Great Awakening Research Articles

A Kingdom Divided: Evangelicals, Loyalty, and Sectionalism in the Civil War Era by April E. Holm

Reviewed by: A Kingdom Divided: Evangelicals, Loyalty, and Sectionalism in the Civil War Era by April E. Holm Christopher M. Bishop A Kingdom Divided: Evangelicals, Loyalty, and Sectionalism in the Civil War Era. By April E. Holm. (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2017. Pp. 276.) April E. Holm has produced a work of lasting significance to scholars of the nineteenth century. Holm “uses religion as a critical lens through which to analyze sectionalism, war, and reunion” (1). She considers shifting sectional identity in what became the border region, the ways in which evangelicals there understood the sectional crisis and Civil War, and explains how border ideology became significant later in the century. Far from being peripheral players, Holm demonstrates that evangelical border moderates played a major role in their denominations and helped define a distinctive regional identity that was neither southern nor northern. Before the Ohio Valley was thought of as the border, it was the West. During the Second Great Awakening, evangelicals believed it was their divine errand to bring Christianity to the region, where they built strong institutions and competed fiercely for converts. Once established, “Evangelicals in the West . . . argued that the people of their region had spiritual needs that differed from those of the East and these needs warranted separate regional institutions” (36–37). These new institutions helped forge regional identity. But as slavery became increasingly divisive, the West found itself trapped in the middle. The slavery debate spilled into the religious realm, dividing Methodists, Presbyterians, and Baptists into sectional branches. For their part, border evangelicals “viewed themselves as intermediaries between irrational actors in the North and the South” (40). Moderates prized denominational unity and felt that abolitionism posed a far greater danger than slavery. This religious tension helped transform the West into a new border region. Denominational schisms marked the beginning—not end—of intense factionalism in the border region. Throughout the 1850s, churches urged border Christians to take sides and worked to secure their loyalty. Moderates, on the other hand, demanded religious leaders leave politics out of religion and asserted that slavery was political in nature. As southern [End Page 95] denominations embraced the Confederacy and their northern brethren took up the banner of the Union, border preachers articulated the philosophy known as the spirituality of the church, meaning that religious organizations served a spiritual purpose and political discussion was off-limits. In the end, neutrality alienated both sides. Holm compellingly describes how state actors insinuated themselves into this religious struggle. Army officers maintained that neutrality was treason and coerced Christians along the border to actively pray for the Union, frequently requiring ministers to take loyalty oaths and display flags or face imprisonment and banishment. Edwin M. Stanton even ordered northern officers to place southern Methodist pulpits into the hands of loyal ministers from the northern Methodist church. Confederate defeat escalated religious conflict. In places like Kentucky, Missouri, and West Virginia, neutral moderates who remained loyal to northern denominations now seemed suspect. The middle ground they hoped to occupy vanished when northern churches openly embraced abolitionism and the Republican Party at the end of the war. Under pressure to take a political stand, many defected to southern churches, seen as less radical by comparison. Southerners enthusiastically welcomed them and co-opted their culture of political neutrality. The doctrine of the spirituality of the church became an article of faith for southern evangelicals, which made them feel superior to northern evangelicals, while they still supported the racial status quo. Later in the century, polemicists produced histories of schisms and war which aired old grievances and declared their rivals to be apostates. In an era of reconciliation, denominations kept sectionalism strong. A Kingdom Divided is based on excellent primary sources, including newspapers, letters, diaries, contemporary accounts, government documents, and denominational records. Holm provides an illuminating history of the doctrine of the spirituality of the church, a key idea in southern religious history. The perspective of the border further shows that sectional religious conflict played out across the nineteenth century and did not subside even when conciliation was in full swing. Scholars of particular denominations will quibble over minor points and the author’s treatment of the...

