Evangelical Secularism and the Measure of Leviathan

Abstract

Statistics point to a “surge” in evangelical publications as well as in the practices of evangelical piety in the first half of the nineteenth century. In order to explain these parallel trends, however, mere measurement falls short in adequately addressing the strange power evangelical media institutions assumed during this period. In 1825, for example, the American Tract Society announced its agenda of “systematic organization,” a directive that applied equally,and simultaneously, to words on the page, to readers on the ground, and to the airy abstractions of the nation-state.