The Democratization of American ChristianityA provocative reassessment of religion and culture in the early days of the American republic "The so-called Second Great Awakening was the shaping epoch of American Protestantism, and this book is the most important study of it ever published."—James Turner, Journal of Interdisciplinary History
Winner of the John Hope Franklin Publication Prize, the Society for Historians of the Early American Republic book prize, and the Albert C. Outler Prize In this provocative reassessment of religion and culture in the early days of the American republic, Nathan O. Hatch argues that during this period American Christianity was democratized and common people became powerful actors on the religious scene. Hatch examines five distinct traditions or mass movements that emerged early in the nineteenth century—the Christian movement, Methodism, the Baptist movement, the black churches, and the Mormons—showing how all offered compelling visions of individual potential and collective aspiration to the unschooled and unsophisticated. |
From inside the book
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... itinerant of sorts , crisscrossing the landscape of religious sources from the early re- public . Time and again ... itinerants ( chapter 4 ) , and in assisting with the appendix and the index . Finally , a word of gratitude to my family ...
... itinerant Lorenzo Dow should be allowed to influence their congregations , and after 1800 the British leadership successfully barred Dow from their meetings . This sort of control was impossible in America . Despite the misgivings of ...
... itinerants kept on the advice of Wesley and Asbury and that Baptists and other revivalists wrote in the tradition of Whitefield . These sources give splendid testimony to the conviction of unlearned preachers and show that their own ...
... itinerant to take note of Beecher's aspersion of common preachers . In his discourse On Church Government , Lorenzo Dow found in Beecher's condescension " a Snake in the grass . " " I see no gospel law that authorizes any man , or set ...
... prominent Methodist itinerant included both lawyers and doctors under the " wo " of prophecy . And the Mormon prophet Joseph Smith and his successor Brigham Young aligned the early Mormon movement closely with Crisis of Authority 29.
Contents
3 | |
17 | |
49 | |
67 | |
The Sovereign Audience | 125 |
The Right to Think for Oneself | 162 |
Upward Aspiration and Democratic Dissent | 193 |
The Recurring Populist | 210 |
A Sampling of Anticlerical | 227 |
Notes | 244 |
Index | 305 |
Other editions - View all
The Democratization of American Christianity Nathan O. Hatch,Professor Nathan O Hatch Limited preview - 1989 |