Challenging the formidable tradition that places early New England Puritanism at the center of the American religious experience; Yale historian Jon Butler offers a new interpretation of three hundred years of religious and cultural development. Butler stresses the instability of religion in Europe where state churches battled dissenters; magic; and astonishingly low church participation. He charts the transfer of these difficulties to America; including the failure of Puritan religious models; and describes the surprising advance of religious commitment there between 1700 and 1865. Through the assertion of authority and coercion; a remarkable sacralization of the prerevolutionary countryside; advancing religious pluralism; the folklorization of magic; and an eclectic; syncretistic emphasis on supernatural interventionism; including miracles; America emerged after 1800 as an extraordinary spiritual hothouse that far eclipsed the Puritan achievement―even as secularism triumphed in Europe.Awash in a Sea of Faith ranges from popular piety to magic; from anxious revolutionary war chaplains to the cool rationalism of James Madison; from divining rods and seer stones to Anglican and Unitarian elites; and from Virginia Anglican occultists and Presbyterians raised from the dead to Jonathan Edwards; Joseph Smith; and Abraham Lincoln. Butler deftly comes to terms with conventional themes such as Puritanism; witchcraft; religion and revolution; revivalism; millenarianism; and Mormonism. His elucidation of Christianity’s powerful role in shaping slavery and of a subsequent African spiritual “holocaust;†with its ironic result in African Christianization; is an especially fresh and incisive account.Awash in a Sea of Faith reveals the proliferation of American religious expression―not its decline―and stresses the creative tensions between pulpit and pew across three hundred years of social maturation. Striking in its breadth and deeply rooted in primary sources; this seminal book recasts the landscape of American religious and cultural history.
#432468 in Books Belknap Press 2013-02-26Original language:EnglishPDF # 1 9.28 x 1.63 x 6.48l; 2.15 #File Name: 0674045556560 pages
Review
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful. On a scale of 1 - 5 stars; I give it 6.By Robert BainWalter Johnson's River of Dark Dreams: Slavery and Empire in the Cotton Kingdom offers; is the critical scholarship that our assessment of the slavery institution has needed as it that has everything to do with what we are were as a nation and perhaps even why; in large part; we remain there; chained but unlinked; as it were; to our national past. Bookended with Edward Baptist's The Half Has Never Been Told: Slavery and he Making of American Capitalism we are far better able to reckon with past tense as present tense toward a future tense. As ably said by William Faulkner: "the past is not dead; it's not even past." Like Edward Baptist's; this work warrants; on a scale of one to five stars; nothing less than six stars -- both important reads for us all.9 of 12 people found the following review helpful. Real HistoryBy James P. PatutoTough; scholarly ; well written; fantastically researched study of all aspects of slavery in the Mississippi Valley. If you really want to understand the causes of the Civil War; economic ; social; geographical; and even psychological this book is a must. It doesn't pretend to give easy answers but anyone who reads it will understand the mindset that allowed the slave holders to plunge their region into war. research that delves into the popular writings of the day; and private diaries ; that saw slavery as not an institution to eventually wither but one that should embrace more of the world. The cruel economics of forced labor; punishment; meager food; and the sale of human flesh are exposed beyond the myths that are held by many readers of history. Highly recommend; but be prepared it is one of the few histories that will truly change perceptions and deepen understanding.6 of 8 people found the following review helpful. River of Dark DreamsBy william P. CollinsA marvelous work with a perspective I have never encounteredin my reading on this topic. Interweaving day to day details withthe broader narrative was a very superior way to present ths materialI read it straight through