Civic Longing: The Speculative Origins of U.S. Citizenship by Carrie Hyde

Reviewed by: Civic Longing: The Speculative Origins of U.S. Citizenship by Carrie Hyde Rebecca E. Zietlow (bio) Civic Longing: The Speculative Origins of U.S. Citizenship. By Carrie Hyde. (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2018. Pp. 308. Cloth, $45.00.) What role does the imagination play at a time of national crisis? That question is at the heart of Carrie Hyde's recent book, Civic Longing: The Speculative Origins of U.S. Citizenship. In it, Hyde discusses the political and cultural history of citizenship in the United States before the Civil War. Disputes over the meaning of citizenship were commonplace in the antebellum era, and citizenship played a central role in the legal reforms of the Reconstruction era. While historians and legal scholars have thus explored legal precedents in depth to understand the meaning of citizenship in the Reconstruction era, Hyde, an English professor, brings a unique perspective to this discussion by exploring the cultural significance of citizenship outside the law. Instead of political debates and legal rulings, Hyde examines religious texts, essays, and works of fiction to illustrate alternative visions of citizenship that enhanced the debate over some of the most important and divisive issues in the antebellum era. The American Revolution transformed subjects into citizens, but the original United States Constitution neither defined citizenship nor delineated the rights enjoyed by citizens. In the political realm, antislavery activists often invoked citizenship as a basis of rights for free blacks. The U.S. Supreme Court rejected those arguments in the infamous case of Dred Scott v. Sandford (1857), holding that blacks could never be citizens. After the Civil War, the Fourteenth Amendment's citizenship clause overturned the Dred Scott ruling and established birthright citizenship. But what did it mean to be a U.S. citizen in nineteenth-century America? A wave of immigration during this era complicated this inquiry, as did the uncertain status of American Indians, who were native to the continent but belonged to tribes that considered themselves as separate sovereign nations. Belonging, or the failure to belong, was central to the debate over slavery, secession, and the rights established by the Fourteenth Amendment. Hyde shows how literature created space for debate over the meaning of belonging. In the time of the Second Great Awakening, religion was bound to influence the debate over slavery. Hyde argues that Christians were influenced by new translations of Paul's letter to the Philippians, which referred to "citizens of heaven." Some interpreted this language as identifying heaven, rather than the nation, "as the supreme home to which one owed allegiance" (46). This doctrine arguably provided an excuse for disengagement in the political realm, but Hyde claims that it also provided a forum for [End Page 149] exploring what citizenship could mean in the corporal realm. For example, in her 1856 novel, Dred: A Tale of the Great Dismal Swamp, Harriet Beecher Stowe portrays "an egalitarian image of heavenly citizenship as a counterfactual imperative for a racially inclusive model of political citizenship in the United States" (81). Here Stowe, whom Abraham Lincoln purportedly referred to as "the little woman who started this great war," presented an egalitarian model for what could happen after the war ended slavery. Hyde shows how fiction contributed to another argument raised by abolitionists, the claim that slavery violated natural law. She describes Frederick Douglass's novel The Heroic Slave (1852) as a fictional account of a slave rebellion that took place on a slave ship. Douglass uses the open seas as a metaphor for the state of nature, invoking the natural world as a symbol of liberty and reform. In a famous quotation from the book, Douglass insists, "You cannot write the bloody laws of slavery on those restless billows. The ocean, if not the land, is free" (106). According to Hyde, Douglass links nature and citizenship to formulate the "natural citizen," where freedom is the state of nature. During congressional debates over the Fourteenth Amendment, many of its proponents agreed with Douglass that the rights of citizenship included natural rights. Some of the authors discussed in Civic Longing explored the flip side of citizenship: the ability to relinquish it. For example, in his essay "The Custom...

Колониальная пресса Британской Америки о событиях и религиозной полемике первого «Великого Пробуждения» 1730—1740-х годов

Колониальная пресса Британской Америки о событиях и религиозной полемике первого «Великого Пробуждения» 1730—1740-х годов

Virginia y la reforma de la esclavitud, 1800–1865: Los límites del progreso en una sociedad esclavista (Virginia and the reform of slavery, 1800–1865: The limits of progress in a slave society)

