Religion In Nineteenth-Century America Research Articles

Jewish Sunday Schools: Teaching Religion in Nineteenth-Century America by Laura Yares (review)

Jewish Sunday Schools: Teaching Religion in Nineteenth-Century America by Laura Yares (review)

“A Higher and Purer Shape”: Kaufmann Kohler's Jewish Orientalism and the Construction of Religion in Nineteenth-Century America

AbstractThis article uses the case of Kaufmann Kohler (1843–1926), an intellectual and institutional leader of American Reform Judaism, to explore the relationship between Orientalism and the category of religion in nineteenth-century America. Recent scholarship has shown that the lived religion of nineteenth-century American Jews departs significantly from the ideological hopes of Jewish elites. Connecting the emerging portrait of nineteenth-century Jewish laity with elite arguments for American Judaism, I reconsider Kohler's thought as a theological project out of step with his socioreligious milieu. Kohler is renowned for his theorizing of Judaism as a universal, ethical religion. As scholars have demonstrated repeatedly, defining Judaism as a “religion” was an important feature of Reform thought. What these accounts have insufficiently theorized, however, is the political context that ties the categorization of religion to the history of Orientalism that organized so many late nineteenth-century discussions of religion, Jewish and not. Drawing on work by Tracy Fessenden, John Modern, and Tisa Wenger, I show that Kohler's universal, cosmopolitan religion is a Jewish version of the Protestant secular. Like these Protestant modernists, Kohler defines Reform Judaism as a religion that supersedes an atavistic tribalism bound to materiality and ritual law. Being Jewish, for Kohler, means being civilized; reforming the soul of Judaism goes together with civilizing Jewish bodies and creating a Judaism that could civilize the world in an era in which religion and imperialism were overlapping interpretive projects with racial and gendered entanglements.

What Kind of Prejudice Was Anti-Mormonism?

Research Article| January 01 2015 What Kind of Prejudice Was Anti-Mormonism? Review of J. Spencer Fluhman. “A Peculiar People”: Anti-Mormonism and the Making of Religion in Nineteenth-Century America. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2012.Terryl L. Givens. The Viper on the Hearth: Mormons, Myths, and the Construction of Heresy. Second Edition. New York: Oxford University Press, 2013.Patrick Q. Mason. The Mormon Menace: Violence and Anti-Mormonism in the Postbellum South. New York: Oxford University Press, 2011.Megan Sanborn Jones. Performing American Identity in Anti-Mormon Melodrama. New York: Routledge, 2009. Chris Beneke Chris Beneke Chris Beneke is associate professor of history at Bentley University. He is the author of Beyond Toleration: The Religious Origins of American Pluralism (Oxford, 2006) and coeditor of The First Prejudice: Religious Tolerance and Intolerance in Early America (Penn Press, 2011) and Profane: Sacrilegious Expression in a Multicultural Age (University of California Press, 2014). Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google Mormon Studies Review (2015) 2: 75–85. https://doi.org/10.5406/mormstudrevi.2.2015.0075 Cite Icon Cite Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter LinkedIn MailTo Permissions Search Site Citation Chris Beneke; What Kind of Prejudice Was Anti-Mormonism?. Mormon Studies Review 1 January 2015; 2 75–85. doi: https://doi.org/10.5406/mormstudrevi.2.2015.0075 Download citation file: Zotero Reference Manager EasyBib Bookends Mendeley Papers EndNote RefWorks BibTex toolbar search Search Dropdown Menu toolbar search search input Search input auto suggest filter your search All Scholarly Publishing CollectiveUniversity of Illinois PressMormon Studies Review Search Advanced Search The text of this article is only available as a PDF. Copyright 2015 by the Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois2015 Article PDF first page preview Close Modal Issue Section: REVIEW ESSAYS You do not currently have access to this content.

Fluhman, J. Spencer “A Peculiar People”: Anti-Mormonism and the Making of Religion in Nineteenth-Century America. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2012. 240 pp. $34.95 (cloth).

Previous articleNext article No AccessBook ReviewFluhman, J. Spencer “A Peculiar People”: Anti-Mormonism and the Making of Religion in Nineteenth-Century America. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2012. 240 pp. $34.95 (cloth).Seth PerrySeth PerryIndiana University. Search for more articles by this author PDFPDF PLUSFull Text Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditEmail SectionsMoreDetailsFiguresReferencesCited by The Journal of Religion Volume 94, Number 4October 2014 Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1086/679216 Views: 37Total views on this site For permission to reuse, please contact [email protected]PDF download Crossref reports no articles citing this article.

