Synopses & Reviews
Religions of the United States in Practice is a rich anthology of primary sources with accompanying essays that examines religious behavior in America. From praying in an early American synagogue to performing Mormon healing rituals to debating cremation, Volume 1 explores faith through action from Colonial times through the nineteenth century.
The documents and essays consider the religious practices of average people--praying, singing, healing, teaching, imagining, and persuading. Some documents are formal liturgies while other texts describe more spontaneous religious actions. Because religious practices also take place in the imagination, dreams, visions, and fictional accounts are also included.
Accompanying each primary document is an essay that sets the religious practice in its historical and theological context--making this volume ideal for classroom use and accessible to any reader. The introductory essays explain the various meanings of religious practices as lived out in churches and synagogues, in parlors and fields, beside rivers, on lecture platforms, and in the streets.
Religions of the United States in Practice offers a sampling of religious perspectives in order to approximate the living texture of popular religious thought and practice in the United States. The history of religion in America is more than the story of institutions and famous people. This anthology presents a more nuanced story composed of the everyday actions and thoughts of lay men and women.
Review
"This rich collection opens the reader's mind to an impressive range of religious practice and serves as a valuable complement to traditional approaches to American religious studies. Highly recommended for general readers through faculty."--Choice
Review
This rich collection opens the reader's mind to an impressive range of religious practice and serves as a valuable complement to traditional approaches to American religious studies. Highly recommended for general readers through faculty. Choice
Synopsis
Religions of the United States in Practice is a rich anthology of primary sources with accompanying essays that examines religious behavior in America. From praying in an early American synagogue to performing Mormon healing rituals to debating cremation, Volume 1 explores faith through action from Colonial times through the nineteenth century.
The documents and essays consider the religious practices of average people--praying, singing, healing, teaching, imagining, and persuading. Some documents are formal liturgies while other texts describe more spontaneous religious actions. Because religious practices also take place in the imagination, dreams, visions, and fictional accounts are also included.
Accompanying each primary document is an essay that sets the religious practice in its historical and theological context--making this volume ideal for classroom use and accessible to any reader. The introductory essays explain the various meanings of religious practices as lived out in churches and synagogues, in parlors and fields, beside rivers, on lecture platforms, and in the streets.
Religions of the United States in Practice offers a sampling of religious perspectives in order to approximate the living texture of popular religious thought and practice in the United States. The history of religion in America is more than the story of institutions and famous people. This anthology presents a more nuanced story composed of the everyday actions and thoughts of lay men and women.
Synopsis
"This anthology presents the reader with a rich sampling of the ways in which American religion has been practiced. It implicitly challenges some of the standard temporal and thematic categories through which American religion has been understood. The volumes will be useful as reference works and in courses about American religious history. There is much here that does not appear in standard treatments of the subject."--Robert Wuthnow, Princeton University
Synopsis
"This anthology presents the reader with a rich sampling of the ways in which American religion has been practiced. It implicitly challenges some of the standard temporal and thematic categories through which American religion has been understood. The volumes will be useful as reference works and in courses about American religious history. There is much here that does not appear in standard treatments of the subject."--Robert Wuthnow, Princeton University
Synopsis
Religions of the United States in Practice is a rich anthology of primary sources with accompanying essays that examines religious behavior in America. From praying in an early American synagogue to performing Mormon healing rituals to debating cremation, Volume 1 explores faith through action from Colonial times through the nineteenth century.
The documents and essays consider the religious practices of average people--praying, singing, healing, teaching, imagining, and persuading. Some documents are formal liturgies while other texts describe more spontaneous religious actions. Because religious practices also take place in the imagination, dreams, visions, and fictional accounts are also included.
Accompanying each primary document is an essay that sets the religious practice in its historical and theological context--making this volume ideal for classroom use and accessible to any reader. The introductory essays explain the various meanings of religious practices as lived out in churches and synagogues, in parlors and fields, beside rivers, on lecture platforms, and in the streets.
