Download or read book Spiritualism in Antebellum America written by Bret E. Carroll and published by . This book was released on 1997-10-22 with total page 266 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Explores the origins, beliefs, practices, and significance of Spiritualism, a colorful religious ideology centered on spirit communication and spirit activity. Looks at Spiritualism as a reflection of and a reaction to many currents in antebellum American life, such as democratic conceptions of religious authority, the revolt against religious formalism, the growing power of science, and the rise of commercial capitalism. Includes bandw illustrations. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR
Download or read book Spiritualism in Antebellum America written by Bret E. Carroll and published by Indiana University Press. This book was released on 1997-10-22 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "At a time when the New Age movement is starting to make good on the Spiritualists' vision of America as a 'grand clairvoyant nation', Carroll's work raises provocative questions about the tension betwen freedom and authority in the harmonial religions of today." -- Church History "... offers the most comprehensive, sane examination of its topic yet available, no mean achievement for a subject long afflicted by religious partisanship and now perhaps in danger of sympathetic attraction." -- Journal of American History "... fascinating reading it will be for those with a taste for good scholarly writing and a love of the American past and the manifold varieties of the spiritual quest." -- The Quest "In addition to being an excellent introduction to mid-19th-century Spiritualism, Carroll's work also offers scholars a new vantage point from which to view the religious creativity that was so prominent in antebellum America in general." -- Choice During the decade before the Civil War, a growing number of Americans gathered around tables in dimly lit rooms, joined hands, and sought enlightening contact with spirits. The result was Spiritualism, a distinctly colorful religious ideology centered on spirit communication and spirit activity. Spiritualism in Antebellum America analyzes the attempt by spiritually restless Americans of the 1840s and 1850s to negotiate a satisfying combination of freedom and authority as they sought a sense of harmony with the universe.
Download or read book Secularism in Antebellum America written by John Lardas Modern and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2011-11-11 with total page 349 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Ghosts. Railroads. Sing Sing. Sex machines. These are just a few of the phenomena that appear in John Lardas Modern’s pioneering account of religion and society in nineteenth-century America. This book uncovers surprising connections between secular ideology and the rise of technologies that opened up new ways of being religious. Exploring the eruptions of religion in New York’s penny presses, the budding fields of anthropology and phrenology, and Moby-Dick, Modern challenges the strict separation between the religious and the secular that remains integral to discussions about religion today. Modern frames his study around the dread, wonder, paranoia, and manic confidence of being haunted, arguing that experiences and explanations of enchantment fueled secularism’s emergence. The awareness of spectral energies coincided with attempts to tame the unruly fruits of secularism—in the cultivation of a spiritual self among Unitarians, for instance, or in John Murray Spear’s erotic longings for a perpetual motion machine. Combining rigorous theoretical inquiry with beguiling historical arcana, Modern unsettles long-held views of religion and the methods of narrating its past.
Download or read book Gospel of Disunion written by Mitchell Snay and published by UNC Press Books. This book was released on 2014-02-01 with total page 278 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The centrality of religion in the life of the Old South, the strongly religious nature of the sectional controversy over slavery, and the close affinity between religion and antebellum American nationalism all point toward the need to explore the role of religion in the development of southern sectionalism. In Gospel of Disunion Mitchell Snay examines the various ways in which religion adapted to and influenced the development of a distinctive southern culture and politics before the Civil War, adding depth and form to the movement that culminated in secession. From the abolitionist crisis of 1835 through the formation of the Confederacy in 1861, Snay shows how religion worked as an active agent in translating the sectional conflict into a struggle of the highest moral significance. At the same time, the slavery controversy sectionalized southern religion, creating separate institutions and driving theology further toward orthodoxy. By establishing a biblical sanction for slavery, developing a slaveholding ethic for Christian masters, and demonstrating the viability of separation from the North through the denominational schisms of the 1830s and 1840s, religion reinforced central elements in southern political culture and contributed to a moral consensus that made secession possible.
Download or read book The Village Enlightenment in America written by Craig Hazen and published by University of Illinois Press. This book was released on 2000-01-05 with total page 212 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Village Enlightenment in America focuses on three nineteenth-century spiritual activists who epitomized the marriage of science and religion fostered in antebellum, pre-Darwinian America by the American Enlightenment. A theologian, writer, and apologist for the nascent Mormon movement, as well as an amateur scientist, Orson Pratt wrote Key to the Universe, or a New Theory of Its Mechanism, to establish a scientific base for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Robert Hare, an inventor and ardent convert to spiritualism, used his scientific expertise to lend credence to the spiritualist movement. Phineas Parkhurst Quimby, generally considered the initiator of the American mind-cure movement, developed an overtly religious concept of science and used it to justify his system of theology. Pratt, Hare, and Quimby all employed a potent combination of popular science and Baconianism to legitimate their new religious ideas. Using the same terms--matter, ether, magnetic force--to account for the behavior of particles, planetary rotation, and the influence of the Holy Ghost, these agents of the Enlightenment constructed complex systems intended to demonstrate a fundamental harmony between the physical and the metaphysical. Through the lives and work of these three influential men, The Village Enlightenment in America opens a window to a time when science and religion, instead of seeming fundamentally at odds with each other, appeared entirely reconcilable.
