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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... religious leadership that the public deemed " untutored " and " irregular " as late as the First Great Awakening became overwhelmingly successful , even normative , in the first decades of the republic . Ministers from different classes ...
... religious populists . A Passion for Equality America's nonrestrictive environment permitted an unexpected and often explosive conjunction of evangelical fervor and popular sov- ereignty . It was this engine that accelerated the process ...
... religious movements openly fanned the flames of religious ecstasy . Reject- ing the Yankee Calvinism of his youth in ... religion , long held in check by the church , were recognized and encouraged from the pulpit . It is no wonder that ...
... religious story of the early republic is the signal achievements of these and other populist religious leaders — outsiders who used democratic persua- sions to reconstruct the foundations of religious authority . The strands of this ...
... religion outside Christian institutions . The theme of democratic leadership brings into sharper focus certain deep and recurring patterns in American religious history . At the outset , it is important to note several things that such ...
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 |