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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... prophet and revelator . And groups such as the Disciples of Christ , despite professed democratic structures , were eventually controlled by such powerful individuals as Alexander Campbell , who had little patience with dissent . As ...
... prophets such as Elias Smith , Lorenzo Dow , and Theophilus Gates or black preachers such as Richard Allen or Daniel Coker on an equal footing with Jonathan Edwards or Timothy Dwight . Many of these popular figures also published far ...
... prophets or apostles , that I could have had sure guides . " LORENZO DOW , 1804 By 1814 Timothy Dwight , the president of Yale , had ample cause for good cheer . Under his tutelage , a remarkable coalition of talented leaders had ...
... A 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.
... prophets in these agrarian movements . A hostile critic of Yankee squatters in New York compared the religious ferment with that of the English Civil War . The Yankees were A set of fierce republicans , if anything sneaking and drawling ...
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 |
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The Democratization of American Christianity Nathan O. Hatch,Professor Nathan O Hatch Limited preview - 1989 |