Download or read book Radical Spirits written by Ann Braude and published by Indiana University Press. This book was released on 2020-05-25 with total page 308 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “Braude has discovered a crucial link between the early feminists and the spiritualists who so captured the American imagination.” —Los Angeles Times In Radical Spirits, Ann Braude contends that the early women’s rights movement and Spiritualism went hand in hand. Her book makes a convincing argument for the importance of religion in the study of American women’s history. In this new edition, Braude discusses the impact of the book on the scholarship of the last decade and assesses the place of religion in interpretations of women’s history in general and the women’s rights movement in particular. A review of current scholarship and suggestions for further reading make it even more useful for contemporary teachers and students. “It would be hard to imagine a book that more insightfully combined gender, social, and religious history together more perfectly than Radical Spirits. Braude still speaks powerfully to unique issues of women’s creativity—spiritual as well as political—in a superb account of the controversial nineteenth-century Spiritualist movement.” —Jon Butler, Howard R. Lamar Professor Emeritus of American Studies, History, and Religious Studies at Yale University “Continually rewarding.” —The New York Times Book Review “A fascinating, well-researched, and scholarly work on a peripheral aspect of the rise of the American feminist movement.” —Library Journal “A vitally important book . . . [that] has . . . influenced a generation of young scholars.” —Marie Griffith, associate director of the Center for the Study of Religion, Princeton University “An insightful book and a delightful read.” —Journal of American History
Download or read book The Routledge Historical Atlas of Religion in America written by Bret Carroll and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2013-10-23 with total page 145 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: First Published in 2001. Charting the history and geographic development of American religions, The Routledge Historical Atlas of Religion in America displays in vibrant visual and textual detail the intimate relationship between American spiritual belief and the events that formed the nation. Mirroring the variety found in America's religious past and present, coverage focuses on such diverse topics as: Indigenous American Religions, Russian Orthodoxy, French Catholicism, The Puritans, Judaism in the Colonies, The Great Awakening, American Metaphysical Movements, African American Churches, The Mormons, Islam, Buddhism and German Sects in Colonial America. Loaded with more than 50 full-color maps, charts, and illustrations, The Routledge Historical Atlas of Religion in America is an indispensable reference for those interested in the American religious experience.
Download or read book Church in the Wild written by Brett Grainger and published by . This book was released on 2019 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Since Perry Miller's 1940 essay on the connection between Puritan theology and Transcendentalism, "From Edwards to Emerson," there has been a dominant model for thinking about the relationship between American religion and nature. According to Miller, Emerson and his fellow New England elites were the only ones during the antebellum period to turn to nature for a direct, unmediated access to spirituality; this was part of their protest against the orthodoxy of Protestantism. We would, however, misunderstand the past if we forgot that New England Transcendentalists, as important as they are to American intellectual history, were an elite minority. There were other religious groups who also turned to the field and stream, the stone and the tree, in their everyday religious practice and their theology. Evangelical Christianity was the popular religion of antebellum America. During this period, evangelical relationships to the material world, and to nature at large, were closer to Catholicism than one might expect. Brett Malcolm Grainger makes two important arguments in this book: (1) early republic Evangelicals represent an important, non-derivative, and popular strand of American religious engagement with nature, a story often ignored while focusing on Emerson and Thoreau; and (2) the everyday religion of antebellum American Evangelicals shows us that the Catholic-Protestant divide over real presence needs to be reconsidered. Evangelical enchantment can be seen in field sermons, camp meetings, water cures, outdoor baptisms, and mesmerism. Grainger sheds light on a major religious movement that swept across antebellum America from Virginia, Kentucky, and Appalachia to Pennsylvania, Connecticut, and upstate New York.--
Download or read book The Routledge Historical Atlas of Religion in America written by Bret E. Carroll and published by Psychology Press. This book was released on 2000 with total page 148 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: First Published in 2001. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.