Consecrated Merchants and Midnight Criers: Commercial Evangelicalism and a Jazz Theory of Gender Distinctions in Nineteenth-Century America

Drawing on Jeanne Boydston’s “aesthetic of jazz” and the contributions of queer theory, this article complicates notions of a “normative” gender binary and feminized Protestant religion in nineteenth-century America. Evangelical tract and book sellers known as “colporteurs” constructed spiritual personalities that failed to organize neatly around a gender binary, combining private, passive, and dependent roles as servants and employees with conquering, public identities as sellers of the gospel message. Moving away from a focus on female preaching and the liminal gender fluidity of “fringe” sects, this paper argues that colportage reflected a larger cultural instability in the gender binary where spiritual selling collapsed conventional masculine and feminine traits, opening a queer space for expressions beyond the gender line. Tracing colporteur identities from the American Tract Society and Millerites of the 1840s to the International Bible Students of the 1890s and 1900s, this article suggests that colportage was one expression of the vast variation and instability of potential gender identities that marked America in the nineteenth century.

PORTENTS OF A DISCIPLINE: THE STUDY OF RELIGION BEFORE RELIGIOUS STUDIES

Academic disciplines, including departments of history, emerged slowly and unevenly in the second half of the nineteenth century. Professional societies, including the American Historical Association (AHA) at its founding in 1884, were generally tiny organizations, a few would-be specialists collecting together to stake a claim on a distinct scholarly identity. Fields of study were necessarily fluid—interdisciplinary because they remained, to a large degree, predisciplinary. As fields went, the study of religion appeared especially amorphous; it was spread out across philology, history, classics, folklore, anthropology, archaeology, psychology, sociology, and oriental studies. Adding to the complexity more than simplifying it was the persisting claim that the study of religion belonged specifically (if not exclusively) to theology and hence to seminaries and divinity schools. Elizabeth A. Clark'sFounding the Fathersilluminates the importance of Protestant theological institutions in shaping the study of religion in nineteenth-century America, suggesting, in particular, how well-trained church historians pointed the way toward disciplinary consolidation and specialization. Marjorie Wheeler-Barclay'sScience of Religion, by contrast, explores the leading British intellectuals responsible for extending the study of religion across a broad swath of the new human sciences. Together these two books offer an excellent opportunity to reflect on what religion looked like as a learned object of inquiry before religious studies fully crystallized as an academic discipline in the middle third of the twentieth century. Clark opens the introduction to her book with an epigraph from Hayden White: “The question is, What is involved in the transformation of a field of studies into a discipline?” (1). What indeed?

“A Peculiar People”: Anti-Mormonism and the Making of Religion in Nineteenth-Century America

“A Peculiar People”: Anti-Mormonism and the Making of Religion in Nineteenth-Century America

“A Hall of Mirrors”: Two Recent Works in Mormon Studies

A Hall of Mirrors: Two Recent Works in Mormon Studies BRIGHAM YOUNG: Pioneer Prophet. By John G. Turner. Cambridge, MA: Harvard Uni- versity Press. 2012.A PECULIAR PEOPLE: Anti- Mormonism and Making of Religion in Nineteenth-Century America. By J. Spencer Fluhman. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press. 2012.In his preface to Brigham Young: Pioneer Prophet , John Turner argues that the field of Mormon history is a hall of mirrors, full of distorted and incomplete reflections of nearly any event (viii). Turner's metaphor points to mass of textual evidence and competing claims found in short history of Latter-day Saints (LDS). As do most historians, Mormon Studies scholars must sift through contradictory accounts that change over time; added to that, documents are often chock-full of angels, golden tablets, and divine revelations. And Mormon Studies scholars are not often left wanting for documentation. After all, it was on April 6, 1830, at first meeting that organized new church, that Joseph Smith, Jr., presented a revelation that instructed church members that [t]here shall be a record kept among you (Doctrine and Covenants 21:1). Contribut- ing to hall-of-mirrors effect is fact that scholars of Mormonism have not always had access to documents that they need to help clarify story, documents that are housed in church's archives. New scholarship in field of Mormon Studies has to confront hall of mirrors with a careful historical eye and a strong theoretical approach, as it attempts to clarify workings of this relatively new religious movement.Turner's Brigham Young and J. Spencer Fluhman's A Peculiar People: Anti-Mormonism and Making of Religion in Nineteenth-Century America represent this new scholarship in field of Mormon Studies. In researching their books, authors enjoyed greater access to documentation than scholars in past. As part of growing field of Mormon Studies, these two books avoid parochialism and polemicism that has been endemic to Mormon his- tory (Turner, viii). Instead, they seek to contextualize Mormonism within broader narratives of American history in order to better understand both histories. Using different approaches, both texts explore dialectic of identity formation within and outside Mormon community. Mormon identity was forged and changed over time in conversation with outsiders. Both Turner and Fluhman take that identity formation seriously and explore it through lenses of critical race and gender studies, providing us with narratives that help us better understand role of Mormonism in American history.Even though Latter-day Saints make up only two percent of population of United States, movement has achieved an outsized cultural relevance (2). Debates about Mormonism-on whether or not it is a Christian tradition, on whether it can produce a trusted president of United States, on its revela- tion that prohibits hot drinks, alcohol, and tobacco-continue today, and both Turner and Fluhman investigate role of history-telling in those debates. In his introduction, Fluhman examines differences between discussions about Mormon history within LDS community and within academy. Within LDS community, Joseph Smith's life, the emergence of Book of Mor- mon, and persecution of early Mormons [and] heroism of western trek begin narrative of Mormon tradition. Then that narrative skips to late twentieth-century international growth, leaving gaps in chronology that contain elements that fit awkwardly with Mormons' current emphasis on public relations (6). Those gaps would include church's culture in state of Utah and formation of reorganized church that gathered around Joseph Smith's son in Missouri. In work that runs counter to LDS narrative, academic historians have had an ongoing fascination with Mormon cultural deviance-particularly its embrace of polygamy and theocracy-that upsets strategic forgetting within LDS community but has its own bias. …