This important book is written by Gerardo Gurza Lavalle, a professor specializing in the history of the United States during the nineteenth century, including its relationship with Mexico. He has taught and led research for many years at the Instituto de Investigaciones Dr. José María Luis Mora in Mexico. This book is essentially a Spanish translation of his Ph.D. thesis presented at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. It is a diachronic study of efforts led mainly by Christian ministers belonging to the African Colonization Society to gradually abolish slavery and then send the emancipated to Africa after they were Christianized and ready to Christianize the “pagans” living there. This solution aimed to solve multiple problems: first, the drive to Christianize the enslaved as a response to the Second Great Awakening; second, to end slavery and expel the former enslaved from the United States. Virginia is selected as an influential state that had the largest number of the enslaved and, after the American Revolution, contained an impressive number of emancipated ex-enslaved. These efforts were frustrated by several factors. But the ex-enslaved had no intention to be voluntarily sent to Liberia, with its reputation for starvation, extremely high mortality, and death from warfare led by a population that viewed new arrivals as invaders. Only a few still-enslaved people volunteered to go in return for their emancipation. And their trips to Africa were barely funded. It became clear that neither enthusiasm nor funding to send hundreds of thousands of the enslaved to Africa was forthcoming. Nor would many former slaves go voluntarily, much less pay for their expulsion to Liberia.

Epistrophe, Metanoia, and Great Awakening: Focus on Michel Foucault, Christianity, and Saramdaum Education

Epistrophe, Metanoia, and Great Awakening: Focus on Michel Foucault, Christianity, and Saramdaum Education

The Great Awakening of Life: an Existential Phenomenological Interpretation of the Mahat-Buddhi in the Sāṃkhya Kārikā

The Sāṃkhya Kārikā’s “mahat-buddhi” appears to be riddled with obscurity. Standard realist interpreters struggle to explain its cumbersome, textually unsupported bivalence, namely, how the mahat-buddhi can represent both a cosmological entity and a psychological capacity. Idealist readings, meanwhile, neglect the historically deep ontological meaning of this tattva by reducing it to a power of the transcendental ego. This paper moves beyond the impasse of the realism-idealism framework for interpreting the Sāṃkhya Kārikā and examines the mahat-buddhi through the existential phenomenology of Jose Ortega y Gasset. It begins by re-framing classical Sāṃkhya metaphysics as an existential phenomenology of life, whereby life—as lived reality, not an external physical world or a field of mental experience—conveys the meaning of vyaktaprakṛti. From this, the paper then argues that the mahat-buddhi represents “the great awakening of life,” which is characterized by 5 key features: (1) purposive procreativity; (2) a power of illuminating discernment; (3) a principle of disclosure; (4) an existentially unitary, concentrated vitality; and (5) a capacity to take other-beings-as.

