A New Perspective on the Burned-Over District: The Millerites in Upstate New York

Abstract

Whitney R. Cross'sThe Burned-over District:. The Social and Intellectual History of Enthusiastic Religion in Western New York, 1800–1850, first published in 1950 by Cornell University Press, has had a puzzling reception from the scholarly world. On the one hand, its quantity of research and quality of insight earned the book a reputation as one of the principal studies of innovative religion in America. On the other hand, despite the frequency with which historians have cited it, until recently no one has attempted a systematic consideration of its hypotheses and conclusions.