists from Boston to Charleston, the religious revival of the 1740s traditionally known as the First Great Awakening provided colonial newspaper printers with their first story of transcolonial importance. At the time of the Awakening, American newspapers had become a vital part of the colonial information network as each major city offered at least one weekly paper. Papers printed weekly reports on revivalist preaching, eye-witness accounts of revival meetings, shocking stories of improper ordinations and church separations, as well as numerous contributed letters praising or denouncing virtually every aspect of the Awakening. No other colonial event of the 1740s, including the War of the Austrian Succession (1740-1748) and the Jacobite Rebellion (1745), came close to receiving as much newspaper coverage, making the First Great Awakening America’s first “Big Story.” In The First Great Awakening in Colonial American Newspapers: A Shifting Story, Lisa Smith offers the first scholarly work to examine in detail the printed newspaper record of the revival. This comprehensive, in-depth examination of colonial newspapers over a ten-year period uncovers information on shifts in the presentation of the revival over time, specific differences in regional reporting, and significant transformations in the newspaper personae of popular revivalists such as George Whitefield and Gilbert Tennent. Using original newspaper excerpts and graphs revealing reporting trends, this book presents an engaging, detailed picture of how colonial newspaper printers covered the experience of the First Great Awakening.
Download or read book When Benjamin Franklin Met the Reverend Whitefield written by Peter Charles Hoffer and published by JHU Press. This book was released on 2011-10-11 with total page 168 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the 1740s, two quite different developments revolutionized Anglo-American life and thought—the Enlightenment and the Great Awakening. This book takes an encounter between the paragons of each movement—the printer and entrepreneur Benjamin Franklin and the British-born revivalist George Whitefield—as an opportunity to explore the meaning of the beginnings of modern science and rationality on one hand and evangelical religious enthusiasm on the other. There are people who both represent the times in which they live and change them for the better. Franklin and Whitefield were two such men. The morning that they met, they formed a long and lucrative partnership: Whitefield provided copies of his journals and sermons, Franklin published them. So began one of the most unique, mutually profitable, and influential friendships in early American history. By focusing this study on Franklin and Whitefield, Peter Charles Hoffer defines with great precision the importance of the Anglo-American Atlantic World of the eighteenth century in American history. With a swift and persuasive narrative, Hoffer introduces readers to the respective life story of each man, examines in engaging detail the central themes of their early writings, and concludes with a description of the last years of their collaboration. Franklin's and Whitefield's intellectual contributions reach into our own time, making Hoffer's readable and enjoyable account of these extraordinary men and their extraordinary friendship relevant today. Also in the Witness to History series The Huron-Wendat Feast of the Dead: Indian-European Encounters in Early North America by Erik R. Seeman King Philip's War: Colonial Expansion, Native Resistance, and the End of Indian Sovereignty by Daniel R. Mandell The Caning of Charles Sumner: Honor, Idealism, and the Origins of the Civil War by Williamjames Hull Hoffer Bloodshed at Little Bighorn: Sitting Bull, Custer, and the Destinies of Nations by Tim Lehman
Download or read book From Empire to Humanity written by Amanda B. Moniz and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2016-06-01 with total page 320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the decades before the Revolution, Americans and Britons shared an imperial approach to helping those in need during times of disaster and hardship. They worked together on charitable ventures designed to strengthen the British empire, and ordinary men and women made donations for faraway members of the British community. Growing up in this world of connections, future activists from the British Isles, North America, and the West Indies developed expansive outlooks and transatlantic ties. The schism created by the Revolution fractured the community that nurtured this generation of philanthropists. In From Empire to Humanity, Amanda Moniz tells the story of a generation of American and British activists who transformed humanitarianism as they adjusted to being foreigners. American independence put an end to their common imperial humanitarianism, but not their friendships, their far-reaching visions, or their belief that philanthropy was a tool of statecraft. In the postwar years, these philanthropists, led by doctor-activists, collaborated on the anti-drowning cause, spread new medical charities, combatted the slave trade, reformed penal practices, and experimented with relieving needy strangers. The nature of their cooperation, however, had changed. No longer members of the same polity, they adopted a universal approach to their benevolence, working together for the good of humanity, rather than empire. Making the care of suffering strangers routine, these British and American activists laid the groundwork for later generations' global undertakings. From Empire to Humanity offers new perspectives on the history of philanthropy, as well as the Atlantic world and colonial and postcolonial history.
Download or read book Missions and Empire written by Norman Etherington and published by OUP Oxford. This book was released on 2005-07-14 with total page 358 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The explosive expansion of Christianity in Africa and Asia during the last two centuries constitutes one of the most remarkable cultural transformations in the history of mankind. Because it coincided with the spread of European economic and political hegemony, it tends to be taken for granted that Christian missions went hand in hand with imperialism and colonial conquest. In this book historians survey the relationship between Christian missions and the British Empire from the seventeenth century to the 1960s and treat the subject thematically, rather than regionally or chronologically. Many of these themes are treated at length for the first time, relating the work of missions to language, medicine, anthropology, and decolonization. Other important chapters focus on the difficult relationship between missionaries and white settlers, women and mission, and the neglected role of the indigenous evangelists who did far more than European or North American missionaries to spread the Christian religion - belying the image of Christianity as the 'white man's religion'.