Newton Arvin and the Police: Contexts for The Scarlet Professor

Newton Arvin and the Police: Contexts for <i>The Scarlet Professor</i>

Theologies of the American Revivalists: From Whitefield to Finney

In this closely argued study, Robert Caldwell III, Associate Professor of Church History at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, provides a comprehensive overview of the major theologians who shaped the First and Second Great Awakenings, which did so much to shape the religious landscape of America.Caldwell begins by exploring the Moderate Calvinist theology of early New Light revivalists like George Whitefield that inspired the First Awakening, notable for its protracted conversion process inherited from English Puritanism. Such an inheritance came under fire from Congregationalist Andrew Croswell, who contended instead that salvation was available immediately ‘in right and grant’ to all who believe (48). Although closer to New Light orthodoxy, Jonathan Edwards developed a somewhat convoluted understanding of free will wherein humans had a moral inability to choose Christ apart from the Spirit's work, but a natural ability to repent and believe. An Edwardsian ‘New Divinity School’ of theologians, including John Bellamy, Samuel Hopkins, and John Edwards Jr, subsequently built on Edwards's foundations.Further variations on Edwardsian theology were behind many of the developments in revivalist theology outlined by Caldwell, from developments amongst Congregationalists and Presbyterians during the Second Awakening through to one of the most famous revivalists of all, Charles Finney. Finney's espousal of ‘new measures’, including protracted meetings and ‘the anxious bench’, were controversial and remain so, but Caldwell is keen to show that behind his showmanship, Finney was deeply influenced by the New Divinity School and had an Edwardsian framework undergirding his revival theology, albeit one that affirmed that the sinner has moral ability to repent and believe.Caldwell concludes his study by looking at two sceptical responses to revivalism. The Princeton Old Light Calvinism of Archibald Alexander and Charles Hodge saw a return to an earlier Calvinist orthodoxy, while Restorationists like Alexander Campbell and Walter Scott offered a biblicist critique of revivalism that espoused a purely cerebral reductionist view of faith as ‘the notional affirmation of the simple facts of the Christian gospel’ (219).The varieties of revivalist theologies espoused by autonomous Baptist congregations are covered in a separate chapter, and the impact of the Arminian theology of Methodism during the Second Awakening is also explored. Allowing for their own bias, Wesleyan readers may here be struck by the relative uncomplicatedness of the treatment of themes of free will and sovereignty in their theological tradition in comparison to some seeming ‘forest of fallacies’ (134) produced by Edwardsian attempts to differentiate moral and natural ability in repentance. Caldwell's perfectly justifiable decision to end his study of revivalism in the 1840s does regrettably preclude the exploration of perfectionist developments in the Wesleyan tradition leading to holiness revivalism. The subsequent career of Phoebe Palmer (1807–74) as a revivalist and theologian might be reasonably appended to Caldwell's description of Finney's writings as ‘one of the last major expressions of revival theology to appear in America’ (163), and her inclusion would have brought gender variety to an understandably male history. Palmer's theology and praxis, arising as it did from her own experience of holiness rather than from any academic training, offers a challenge to Caldwell's concluding theory that revival theology failed to continue to develop after the 1840s due to the effect of deleterious liberal theology in Edwardsian seminaries.Caldwell's thorough scholarship covers a wide variety of disputed theological themes in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century revivalism, including the nature of conversion, conviction of sin, the bondage and freedom of the will, and sanctification. The men whose ideas Caldwell explores were principally pastors preaching for conversions, and so the essential relationship between their theology and revivalist praxis is explored, particularly in the case of the Baptists and Finney. The book is a helpful counterpoint to any who would argue that revivalism is historically short on theological underpinning, and deserves to be widely read and carefully studied.

The Public Universal Friend: Jemima Wilkinson and Religious Enthusiasm in Revolutionary America by Paul B Moyer

Reviewed by: The Public Universal Friend: Jemima Wilkinson and Religious Enthusiasm in Revolutionary America by Paul B Moyer Kyle B. Roberts The Public Universal Friend: Jemima Wilkinson and Religious Enthusiasm in Revolutionary America. By Paul B. Moyer. Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 2015, 264 pages, $27.95 Cloth. On 11 October 1776, family and friends were startled to discover that the person they had known as Jemima Wilkinson, a twenty-three-year-old Quaker woman from Rhode Island, had, upon recovering from what looked like a fatal illness, been reborn as the Public Universal Friend. A divine genderless spirit had taken the body of “an unremarkable person who lived in an unremarkable corner of early America” (13), as historian Paul B. Moyer explains in his new book, in order to serve as a holy messenger preparing the world for the return of Christ. The Universal Friend’s embrace of male and female attributes would be a cause of wonderment— and consternation—for the next four decades. While dozens of books have been written about Ann Lee, that other revolutionary-era prophet and founder of the Shakers whose ministry radically challenged spiritual and secular gender conventions of the time, less attention has been paid to Wilkinson. Moyer’s welcome study is only the third book-length exploration of the prophet, following Herbert A. Wisbey Jr’s classic Pioneer Prophetess (1964) and Frances Dumas’s more recent The Unquiet World (2010). It is a study focused as much on the women and men who followed the Universal Friend—numbering 260 strong at their peak in 1790—as it is about their spiritual leader. Where the surviving primary source material written by the Universal Friend runs thin, Moyer’s consideration of the experience of her devoted followers—as well as her apostates—provides a rich picture of belief and practice. The arrival of the Universal Friend in the fall of 1776 was well-timed. Radical overturning of convention seemed suddenly possible in the months after thirteen North American colonies declared independence from Great Britain. Much like the Revolution itself, the story of the Universal Friend’s ministry is a combination of radical and conservative strains. While scholars have acknowledged the opportunities the Revolution offered for innovation, Moyer cautiously pushes back against interpretations by historians [End Page 239] of American religion and gender that see fewer gains for women in the post-revolutionary institutionalization of religion. In the Universal Friend’s gender-bending presentation of self, but perhaps even more importantly in the communities of the faithful, emerged modes of women’s spiritual leadership that surpassed other Protestant groups of the time. Not only is this a chronological study of the life and ministry of an unusual religious figure and followers, but Moyer recognizes how their experience provides a valuable lens on larger issues shaping revolutionary and early national America. Despite a tradition of dividing American religious activity into First and Second Great Awakenings that straddle the war for independence, Moyer joins Steve Marini and other scholars in showing how the conflict fueled religious activity. The Quakers from southeastern New England who made up the majority of the Universal Friend’s initial converts felt the onset of war acutely. Close analysis of early followers’ writings convincingly reveals that instability, anxiety, and loss were more salient factors in their decision than social or economic concerns. Early converts led fairly comfortable lives but were spiritual seekers hungry for a path to salvation, encouragement to develop their individual spiritual gifts, and stability and order in a time when political allegiances were suspect. The Universal Friend’s message, Moyer argues, was a combination of fairly standard orthodox religious themes not unlike those embraced by contemporary Quakers and New Light evangelicals, but its delivery “with a disarming confidence and air of conviction” (24) by such an unconventional messenger offered comfort in the midst of an unsettling war. In expanding the ministry to Philadelphia after the war, the Universal Friend and followers were opened up to discussion in a vibrant urban public sphere. Unorthodox ideas about gender conventions provoked more debate than the Universal Friend’s orthodox creed. Philadelphians took to their newspapers to express their anxieties about...

