Download or read book Radical Sects of Revolutionary New England written by Stephen A. Marini and published by Cambridge, Mass. : Harvard University Press. This book was released on 1982 with total page 232 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: During the late eighteenth century, radical religious sects in the backwoods of New England created a mass movement in dissent, which broke the grip of a monolithic religious culture and helped lay the foundation for a new style of diversity in religion and ultimately in politics. In this comparative study of the Shakers, Universalists, and Freewill Baptists, Stephen Marini analyzes beliefs, leadership, social structures, and rituals in order to decipher their appeal and explain the larger effects. These three sects arose during the American Revolution in response to a complex crisis of religious revival, frontier migration, and political changes. By 1815 they represented one-fourth of rural New Englands churches. Their rejection of basic Calvinist beliefs and practices such as predestination and original sin presented the first large-scale popular challenge to the dominant religious norms in New England. As Americas earliest indigenous religions they created alternative theologies, polities, and liturgies which expressed a new emphasis on free will, equality, and community. Utilizing the concepts and techniques of social history, anthropology, and sociology, Marinis work traces the development of these new religious cultures as an integral element of Revolutionary New England.
Download or read book The Loyalist Problem in Revolutionary New England written by Thomas N. Ingersoll and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2016-10-24 with total page 522 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Loyalist Problem in Revolutionary New England begins with a snapshot of the region on the eve of the Boston Tea Party. The colonists' Republican tradition helped them spark the Revolution, but their special history also threatened the unity of the United States throughout the Revolutionary War, for Loyalists tried to discredit New Englanders as a naturally rebellious people. Yet Ingersoll shows that the rebels never sought to drive the dissenters out of the new nation, and accorded them a remarkable degree of liberal toleration, with the great majority of Loyalists ultimately becoming citizens of the new states.
Download or read book Conservative Revolutionaries written by John S. Oakes and published by BoD – Books on Demand. This book was released on 2018-01-01 with total page 320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Boston Congregationalist ministers Charles Chauncy (1705-1787) and Jonathan Mayhew (1720-1766) were significant political as well as religious leaders in colonial and revolutionary New England. Scholars have often stressed their influence on major shifts in New England theology, and have also portrayed Mayhew as an influential preacher, whose works helped shape American revolutionary ideology, and Chauncy as an active leader of the patriot cause. Through a deeply contextualised re-examination of the two ministers as ‘men of their times’, Oakes offers a fresh, comparative interpretation of how their religious and political views changed and interacted over decades. The result is a thoroughly revised reading of Chauncy’s and Mayhew’s most innovative ideas. Conservative Revolutionaries unearths strongly traditionalist elements in their belief systems, focussing on their shared commitment to a dissenting worldview based on the ideals of their Protestant New England and British heritage. Oakes concludes with a provocative exploration of how their shifting theological and political positions may have helped redefine prevailing notions of human identity, capability, and destiny.
Download or read book A Paradise of Reason written by J. Rixey Ruffin and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2008 with total page 277 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: William Bentley was pastor of the East Church in Salem Massachusetts from 1783 intil his death in 1819. There, he ministered to the sailors, widows, artisans, and captains of the waterfront. He offered his flock a faith grounded by the dual pillars of a benevolent deity and salvation through moral living.
Download or read book Liberty Tree written by Alfred F. Young and published by NYU Press. This book was released on 2006-11-06 with total page 429 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: With the publication of Liberty Tree, acclaimed historian Alfred F. Young presents a selection of his seminal writing as well as two provocative, never-before-published essays. Together, they take the reader on a journey through the American Revolution, exploring the role played by ordinary women and men (called, at the time, people out of doors) in shaping events during and after the Revolution, their impact on the Founding generation of the new American nation, and finally how this populist side of the Revolution has fared in public memory. Drawing on a wide range of sources, which include not only written documents but also material items like powder horns, and public rituals like parades and tarring and featherings, Young places ordinary Americans at the center of the Revolution. For example, in one essay he views the Constitution of 1787 as the result of an intentional accommodation by elites with non-elites, while another piece explores the process of ongoing negotiations would-be rulers conducted with the middling sort; women, enslaved African Americans, and Native Americans. Moreover, questions of history and modern memory are engaged by a compelling examination of icons of the Revolution, such as the pamphleteer Thomas Paine and Boston's Freedom Trail. For over forty years, history lovers, students, and scholars alike have been able to hear the voices and see the actions of ordinary people during the Revolutionary Era, thanks to Young's path-breaking work, which seamlessly blends sophisticated analysis with compelling and accessible prose. From his award-winning work on mechanics, or artisans, in the seaboard cities of the Northeast to the all but forgotten liberty tree, a major popular icon of the Revolution explored in depth for the first time, Young continues to astound readers as he forges new directions in the history of the American Revolution.
