Religious Enthusiasm in the New World, Heresy to Revolution (review)

Abstract

56Quaker History Quakers to address but each needs careful, critical appraisal. Perhaps Seth Hinshaw 's "brief overview" will stimulate others to pursue such studies. Utah State UniversityClyde A. Milner II Religious Enthusiasm in the New World, Heresy to Revolution. By David S. Lovejoy. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1985. 336 pp. $25.00. "What did John of Leyden, Anne Hutchinson, William Penn, and George Whitefield have in common?" This is the question posed by David Lovejoy on the first page of his comprehensive and highly readable study of enthusiasm in America from the seventeenth century to the American Revolution. Lovejoy defines enthusiasts as those devout sectarians "who would not, could not, contain their zeal within the organized limits of religious convention . . . [They] practiced a personal experimental religion which hinged, they believed, on direct inspiration." Enthusiasts sought an emotional relationship with God and with their co-religionists; they denigrated education and intellectual effort in general as an arid, unauthentic means of perception. They often resorted to extreme, highly theatrical gestures, such as going naked in public, and they were accused ofeven more deviant behavior by their contemporaries who pictured them indulging in orgies and conspiring to overthrow established society. Lovejoy does not link his narrative account to theoretical models of the sort provided by anthropologists or sociologists writing on similar movements, such as Victor Turner, Peter Worsley or Brian Harrison. He makes only a rudimentary attempt to relate enthusiastic behavior to general social processes or to specific social types. Indeed, some readers might complain of a lack ofhistorical or theoretical precision in statements such as, "Seventeenth-century England seemed to have its share of men and women who sought more emotional, more open, less regimented religious experiences than what establishments could offer" (p. 122); or, "It is easy to make too much of turning points . . . but . . . historians need all the help they can get in making sense out of the past" (p. 135). On the other hand readers are certain to admire Lovejoy's impressive grasp of a wide range of historical material and his ability to write lucidly, even entertainingly, about figures as diverse as the antinomian Anne Hutchinson, the Quaker George Keith, the Mennonite Pieter Cornelius Plockhoy, and the transcendentalist Ralph Waldo Emerson. Instead of an elaborate theoretical synthesis Lovejoy presents a number of straightforward, narrative accounts of a variety of enthusiastic individuals and movements from Anne Hutchinson and the Quakers to the Great Awakening , and concludes by assessing both the positive and negative impact of enthusiasm in American history. In a final chapter "Enthusiasm and the Cause ofMankind" he stresses the positive significance of secularized enthusiasm in the period of the American Revolution: "Secularized, enlarged, and idealized, enthusiasm took on more positive meaning when subjected to Revolutionary circumstances, particularly in the minds of radical patriots who sought in revolution "further truths" commensurate with New World promises and opportunities" (p. 225). While Lovejoy points out that, "From the sixteenth century well into the nineteenth , enthusiasm bore usually a pejorative connotation, ..." his own account of religious enthusiasm is written from a perspective which he would probably characterize as balanced and neutral. Unlike Norman Cohn, who linked millenarian movements to modern fascism and Stalinism, or Christopher Hill, who—from the exact opposite perspective—viewed seventeenth century sectarians as heros of class struggle, Lovejoy makes no explicit judgments about the value of his subjects' historical contribution. In fact I would argue that Lovejoy does present a value-laden account of enthusiastic behavior—one that is often extremely condescending. Not only does Lovejoy deny his subjects—especially the women—any intellectual stature Book Reviews57 (Anne Hutchinson didn't think; she "soaked up" antinomianism (p. 68)), but he virtually ignores many of the spiritual and social achievements ofthese practitioners of radical religion. Lovejoy's analysis of early Quakerism is an example. It is an account based almost totally on anti-Quaker writings. The reader is treated to detailed descriptions of Quakers appearing naked in public (including the theologian Robert Barclay), their "trembling and quaking, . . . shrieking and howling and yelling and roaring . . ." and to an account oftheir desire to "swing with the Spirit" (pp. 113, 115). We learn nothing, however, of Barclay's eloquent spiritual...