Turning Points in the History of American Evangelicalism eds. by Heath W. Carter and Laura Rominger Porter

Reviewed by: Turning Points in the History of American Evangelicalism eds. by Heath W. Carter and Laura Rominger Porter Mark J. Dixon Turning Points in the History of American Evangelicalism. Edited by Heath W. Carter and Laura Rominger Porter. Grand Rapids: Eerd-mans, 2017. 297 pp. "Some Lutherans in America don't like the word 'evangelical' because it has been monopolized by biblical fundamentalists." [The New Church Debate: Issues Facing American Lutheranism. Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1983, 2] Carl Braaten's imprecise use of terms did not invalidate his assessment of Lutheran attitudes, which still rings true today. In fact, Lutherans in America have been skeptical of evangelicalism (and closely related movements) long before it came to be associated almost exclusively with the modern Religious Right. This skepticism implies that evangelicalism is easily defined, and unworthy of serious or respectful engagement. This collection puts these assumptions to the lie. Here readers encounter evangelicalism as "the single most powerful explanatory device adopted by academic historians to account for the distinctive features of American society, culture, and identity," and see the folly in pigeonholing a tradition without a universally accepted "consistent historical referent" (xvi). Carter and Porter open their introduction by summarizing the evangelical influence on modern American life—from the Bakkers to the Osteens, The Total Woman to The Purpose Driven Life, Nixon to [End Page 118] Trump. Despite evangelicalism's obvious contemporary significance, its history was neglected until the "historiographical revolution" of the 1980s, which emanated largely from Wheaton College's Institute for the Study of American Evangelicals (founded 1982). This surge in scholarship located the modern faith associated with Billy Graham within a tradition "extend[ing] all the way back to colonial revivals led by the likes of George Whitefield, Jonathan Edwards, and Sarah Osborn." It also led to a growing recognition that "no other faith had so powerfully shaped the nation's course" (xv). Despite (or because of) this increased critical attention, a satisfactory historical definition for evangelicalism has proved elusive. Carter and Porter intentionally refrain from offering a comprehensive definition, and instead frame this collection of essays as "a variety of historical approaches to a term that … points to a set of family resemblances that spring from a shared genealogy" (xvi). Decisive moments in the history of several branches of this family tree are laid out in twelve essays spanning from the Great Awakening to the 1974 Lausanne Congress. Every essay is worth your time. I regret that I can only mention a few. Some, like Harry Stout's on the Great Awakening or George Marsden's on fundamentalism, conveniently repackage field-shaping theses from these authors' own monographs to fit the "turning points" device. Catherine Brekus' essay is notable for treating a classic theme (the relationship between evangelicalism and the Enlightenment) in a new way, in this case by approaching the issue through figures like Sarah Osborn and Newport Gardner instead of, for example, Jonathan Edwards. Edith Blumhofer's essay on the origins of Pentecostalism in Chicago is so highly detailed that it almost functions as a very brief introduction to the subject. This reader particularly appreciated Luke Harlow's chapter, "The Civil War and the Making of Conservative American Evangelicalism," and its convincing argument that the slavery debate and its effective resolution in the Thirteenth Amendment created the narrower, more conservative evangelicalism that would go into the twentieth century prepared to devote tremendous energy to a range of issues that would come to define fundamentalism. [End Page 119] I craved at least one more chapter after Daren Dochuk's on Lausanne, or at least an explanation for the absence of an essay dedicated to the modern evangelical culture with which Carter and Porter chose to open their introduction. Of course a scholarly critique of evangelical Christianity in the context of the 2016 presidential election is most to be desired, but that history almost certainly unfolded too close to publication. In any event it is difficult to know what this turning point means yet. Where will evangelicalism go from here? I also would have liked more from Carter and Porter on their intriguing "genealogical" definition of evangelicalism. What are the family resemblances between figures like George Whitefield...