Download or read book Rally the Scattered Believers written by Shelby M. Balik and published by Indiana University Press. This book was released on 2014-05-30 with total page 316 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “An important new interpretation of how religious change shaped American cultural identity in the early republic.” —Journal of American History Northern New England, a rugged landscape dotted with transient settlements, posed challenges to the traditional town church in the wake of the American Revolution. Using the methods of spatial geography, Shelby M. Balik examines how migrants adapted their understanding of religious community and spiritual space to survive in the harsh physical surroundings of the region. The notions of boundaries, place, and identity they developed became the basis for spreading New England’s deeply rooted spiritual culture, even as it opened the way to a new evangelical age. “I strongly recommend Balik’s book for those studying colonial religious landscapes and heritages not only in New England, but in the nineteenth-century religious diasporas that swept the continent with varying mixes of European colonials and also African and Asian heritages.” —Stanley D. Brunn, University of Kentucky “In this beautifully written and richly researched work, Shelby Balik shows how the travels of early nineteenth century Methodists, Universalists and freewill Baptist itinerant missionaries and congregations recreated the geography of New England Protestantism, setting in motion (literally) a tension between religious rootedness and religious uprootedness, center and periphery, that endures to today. Early American religious history in Balik’s retelling of it is one of bodies in constant movement in and out and around the city on the hill. The delight Balik takes in maps and journeys is infectious. This is a wonderful addition to American religious historiography.” —Robert Orsi, Northwestern University
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 The Fault Lines of Empire written by Elizabeth Mancke and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2005-07-08 with total page 238 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Fault Lines of Empire is a fascinating comparative study of two communities in the early modern British Empire--one in Massachusetts, the other in Nova Scotia. Elizabeth Mancke focuses on these two locations to examine how British attempts at reforming their empire impacted the development of divergent political customs in the United States and Canada.
Download or read book Secret New England written by Edmund R. Thompson and published by . This book was released on 2001 with total page 234 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book The Language of Liberty 1660 1832 written by J. C. D. Clark and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 1994 with total page 428 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book creates a new framework for the political and intellectual relations between the British Isles and America in a momentous period which witnessed the formation of modern states on both sides of the Atlantic and the extinction of an Anglican, aristocratic and monarchical order. Jonathan Clark integrates evidence from law and religion to reveal how the dynamics of early modern societies were essentially denominational. In a study of British and American discourse, he shows how rival conceptions of liberty were expressed in the conflicts created by Protestant dissent's hostility to an Anglican hegemony. The book argues that this model provides a key to collective acts of resistance to the established order throughout the period. The book's final section focuses on the defining episode for British and American history, and shows the way in which the American Revolution can be understood as a war of religion.
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 Gnostic Wars written by Rossbach Stefan Rossbach and published by Edinburgh University Press. This book was released on 2019-08-07 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this unique exposition of important and yet often neglected developments in the history of Western spirituality, Stefan Rossbach reminds us of the philosophical and spiritual underpinnings of the Cold War era, drawing on the traditions of apocalypticism, millenarianism and 'Gnostic' spirituality.Beginning with the 'Gnostic' systems of late Antiquity, the analysis follows 'lines of meaning' which extend through the late Middle Ages and the Renaissance, right up to the present. From the long-term perspective which is thereby established, the spectre of a man-made nuclear apocalypse appears as the latest and most dramatic expression of an outlook on the human condition which refuses to accept limits in the imposition of human designs on the world. The paradoxical continuities that underlie the sense of epoch evoked by the end of the Cold War highlight this work's profound implications for our understanding of contemporary international politics.
