The Democratization of American Christianity
- ISBN-10
- 0300159560
- ISBN-13
- 9780300159561
- Category
- Religion
- Pages
- 326
- Language
- English
- Published
- 1991-01-23
- Publisher
- Yale University Press
- Author
- Nathan O. Hatch
Description
In this prize-winning book Nathan O. Hatch offers a provocative reassessment of religion and culture in the early days of the American republic, arguing 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. "Rarely do works of scholarship deserve as much attention as this one. 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 "The most powerful, informed, and complex suggestion yet made about the religious, political, and psychic 'opening' of American life from Jefferson to Jackson. . . . Hatch's reconstruction of his five religious mass movements will add popular religious culture to denominationalism, church and state, and theology as primary dimensions of American religious history."—Robert M. Calhoon, William and Mary Quarterly "Hatch's revisionist work asks us to put the religion of the early republic in a radically new perspective. . . . He has written one of the finest books on American religious history to appear in many years."—James H. Moorhead, Theology Today The manuscript version of this book was awarded the 1988 Albert C. Outler Prize in Ecumenical Church History from the American Society of Church History Awarded the 1989 book prize of the Society for Historians of the Early American Republic for the best book in the history of the early republic (1789-1850) Co-winner of the 1990 John Hope Franklin Publication Prize given by the American Studies Association for the best book in American Studies Nathan O. Hatch is professor of history and vice president for Graduate Studies and Research at the University of Notre Dame.
Get the book
Other editions
Similar books
-
Calvinism: A History
By Darryl HartRaising important questions about secularization, religious freedom, privatization of faith, and the place of religion in public life, this book will appeal not only to readers with interests in the history of religion but also in the role ...
-
America's God: From Jonathan Edwards to Abraham Lincoln
By Mark A. Noll... that I received many years ago at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School from David Wells, John Woodbridge, and the late John Gerstner, and then at Vanderbilt University from Douglas Leach, Paul Hardacre, and the late Richard Wolf.
-
Reclaiming Our Health: A Guide to African American Wellness
By Michelle A. GourdineSays Gourdine, “I wrote this book to empower our community to solve our own health problems and save our own lives.”
-
Christians in the American Revolution
By Mark A. NollNoll examines the influence of various religious convictions on the movement for independence and, conversely, the effect of the Revolution on colonial church bodies and their understanding of Christian truth.
-
Christian Imperialism: Converting the World in the Early American Republic
By Emily Conroy-KrutzEmily Conroy-Krutz shows the surprising extent of the early missionary impulse and demonstrates that American evangelical Protestants of the early nineteenth century were motivated by Christian imperialism—an understanding of ...
-
Conceived in Doubt: Religion and Politics in the New American Nation
By Amanda PorterfieldLetter from John Adams to Abigail Adams, March 19, 1776, in Adams Family Papers: An Electronic Archive (Boston: Massachusetts Historical Society), http://www.masshist.org/ digitaladams/,last accessedJune 17, 2011.
-
The Best of The Reformed Journal
By Ronald Wells, James BrattFor four decades, from 1951 to 1990, The Reformed Journal set the standard for top-notch, venturesome theological reflection on a broad range of issues.
-
When Church Became Theatre: The Transformation of Evangelical Architecture and Worship in Nineteenth-century America
By Jeanne Halgren KildeThis text focuses on the shift in evangelical Protestant architecture in the 1880s and links it to changes in worship style and religious mission. It focuses on how these buildings helped congregations negotiate social and personal power.
-
Thieves in the Temple: The Christian Church and the Selling of the American Soul
By G. Jeffrey MacDonaldA pastor and religious journalistÕs cri de coeur for a new religious reformation, denouncing the consumer-friendly congregations and therapeutic ministry of the mega-church era
-
Faith and Knowledge: Mainline Protestantism and American Higher Education
By Douglas SloanStill , one extremely important source of hope for the work of the committee was the president of the National Council of Churches himself , J. Irwin Miller . An industrialist and Disciples of Christ layman from Indiana , Miller ...