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,...

Religion and American Culture challenges the religion's traditional emphasis on older European, American, male, middle-class, Protestant, northeastern narratives concerned primarily with churches and theology. Breaking through the field with multicultural tales of Native American, African Americans and other groups that cut across boundaries of gender, class, religion and region, David Hackett's anthology offers an illuminating and comprehensive overview of the most exciting work currently underway in this field.

Today the study of American religion continues to move away from an older, European American, male, middle-class, northeastern, Protestant narrative concerned primarily with churches and theology and toward a multicultural tale of Native Americans, African Americans, Catholics, Jews and other groups. Many of these new studies cut across boundaries of gender, class, and region, and pay particular attention to popular religion. Most current textbooks remain wed to the older Protestant narrative. The purpose of this reader is to expose students to a broad overview of the work emerging from this...

This powerful study weaves the story of Freemasonry into the narrative of American religious history. Freighted with the mythical legacies of stonemasons guilds and the Newtonian revolution, English Freemasonry arrived in colonial America with a vast array of cultural baggage, which was drawn on, added to, and transformed during its sojourn through American culture. David G. Hackett argues that from the 1730s through the early twentieth century the religious worlds of an evolving American social order broadly appropriated the beliefs and initiatory practices of this all-male society. For much...

This powerful study weaves the story of Freemasonry into the narrative of American religious history. Freighted with the mythical legacies of stonemasons guilds and the Newtonian revolution, English Freemasonry arrived in colonial America with a vast array of cultural baggage, which was drawn on, added to, and transformed during its sojourn through American culture. David G. Hackett argues that from the 1730s through the early twentieth century the religious worlds of an evolving American social order broadly appropriated the beliefs and initiatory practices of this all-male society. For much...