Складывание новой религиозной ситуации в британских колониях Северной Америки в результате «Великого Пробуждения» 1730-х — 1750-х гг.

Складывание новой религиозной ситуации в британских колониях Северной Америки в результате «Великого Пробуждения» 1730-х — 1750-х гг.

“Christianity Incorporated”: Sinclair Lewis and the Taylorization of American Protestantism

In this essay, I argue that Sinclair Lewis’s finest works from the 1920s are devoted to examining the conflation of economy and religion in modern America. In Main Street (1920), Lewis contends that the effort to standardize American culture is the result of the apotheosis of Frederick Winslow Taylor’s principles of scientific management. The popularization of Taylor’s industrial reforms gave rise to an efficiency craze that, as Samuel Haber writes, was nothing short of “a secular Great Awakening.” Lewis shows that Taylorism was recast as divine truth, allowing it to transcend the factory and to become the dominant system of norms operative in American culture as a whole, entirely redefining American modernity. He maintains that when Taylorist capitalism is abstracted and made metaphysical, the church assumes the priorities and procedures of industry. Moreover, this leads business to be regarded as a religion. I prove that Lewis further elaborates this critique in Elmer Gantry (1927)—his analysis of Protestantism’s thoroughgoing adoption of capitalist structures, values, and ends—and Babbitt (1922), where he satirizes the sanctification of business culture and the emerging managerial middle-class.

Moravians Encounter New England's Radical Evangelicals, 1745 and 1759

ABSTRACT The Moravian travel reports reproduced here contain accounts and observations of radical evangelical religion in New England during the 1740s and 1750s, especially in and around New London, Connecticut, and Rhode Island. These accounts supplement existing knowledge about radical New Lights and separatists at the height of the Great Awakening. Itinerants James Burnside, Owen Rice, and Richard Utley encounter associates of James Davenport, members of the separatist seminary known as the Shepherds Tent, sectarian Rogerenes, and the exuberant Indian congregation of Narragansett preacher Sam Niles. Beyond providing heretofore-unpublished accounts of these radical evangelicals, these sources also illustrate the uneasy place Moravians occupied during the Great Awakening. The three Moravian travelers seemed to feel affinity for some of the radicals they encountered, but were critical of others and admonished them to steer clear of extremes. Given the fact that these are just two of many Moravian sources related to radical religion during the time period, this is also meant to highlight an avenue ripe for ongoing study.

성령의 역사로서의 개인적 치유와 사회적 치유로서의 회심

Conversion is defined as personal and social transformation toward the reign of God and influenced by an interplay of identity, politics and morality. The Great Awakening Movement of 1907 showed us the formation of the Korean church archetype (identity) and the transformation of Korean Christians as fruits of conversion (morality). The March 1st Independence Movement of 1919 showed us that the participation of church leaders in the independence movement (politics) was originated by the works of the Holy Spirit. After the movement, the gap between the ecumenical group and the evangelical group became wider. It is possible for reconciliation between these two groups only when we regard the Holy Spirit as the healer of the people and the transformer of the society, emphasize mysticism and resistance as the works of the Holy Spirit, and depend upon the spirituality of poverty, weakness, and our covenantal relationship with God.

