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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... they denied the age - old distinction that set the clergy apart as a separate order of men , and they refused to defer to learned theologians and traditional orthodoxies . All were democratic or populist in the Introduction 19.
... as that of the most learned . This book grows out of the wealth and diversity of these sources and the popular ideologies they poignantly convey . Populist Leaders and Democratic Movements This is a book about Introduction / II.
... learned and orthodox disdained early Methodism's new revival measures , notions of free will , and perfectionism . But they despaired that the wrong sort of people had joined Methodism— people who rejected social authority's claim to ...
... learned advocates , and their children , when sick , attended by able physicians ; they were satisfied to place their Religion , their souls , and their salvation , under the guidance of quackery.5 Timothy Dwight , like Beecher , linked ...
... learned his botanic medi- cine in rural New Hampshire at the close of the eighteenth century . After 18oo he extended his practice into Essex County , Massachusetts , where he became embroiled in a series of personal and legal conflicts ...
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 |