A Chosen People, a Promised Land: Mormonism and Race in Hawai’i by Hokulani K. Aikau (review)

Reviewed by: A Chosen People, a Promised Land: Mormonism and Race in Hawai’i by Hokulani K. Aikau Iris-Aya Laemmerhirt A Chosen People, a Promised Land: Mormonism and Race in Hawai’i. By Hokulani K. Aikau. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. 2012. In her historical examination A Chosen People, a Promised Land: Mormonism and Race in Hawai’i, Hokulani K. Aikau traces the complex and unique history of Native Hawaiian Latter-Day Saints (more commonly known as Mormons) from the mid-nineteenth century to today. This fascinating account explains in five chronological chapters, starting with the arrival of the first Mormon missionaries in Hawai’i in 1850, how the Native Hawaiian experience of Mormonism converged with the traditional cultural as well as ethnic traditions and identities of Native Hawaiians. Although the book contextualizes the history of Native Hawaiian Latter-Day Saints within the framework of postcolonial discourses, especially since Western religions played an important role for colonization processes, Aikan does not depict Native Hawaiian’s who joined the Church of Latter-Day Saints as passive victims of Western colonizing forces. Instead, she sheds light on the only sparsely investigated cultural and religious exchanges between Native Hawaiians and American Latter-Day Saints. By explaining the fusion of Native Hawaiian identities with ideas of this Western religion, the book scrutinizes how Latter-Day Saints shaped and influenced Native Hawaiians and vice versa. Furthermore, Aikan’s thorough research, which includes interviews with Native Hawaiian Latter-Day Saints, journals of Mormon missionaries, as well as her own autobiographical accounts, provides an interesting insight into issues of race and religion in nineteenth-century America and the attitude of the Latter-Day Saint Church at that time. Given the predominant social evolutionary mindset of the Mormon religion during the 1850s, according to which Anglo-Mormons were perceived as superior to African Americans and Native Americans, it seems contradictory that Native Hawaiians were considered to be “chosen people.” This peculiar position of Native Hawaiians in the Latter-Day Saint Church is explained with the fact that the Mormon missionary George Q. Cannon had visions in 1851 that traced the Polynesian lineages to The Book of Mormon and Israel (1). However, it was indeed difficult for Native Hawaiians to preserve their cultural and ethnic identity and, at the same, be accepted as faithful Latter-Day Saints. The book further reminds the reader of the almost forgotten deep roots of the Mormon community in Hawai’i, and emphasizes the importance of the small town Lā’ie, where the first permanent site for gathering in Hawai’i was established (66) and a Mormon temple was built. Finally, Aikan examines the modernization efforts of the church from 1890–1940 and closely investigates the influence of tourism that led to the creation of the Polynesian Cultural Center in 1963 [End Page 182] (91). Although she is critical about “selling an image of the happy native to tourists” (129) Aikan also acknowledges the positive effect that working at the Polynesian Cultural Center has on many Polynesian workers who describe their experience as “a time when they were able to learn about their culture as well as the diversity of their culture” and a time “when they took pride in their cultural heritage” (128), thus further hinting to the complex nature of intercultural exchanges. This groundbreaking, transnational, and more inclusive approach to Hawaiian studies grants Native Hawaiians agency and offers a much needed alternative representation of Hawai’i within the national history of the United States. Iris-Aya Laemmerhirt TU Dortmund, Germany Copyright © 2014 Mid-America American Studies Association

A Peculiar People: Anti-Mormonism and the Making of Religion in Nineteenth-Century America

Review of: A Peculiar People: Anti-Mormonism and the Making of Religion in Nineteenth-Century America, by A. R. Blair.

