This path-breaking study analyzes the social and religious transformation of Albany, New York, from the town's colonial origins through industrialization in the early nineteenth century. Rather than see the transformation of traditional societies as a process of modernization, Hackett adopts a broader conception of religion as a cultural system and argues that culture influences social order differently in different historical periods. During most of Albany's colonial period, the Dutch townspeople absorbed British people and customs into their Calvinist way of life. Following the Revolution,...

Ramsey presents a new analysis and interpretation of the religious views of the nineteenth-century American philosopher William James. He argues that James was primarily motivated by religious concerns in his writings and that this fact has been obscured by the artificial scholarly division of his "philosophy," "psychology," and "religion"--a symptom of the professionalization which James himself strenuously resisted in his own time. Ramsey believes that James is best understood in his historical context, as a representative of a society and culture struggling to come to terms with modernity....

The first major study since the 1930s of the relationship between American Transcendentalism and Asian religions, and the first comprehensive work to include post-Civil War Transcendentalists like Samuel Johnson, this book is encyclopedic in scope. Beginning with the inception of Transcendentalist Orientalism in Europe, Versluis covers the entire history of American Transcendentalism into the twentieth century, and the profound influence of Orientalism on the movement--including its analogues and influences in world religious dialogue. He examines what he calls "positive Orientalism," which...

Standing Against the Whirlwind is a history of the Evangelical party in the Episcopal Church in nineteenth-century America. A surprising revisionist account of the church's first century, it reveals the extent to which evangelical Episcopalians helped to shape the piety, identity, theology, and mission of the church. Using the life and career of one of the party's greatest leaders, Charles Pettit McIlvaine, the second bishop of Ohio, Diana Butler blends institutional history with biography to explore the vicissitudes and tribulations of evangelicals in a church that often seemed...

The first book-length treatment of its topic, this study is aimed at abolishing the old cliche that Congregationalism failed to adapt to the democratizing culture of the westward migration. Drawing on hundreds of previously unused letters, journals, and sermons, the author argues that Congregational missionaries were aggressive evangelists who successfully adjusted to the egalitarian demands of the early republican frontier. Keepers of the Covenant critically examines the various explanations for the decline of Congregationalism after the American Revolution, and in the process,...

Following the Revolutionary War, American Methodism grew at an astonishing rate, rising from fewer than 1000 members in 1770 to over 250,000 by 1820. In Taking Heaven by Storm, John H. Wigger seeks to explain this remarkable expansion, offering a provocative reassessment of the role of popular religion in American life.

Early Methodism was neither bland nor predictable; rather, it was a volatile and innovative movement, both driven and constrained by the hopes and fears of the ordinary Americans who constituted its core. Methodism's style, tone, and agenda worked their way deep...

Our Lady of the Exile is a study of Cuban-American popular Catholicism, focusing on the shrine of Our Lady Charity in Miami. Drawing on a wide range of sources and using both historical and ethnographic methods, the book examines the religious life of the Cuban exiles who visit the shrine. Those pilgrims are diverse, and so are the motives that bring them. At the same time, author Thomas A. Tweed argues, Cuban devotees of the national patroness share a great deal. Most come to pray for their homeland and to recreate bonds with other Cubans, on the island and in the diaspora. The...

Ever since Max Weber started an argument about the role of Protestantism in jump-starting northern Europe's economic development, scholars have clashed over the influence of religion and culture on a society's (or an individual's) economic prospects. Today, many wonder whether the "explosion" of Protestantism in Latin America will effect a similar wave of growth and democratization. In this book, Sherman compiles the results of her field study and national survey of 1000 rural Guatemalan households. She offers persuasive evidence that, in Guatemala and throughout the region, religious...

Mormonism is one of the world's fastest growing religions, doubling its membership every 15 years. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (the formal denomination of the Mormon church) is now 10 million strong, with more than half of its membership coming from outside the United States. More than 88 million copies of The Book of Mormon have been printed, and it has been translated into more than 50 languages. Mormons in America tells the tumultuous story of this religious group, from its humble origins in small-town New York State in 1830 to its present heyday. Claudia and Richard...

Written from the perspective of the various denominations that thrived in the 19th century, this comprehensive survey of the middle period in America's religious past actually starts a little earlier, in the 1780s. In the aftermath of the American Revolution, the citizens of the newly-minted republic had to cope with more than the havoc wreaked on churches and denominations by the war. They also tasted for the first time the effects of two novel ideas incorporated in the Constitution and the First Amendment: the separation of church and state and the freedom to practice any religion.
Grant...