Download or read book Ghostly Communion written by John J. Kucich and published by Dartmouth College Press. This book was released on 2015-03-24 with total page 225 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this exceptional book, Kucich reveals through his readings of literary and historical accounts that spiritualism helped shape the terms by which Native American, European, and African cultures interacted in America from the earliest days of contact through the present. Beginning his study with a provocative juxtaposition of the Pueblo Indian Revolt and the Salem Witchcraft trials of the seventeenth century, Kucich examin[e]s how both events forged "contact zones" - spaces of intense cultural conflict and negotiation - mediated by spiritualism. Kucich goes on to chronicle how a diverse group of writers used spiritualism to reshape a range of such contact zones. These include Rochester, New York, where Harriet Jacobs adapted the spirit rappings of the Fox Sisters and the abolitionist writings of Frederick Douglass as she crafted her own story of escape from slavery; mid-century periodicals from the Atlantic Monthly to the Cherokee Advocate to the Anglo-African Magazine; post-bellum representations of the afterlife by Elizabeth Stuart Phelps, Mark Twain and the Native Americans who developed the Ghost Dance; turn-of-the-century local color fiction by writers like Sarah Orne Jewett, Charles Chesnutt and Maria Cristina Mena; and the New England reformist circles traced in Henry James's The Bostonians and Pauline Hopkins's Of One Blood. Kucich's conclusion looks briefly at New Age spiritualism, then considers the implications of a cross-cultural scholarship that draws on a variety of critical methodologies, from border and ethnic studies to feminism to post-colonialism and the public sphere. The implications of this study, which brings well-known, canonical writers and lesser-known writers into conversation with one another, are broadly relevant to the resurgent interest in religious studies and American cultural studies in general.
Download or read book The World of Antebellum America written by Alexandra Kindell and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 2018-09-20 with total page 840 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This set provides insight into the lives of ordinary Americans free and enslaved, in farms and cities, in the North and the South, who lived during the years of 1815 to 1860. Throughout the Antebellum Era resonated the theme of change: migration, urban growth, the economy, and the growing divide between North and South all led to great changes to which Americans had to respond. By gathering the important aspects of antebellum Americans' lives into an encyclopedia, The World of Antebellum America provides readers with the opportunity to understand how people across America lived and worked, what politics meant to them, and how they shaped or were shaped by economics. Entries on simple topics such as bread and biscuits explore workers' need for calories, the role of agriculture, and gendered divisions of labor, while entries on more complex topics, such as aging and death, disclose Americans' feelings about life itself. Collectively, the entries pull the reader into the lives of ordinary Americans, while section introductions tie together the entries and provide an overarching narrative that primes readers to understand key concepts about antebellum America before delving into Americans' lives in detail.
Download or read book Ghosts of Futures Past written by Molly McGarry and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 2012-09-30 with total page 284 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Simpson, imprint in humanities"--Page opposite title page.
Download or read book Wonder Shows written by Fred Nadis and published by Rutgers University Press. This book was released on 2005-01-13 with total page 335 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Wonder Shows, Fred Nadis offers a colorful history of these traveling magicians, inventors, popular science lecturers, and other presenters of “miracle science” who revealed science and technology to the public in awe-inspiring fashion. The book provides an innovative synthesis of the history of performance with a wider study of culture, science, and religion from the antebellum period to the present.
Download or read book Speaking with the Dead in Early America written by Erik R. Seeman and published by University of Pennsylvania Press. This book was released on 2019-11-01 with total page 344 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In late medieval Catholicism, mourners employed an array of practices to maintain connection with the deceased—most crucially, the belief in purgatory, a middle place between heaven and hell where souls could be helped by the actions of the living. In the early sixteenth century, the Reformation abolished purgatory, as its leaders did not want attention to the dead diminishing people's devotion to God. But while the Reformation was supposed to end communication between the living and dead, it turns out the result was in fact more complicated than historians have realized. In the three centuries after the Reformation, Protestants imagined continuing relationships with the dead, and the desire for these relations came to form an important—and since neglected—aspect of Protestant belief and practice. In Speaking with the Dead in Early America, historian Erik R. Seeman undertakes a 300-year history of Protestant communication with the dead. Seeman chronicles the story of Protestants' relationships with the deceased from Elizabethan England to puritan New England and then on through the American Enlightenment into the middle of the nineteenth century with the explosion of interest in Spiritualism. He brings together a wide range of sources to uncover the beliefs and practices of both ordinary people, especially women, and religious leaders. This prodigious research reveals how sermons, elegies, and epitaphs portrayed the dead as speaking or being spoken to, how ghost stories and Gothic fiction depicted a permeable boundary between this world and the next, and how parlor songs and funeral hymns encouraged singers to imagine communication with the dead. Speaking with the Dead in Early America thus boldly reinterprets Protestantism as a religion in which the dead played a central role.