J. Spencer Fluhman. “A Peculiar People”: Anti-Mormonism and the Making of Religion in Nineteenth-Century America.

J. Spencer Fluhman. “A Peculiar People”: Anti-Mormonism and the Making of Religion in Nineteenth-Century America.

A Peculiar People: Anti-Mormonism and the Making of Religion in Nineteenth-Century America. By J. Spencer Fluhman. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2012. 230 pp. $34.95 cloth.

A Peculiar People: Anti-Mormonism and the Making of Religion in Nineteenth-Century America. By J. Spencer Fluhman. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2012. 230 pp. $34.95 cloth. - Volume 82 Issue 3

“A Peculiar People”: Anti-Mormonism and the Making of Religion in Nineteenth-Century America. By J. Spencer Fluhman (Chapel Hill, University of North Carolina Press, 2012) 229 pp. $34.95 cloth $24.95 paper

<i>“A Peculiar People”: Anti-Mormonism and the Making of Religion in Nineteenth-Century America.</i> By J. Spencer Fluhman (Chapel Hill, University of North Carolina Press, 2012) 229 pp. $34.95 cloth $24.95 paper

“A Peculiar People”: Anti-Mormonism and the Making of Religion in Nineteenth-Century America by J. Spencer Fluhman (review)

“A Peculiar People”: Anti-Mormonism and the Making of Religion in Nineteenth-Century America by J. Spencer Fluhman (review)

"A peculiar people": anti-Mormonism and the making of religion in nineteenth-century America

"A peculiar people": anti-Mormonism and the making of religion in nineteenth-century America

My Sons Have Defeated Me: Walter Lippmann, Felix Adler, and Secular Moral Authority

Previous articleNext article No AccessMy Sons Have Defeated Me: Walter Lippmann, Felix Adler, and Secular Moral Authority*Sarah ImhoffSarah ImhoffIndiana University Search for more articles by this author PDFPDF PLUSFull Text Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditEmail SectionsMoreDetailsFiguresReferencesCited by The Journal of Religion Volume 92, Number 4October 2012 Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1086/666832 Views: 44Total views on this site Citations: 1Citations are reported from Crossref © 2012 by The University of Chicago. All rights reserved.PDF download Crossref reports the following articles citing this article:Evan Goldstein “A Higher and Purer Shape”: Kaufmann Kohler's Jewish Orientalism and the Construction of Religion in Nineteenth-Century America, Religion and American Culture 29, no.33 (Dec 2019): 326–360.https://doi.org/10.1017/rac.2019.8

Religion, Meaning, and Identity in Women's Writing

This text of Elizabeth Fox-Genovese's is published posthumously in the context of pieces dedicated to her memory. It is unclear whether she intended it for eventual publication or whether she had intended it as a lecture; nor is there decisive evidence for a date of composition. In it, she reviews the stance of feminist literary criticism toward religion and finds it to be generally negative. She regrets that feminist critics see in religion mostly a means of subordinating women to men, given that most of the writers whose work they explicate were themselves fervently religious. She then examines the feminization of religion in nineteenth-century America and the growing idea at the time of female moral stewardship. After examining the contrasting approaches taken to the process of feminization by Harriet Beecher Stowe and Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Fox-Genovese then takes as her main case Augusta Jane Evans's novels Beulah and St. Elmo. She argues that feminist critics, in concentrating on questions about the marriage or independence of Evans's characters miss Evans's central concern, which was the loss and recovery of her characters' faith. The feminist critics (given their hostility to religion) misunderstand that Evans's stance was not one against female individualism, but rather (given her commitment as a Christian) a stance against the unbridled individualism of modern American society.

Religion in Nineteenth Century America. By Grant Wacker. Religion in American Life. Edited by Jon Butler and Harry S. Stout. New York: Oxford University Press, 2000. 188 pp. $22.00 cloth.

Religion in Nineteenth Century America. By Grant Wacker. Religion in American Life. Edited by Jon Butler and Harry S. Stout. New York: Oxford University Press, 2000. 188 pp. $22.00 cloth. - Volume 70 Issue 2

Religion in Nineteenth Century America (Religion in American Life Series). By Grant Wacker. New York: Oxford University Press, 2000. 182 pp. $22.00

Journal Article Religion in Nineteenth Century America (Religion in American Life Series). By Grant Wacker. New York: Oxford University Press, 2000. 182 pp. $22.00 Get access Pamela Robinson Durso Pamela Robinson Durso Campbell University Divinity SchoolBuies Creek, North Carolina Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Journal of Church and State, Volume 43, Issue 1, Winter 2001, Pages 158–159, https://doi.org/10.1093/jcs/43.1.158 Published: 01 January 2001

Moral insanity, science and religion in nineteenth-century America: the Gray-Ray debate.

Moral insanity, science and religion in nineteenth-century America: the Gray-Ray debate.