Re-envisioning the Reformer’s Spirituality, Provisioning the Reformed Spiritual Reality : Toward a Reforming of the Misunderstanding of Martin Luther’s View on the Epistle of James

This article deals with Martin Luther’s understanding of the epistle of James. It is argued that the Reformed Church has understood the reformer’s “justification by faith” only partially. It is to clarify that since Korean Society and Church resemble those of the era of the Reformation, a second great awakening or spiritual reformation is needed in Korea. First, Luther’s spirituality is being dealt with comprehensively within this context. Secondly, it is clarified that Luther’s quote of James as the “epistle of straw” in his first edition of the German New Testament is not his final position. By doing so, it is examining that Luther’s doctrine of justification cannot be understood apart from good works. In addition to a general inclusive understanding of the spirituality of Martin Luther, a genuine and conclusive diagnosticating of the corruption of the society and churches of Korea can give us a solution to the problem that we have. Luther’s spirituality explains that a Christian is being saved by faith by hearing the word of God, transcending the internal holiness and prayer, and linking to a life of helping neighbors as to the word. This spirituality embraces but also goes beyond the bounds of the contemplative vision of spirituality. It goes to the social participation of loving neighbors. Luther’s understanding of James is not to abandon “justification by faith” and adopt “justification by works” but to assert that a Christian claiming “justification by faith” ought to be “a man of his/her faith.” In his youth, it is true that Luther had doubts regarding the epistle of James. However, in his latter years, he never doubted on the apostleship and canonicity of James. John Calvin agrees with the latter Luther’s position and asserts the epistle of James is last but not least, straw, a constructional part, for the palace of the word and faith.

Jonathan Edwards' Emphasis on Religious Affections As Via Media To Extreme Responses of Revival

God?s great work to reform His churches on earth many times preceded by great revival sent by Him. Apparently many revival like the one in the Great Awakening of New England colony in the eighteenth century produced two opposing responses: either fanaticism or denial. The Great Awakening became a battle to answer a key question: whether the Great Awakening was a genuine work of the Spirit? What is a true revival, then according to Reformed theology? The figure most fit to answer this question is none other than Jonathan Edwards. In the midst of the controversy, Jonathan Edwards stood in the middle ground trying to justify that the Great Awakening was truly a work of God while at the same time critical towards the excesses. Edwards Treatise of Religious Affections will be related to his discussion on the centrality of affections in religion, the nature of experience and the assurance of salvation.

The Significance of Ramana Maharshi's Self-Enquiry for Meditation

Seeking happiness has become a crucial part of human beings due to a consistent rise in anxiety and stress over the passing years. As a result, the importance of Indian meditation practices has risen worldwide. Especially, Ramana Maharshi's Self-enquiry is one of the significant meditation practices found in India. The purpose of this paper is to show that Mokṣa (liberation), where one is free from suffering, can be attained by the practice of Self-enquiry, which is simple but powerful because it immediately pierces to the core, the Self. Ramana is the ancient traditional master in India, and he is also known for using silence in the instruction of his disciples. The essence of Self-enquiry is that it is not to realize something anew but to abide as the Self, in the here and now with aware affirmation "I am already Thou." Ramana's life, the experience of his great awakening, the Self, 'I'-thought, the body, the theoretical aspect of Self-enquiry as meditation by Ramana and the practical aspect of Self-enquiry as meditation by Prof. Kim Kyeungmin are presented to illustrate the significance of this method. It is pointed out that Maharshi's Self-enquiry is more valuable and productive than other meditation techniques.