Download or read book A Luminous Brotherhood written by Emily Suzanne Clark and published by UNC Press Books. This book was released on 2016-08-26 with total page 281 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the midst of a nineteenth-century boom in spiritual experimentation, the Cercle Harmonique, a remarkable group of African-descended men, practiced Spiritualism in heavily Catholic New Orleans from just before the Civil War to the end of Reconstruction. In this first comprehensive history of the Cercle, Emily Suzanne Clark illuminates how highly diverse religious practices wind in significant ways through American life, culture, and history. Clark shows that the beliefs and practices of Spiritualism helped Afro-Creoles mediate the political and social changes in New Orleans, as free blacks suffered increasingly restrictive laws and then met with violent resistance to suffrage and racial equality. Drawing on fascinating records of actual seance practices, the lives of the mediums, and larger citywide and national contexts, Clark reveals how the messages that the Cercle received from the spirit world offered its members rich religious experiences as well as a forum for political activism inspired by republican ideals. Messages from departed souls including Francois Rabelais, Abraham Lincoln, John Brown, Robert E. Lee, Emanuel Swedenborg, and even Confucius discussed government structures, the moral progress of humanity, and equality. The Afro-Creole Spiritualists were encouraged to continue struggling for justice in a new world where "bright" spirits would replace raced bodies.
Download or read book American Masculinities A Historical Encyclopedia written by Bret Carroll and published by SAGE Publications. This book was released on 2003-10-14 with total page 577 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "This is a highly recommended purchase for undergraduate, medium-sized, and large public libraries wishing to provide a substantial introduction to the field of men′s studies." --Reference & User Services Quarterly "Pleasing layout and good cross-references make Carroll′s compendium a welcome addition to collections serving readers of all ages. Highly recommended." --CHOICE "An excellent index, well-chosen photographs and illustrations, and an extensive bibliography add further value. American Masculinities is well worth what would otherise be too hefty a price for many libraries because no other encyclopedia comes close to covering this growing field so well." --American Reference Books Annual American Masculinities: A Historical Encyclopedia is a first-of-its-kind reference, detailing developments in the growing field of men′s studies. This up-to-date analytical review serves as a marker of how the field has evolved over the last decade, especially since the 1993 publication of Anthony Rotundo′s American Manhood. This seminal book opened new vistas for exploration and research into American History, society, and culture. Weaving the fabric of American history, American Masculinities illustrates how American political leaders have often used the rhetoric of manliness to underscore the presumed moral righteousness and ostensibly protective purposes of their policies. Seeing U.S. history in terms of gender archetypes, readers will gain a richer and deeper understanding of America′s democratic political system, domestic and foreign policies, and capitalist economic system, as well as the "private" sphere of the home and domestic life. The contributors to American Masculinities share the assumption that men′s lives have been grounded fundamentally in gender, that is, in their awareness of themselves as males. Their approach goes beyond scholarship which traditionally looks at men (and women) in terms of what they do and how they have influenced a given field or era. Rather, this important work delves into the psychological core of manhood which is shaped not only by biology, but also by history, society, and culture. Encapsulating the current state of scholarly interpretation within the field of Men′s Studies, American Masculinities: A Historical Encyclopedia is designed to help students and scholars advance their studies, develop new questions for research, and stimulate new ways of exploring the history of American life. Key Features - Reader′s Guide facilitates browsing by topic and easy access to information - Extensive name, place, and concept index gives users an additional means of locating topics of interest - More than 250 entries, each with suggestions for further reading - Cross references direct users to related information - Comprehensive bibliography includes a list of sources organized by categories in the field Topics Covered - Arts, Literature, and Popular Culture - Body, Health, and Sexuality - Class, Ethnic, Racial, and Religious Identities - Concepts and Theories - Family and Fatherhood - General History - Icons and Symbols - Leisure and Work - Movements and Organizations - People - Political and Social Issues About the Editor Bret E. Carroll is Associate Professor of History at California State University, Stanislaus. He received his Ph.D. from Cornell University in 1991. He is author of The Routledge Historical Atlas of Religion in America (1997), Spiritualism in Antebellum America (1997), and several articles on nineteenth-century masculinity.
Download or read book Cosmos Crumbling written by Robert H. Abzug and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 1994 with total page 312 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Others offered programs of physiological and spiritual self-reform: phrenology, vegetarianism, the water-cure, spiritualism, and miscellaneous others. "Even the insect world was to be defended," Emerson mused, "and a society for the protection of ground-worms, slugs, and mosquitoes was to be incorporated without delay.".