Download or read book The Interrelation of the Great Awakening and Harvard College written by George J. Gatgounis and published by Wipf and Stock Publishers. This book was released on 2022-10-11 with total page 103 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Interrelation of the Great Awakening and Harvard College by the Rev. Dr. George Gatgounis, Esq., examines the history of Harvard College from its founding as a training center for Puritan preachers in 1642, through the Great Awakening and its gradual decline as a major spiritual force at Harvard. Gatgounis, a Harvard alumnus, relies on documents in the college's archives to document how evangelist George Whitfield, concerned about the decline in spirituality among the student body, stirred up the campus on his first visit in 1741 but was denounced by the administration as a dangerous zealot on his return in 1744.
Download or read book Wrapped Up in God written by George A. Rawlyk and published by McGill-Queen's Press - MQUP. This book was released on 1993 with total page 185 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Between 1776 and 1830 the Maritime provinces were the site of important waves of religious revivals. Focusing chiefly on Baptists and Methodists, George Rawlyk uses rich primary sources to examine these happenings. Most contemporary interpreters of revivals have explained them in terms of their social and psychological functions and effects. Rawlyk recognizes the importance of such themes but avoids the temptation to reduce revivals to their non-religious functions. While he explores the multi-faceted dimensions of revivalism, he makes it clear that the people involved regarded their religious experiences as valuable in their own right.
Download or read book The Millenarian World of Early Mormonism written by Grant Underwood and published by University of Illinois Press. This book was released on 1999-01-15 with total page 228 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "The most detailed study yet of early Mormon thought about the ""end times,"" The Millenarian World of Early Mormonism shows how Mormon views of Christ's imminent second coming exerted a profound influence on Mormonism between 1830 and 1846. By exploring how early LDS interpretation of the Bible and the Book of Mormon affected, and was affected by, Mormon millennial doctrines, Grant Underwood provides the first comprehensive linkage of the history of early Mormonism and millennial thought. He also probes LDS perceptions of the institutions and values prevalent before the Civil War, reassessing Mormonism's relationship to the dominant culture and placing Mormon millennial thought in the broader context of Judeo-Christian ideas about the end of the world."
Download or read book American Religion Literary Sources and Documents written by David Turley and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2020-12-17 with total page 1525 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This set offers a wide range of primary source material spanning several centuries of religious experience in the United States. The material is grouped thematically and chronologically with a critical apparatus which includes a substantial introductory essay giving an overview of the subject, a chronology, and bibliographies.
Download or read book The Public Universal Friend written by Paul B. Moyer and published by Cornell University Press. This book was released on 2015-09-04 with total page 279 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Amid political innovation and social transformation, Revolutionary America was also fertile ground for religious upheaval, as self-proclaimed visionaries and prophets established new religious sects throughout the emerging nation. Among the most influential and controversial of these figures was Jemima Wilkinson. Born in 1752 and raised in a Quaker household in Cumberland, Rhode Island, Wilkinson began her ministry dramatically in 1776 when, in the midst of an illness, she announced her own death and reincarnation as the Public Universal Friend, a heaven-sent prophet who was neither female nor male. In The Public Universal Friend, Paul B. Moyer tells the story of Wilkinson and her remarkable church, the Society of Universal Friends. Wilkinson’s message was a simple one: humankind stood on the brink of the Apocalypse, but salvation was available to all who accepted God’s grace and the authority of his prophet: the Public Universal Friend. Wilkinson preached widely in southern New England and Pennsylvania, attracted hundreds of devoted followers, formed them into a religious sect, and, by the late 1780s, had led her converts to the backcountry of the newly formed United States, where they established a religious community near present-day Penn Yan, New York. Even this remote spot did not provide a safe haven for Wilkinson and her followers as they awaited the Millennium. Disputes from within and without dogged the sect, and many disciples drifted away or turned against the Friend. After Wilkinson’s "second" and final death in 1819, the Society rapidly fell into decline and, by the mid-nineteenth century, ceased to exist. The prophet’s ministry spanned the American Revolution and shaped the nation’s religious landscape during the unquiet interlude between the first and second Great Awakenings. The life of the Public Universal Friend and the Friend’s church offer important insights about changes to religious life, gender, and society during this formative period. The Public Universal Friend is an elegantly written and comprehensive history of an important and too little known figure in the spiritual landscape of early America.