‘Let Prudence Plain-Dress be your companion’: Dress of female preachers during the Second Great Awakening (1790–1865)

Abstract The Second Great Awakening (1790–1865) created large numbers of new Christian congregants. In order for churches to effectively minister their burgeoning populations, they enlisted the help of women to serve as itinerant preachers. This research analysed the autobiographies of female preachers, period newspaper articles and imagery to better understand the relationship between the sartorial choices and public personas of female preachers. Most did not align themselves with feminist ideologies of the time but rather claimed the will of God as justification. However, these women were highly criticized and therefore sought a balance between their gender and their faith. This was achieved in part through the adoption of a plain style of dress that stood in stark contrast to superfluous fashions of the time. The style of plain dress was modelled after the attire of the Quakers with neutral colours, no embellishments and simple fabrications. Women were told by male preachers, such as John Wesley, that they should dress plainly. Many congregants, as well as female preachers, told stories of extreme conversions where they immediately eschewed their fashionable clothing.

Evangelical Gotham: Religion and the Making of New York City, 1783-1860. By Kyle Roberts

Readers of JAAR may know about the project “A Journey through New York City Religions” (http://www.nycreligion.info/). The endeavor seeks to document the varied religious expressions in contemporary New York City and demonstrate that the city is not a “Secular City” but rather is home to many vibrant religious expressions. In like manner, Kyle Roberts in Evangelical Gotham: Religion and the Making of New York City, 1783-1860 describes with great detail the way evangelicalism impacted, shaped, and even constituted the growing metropolis between the American Revolution and the Civil War. Roberts builds his description chronologically, structuring it historically. In Roberts’s description, evangelical experience in New York was broken down into three periods. The first lasted from the end of the American Revolution through the close of the War of 1812. During this time, New York City as a whole recovered from the dislocation of the American Revolution. Likewise, churches reassembled or gathered for the first time. Individuals who settled in New York found in evangelical conversion and community a fitting answer for the confusion and dislocation of a growing seaport. This early period also saw the first efforts at local outreach, missions, and benevolent work. The second period stretched from 1815 to 1840. This period witnessed confident evangelicals looking outward to evangelize and reshape city life. Local outreaches to young men, to the poor and destitute, and (creatively) to the sailor population all bore fruit, albeit not as much as the workers dreamed. The community also expressed itself and worked to win support through the expanded use of print culture at a time when New York City was establishing itself as one of the centers of print production for the American nation. The revivalism of the later Second Great Awakening, inspired by Charles Finney, also energized New York evangelicals, leading to a new church organization. Many evangelicals were inspired to create “free” churches, which would be supported by offerings rather than the traditional pew rentals that had favored established families and reified class divisions. The Free Church movement and this second period came to an end with urban riots as leading evangelical figures like Arthur and Lewis Tappan confronted the issue of slavery and argued for abolitionism. In the face of such strenuous public opposition, evangelicalism tended to turn inward.

Bibliotherapy for Mental Health

The United States is facing an epidemic of mental illness, affecting nearly 60 million Americans annually (http://www.nami.org/ ). The World Health Organization describes mental health as “a long neglected problem” and has established an action plan for 2013-2020 (http://www.who.int/mental_health/action_plan_2013/en/). One way to combat mental illness is through bibliotherapy, which is the use of written materials including fiction, nonfiction, and poetry to support emotional and psychiatric healing.Bibliotherapy has been in existence since ancient times, but began in earnest in the United States in the 1850’s during the “Great Awakening.” At that time, mental illness began to be seen as a medical condition rather than a supernatural phenomenon. Since then, due to the changing nature of our institutions, interest in bibliotherapy waned until the 1950’s when there was a slight resurgence in its practice. However, in the last 20 years, bibliotherapy has gained a stronghold in the United Kingdom. To relieve the stress of an overcrowded mental health system, public policy in the UK has supported the use of bibliotherapy in a variety of its institutions. There are many ways to conduct bibliotherapy, but studies show that when the process is interactive, such as in a support group setting, the results are better. Also, bibliotherapy can be conducted by many sorts of professionals, including doctors, therapists, social workers, teachers, and librarians. Studies also show that when the bibliotherapists are trained in the best practices of bibliotherapy, results improve. Bibliotherapy is an effective, low-cost alternative for people in need of therapeutic assistance. The UK model should be studied and implemented in the United States and in other nations to help solve the mental health crisis.