Religions of the United States in Practice offers a sampling of religious perspectives in order to approximate the living texture of popular religious thought and practice in the United States. The history of religion in America is more than the story of institutions and famous people. This anthology presents a more nuanced story composed of the everyday actions and thoughts of lay men and women.
Synopsis
"This anthology presents the reader with a rich sampling of the ways in which American religion has been practiced. It implicitly challenges some of the standard temporal and thematic categories through which American religion has been understood. The volumes will be useful as reference works and in courses about American religious history. There is much here that does not appear in standard treatments of the subject."--Robert Wuthnow, Princeton University
About the Author
Colleen McDannell is Sterling M. McMurrin Professor of Religious Studies and Professor of History at the University of Utah. She is the author of Material Christianity: Religion and Popular Culture in America and The Christian Home in Victorian America: 1840-1900 and a coauthor of Heaven: A History.
Table of Contents
Princeton Readings in Religions v
Contributors ix
Introduction by Colleen McDannell
Praying: Individual and Communal Worship
1.The Amidah in Colonial Americanm Synagogues by Dianne Ashton 11
2.Seventeenth-Century Puritan Conversion Narratives by Elizabeth Reis 22
3.The Book of Common Prayer and Eighteenth-Century Episcopalians by Robert Bruce Mullin 32
4.The Green Corn Ceremony of the Muskogees by Joel W. Martin 48
5.The Way of Holiness: The Friday Meeting by A. Gregory Schneider 67
6.Reception of Novices into the Order of the Sisters of St. Benedict by Patricia O'Connell Killen 74
Singing: Songs of Devotion, Praise, and Protest
7.English Hymnody in Early America by Michael J. McClymond 89
8.The 1842 Hymnal of Penina Moise by Dianne Ashton 108
9.Catholic Song in the Antebellum United States by Robert R. Grimes, S.J. 122
10.African American Spirituals by Paul Harvey 138
11.Ojibwe Funerary Hymn Singing by Michael D. McNally 150
12.Temperance Songs and Hymns by Carolyn DeSwarte Gifford 158
Teaching: Learning How to Live Correctly
13.The Celebration of Marriage in the Dutch Reformed Church by Daniel James Meeter 171
14.The Visions of Plenty-coups by Joel W. Martin 181
15.Mary Anne Sadlier's Advice for Irish Catholic Girls by Liz Szabo Hernadi 197
16.John Humphrey Noyes, the Oneida Community, and Male Continence by Michael J. McClymond 218
17.Is Life Worth Living? by Paul Jerome Croce 234
18.In His Steps: A Social Gospel Novel by Janet C. Olson 253
Healing: Health, Happiness, and the Miraculous
19.The Spiritual Meanings of Illness in Eighteenth-Century New England by Kenneth P Minhema 269
20.Supernaturalism and Healing in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints by Grant Underwood 299
21.Christian Physiology and Diet Reform by Peter Gardella 310
22.Sickness, Death, and Illusion in Christian Science by Craig R. Prentiss 320
23.The Miracles of St. Anthony of Padua by Timothy J. Meagher 337
Imagining: The Unseen World
24.The Life and Death of Mother Marie de Saint Joseph by Julia Boss 347
25.Possession, Witchcraft, and the Demonic in Puritan Religious Culture by Kenneth P Minhema 366
26.Speech of Sose-Há-W? and the Code of Handsome Lake by Matthew Dennis 402
27.A Methodist Dream of Heaven and Homeland by A. Gregory Schneider 417
28.African-American Vision Stories by Elizabeth Reis 426
Persuading: Witnessing, Controversies, and Polemics
29.Native American Visionary Experience and Christian Missions by Michael D. McNally 445
30.American Anti-Catholic Pornography by Peter Gardella 452
31.The Christian Doctrine of Slavery by Paul Harvey 466
32.Trance Lecturers in Antebellum America by Ann Braude 483
33.The Cremation versus Burial Debate by Stephen Prothero 492
Index 505