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Cities of Zion: The Holiness Movement and Methodist Camp Meeting Towns in America follows Methodists and holiness advocates from their urban worlds of mid-century New York City and Philadelphia out into the wilderness where they found green worlds of religious retreat in that most traditional of Methodist theaters: the camp meeting. Samuel Avery-Quinn examines the transformation of American Methodist camp meeting revivalism from the Gilded Age through the twenty-first Century. These transformations are a window into the religious worlds of middle-class Protestants as they struggled with economic and social change, industrialization, moral leisure, theological controversies, and radically cha...
In Spiritualism's Place, four friends and scholars who produce the acclaimed Dig: A History Podcast, share their curiosity and enthusiasm for uncovering stories from the past as they explore the history of Lily Dale. Located in western New York State, the world's largest center for Spiritualism was founded in 1879. Lily Dale has been a home for Spiritualists attempting to make contact with the dead, as well as a gathering place for reformers, a refuge for seekers looking for alternatives to established paths of knowledge, and a target for skeptics. This intimate history of Lily Dale reveals the role that this fascinating place has played within the history of Spiritualism, as well as within ...
Archaeologists have been increasingly turning their attention to the study of religion, but the field so far has lacked a cross-cultural overview. This text challenges archaeological conventions by refusing to respect the geographic and temporal boundaries with which archaeologists too often define their field. Worldwide in range and comparative in perspective, this exploration is guided by several fundamental questions: how do we recognize religion in the archaeological record? When should we recognize the first activities we call religious? What distinguishes a world religion? How can we see the formations of modern world religions in the archaeological record? An Archaeology of Religion begins with the first glimmers of what might be considered religious expression in the Paleolithic period and concludes with the complexities of world religions today. This book is an ambitious attempt to survey how scholars approach the identification of religious sites and practices in the archaeological record.
The Routledge Companion to the American Landscape provides a comprehensive overview of the American landscape in a way fit for the twenty-first century, not only in its topical and regional scope but also in its methodological and disciplinary diversity. Critically surveying the contemporary scholarship on the American landscape, this companion brings together scholars from the social sciences and humanities who focus their work on understanding the polyphonic evolution of the United States’ landscape. It simultaneously assesses the development of the US landscape as well as the scholarly thought that has driven innovation and continued research about that landscape. Four broad sections fo...
This book explores the history of church camps and retreat centers to show how environmental stewardship became the dominant paradigm for Protestant environmentalism, why that is a flawed and fractious model, and why it has stalled.
Between 1776 and 1850, the people, politicians, and clergy of New England transformed the relationship between church and state. They did not simply replace their religious establishments with voluntary churches and organizations. Instead, as they collided over disestablishment, Sunday laws, and antislavery, they built the foundation of what the author describes as a religion-supported state. Religious tolerance and pluralism coexisted in the religion-supported state with religious anxiety and controversy. Questions of religious liberty were shaped by public debates among evangelicals, Unitarians, Universalists, deists, and others about the moral implications of religious truth and error. The author traces the shifting, situational political alliances they constructed to protect the moral core of their competing truths. New England's religion-supported state still resonates in the United States in the twenty-first century.
This book looks at the interaction of slavery, religion, and race in antebellum Missouri and how they influenced and shaped each other. The author argues that for African Americans, religion was an arena where they sought control over their own lives and where they created their own form of Christianity.
The Wesleyan-Methodist movement entered American history as a fragment of British Methodism. It quickly took on a new identity in the early republic and grew into a vibrant denomination in the nineteenth century. The transitions from the rugged pioneer religion modeled by Bishop Francis Asbury to the urbane religion of industrial America was by design the goal of influential leaders of the Methodist Episcopal Church. Nathan Bangs was perhaps one of the most significant of such leaders. He rose from obscurity to the ranks of power and influence by refining patterns of worship, expanding denominational publishing, and structuring ministerial education. This study is concerned with the development of respectability in American Methodism. It also explores questions on how Bangs and other leaders dealt with in-house conflicts on issues related to race, slavery, and the poor.
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In this book, Michael Smith offers a comparative and interdisciplinary examination of ancient settlements and cities. Early cities varied considerably in their political and economic organization and dynamics. Smith here introduces a coherent approach to urbanism that is transdisciplinary in scope, scientific in epistemology, and anchored in the urban literature of the social sciences. His new insight is 'energized crowding,' a concept that captures the consequences of social interactions within the built environment resulting from increases in population size and density within settlements. Smith explores the implications of features such as empires, states, markets, households, and neighborhoods for urban life and society through case studies from around the world. Direct influences on urban life – as mediated by energized crowding-are organized into institutional (top-down forces) and generative (bottom-up processes). Smith's volume analyzes their similarities and differences with contemporary cities, and highlights the relevance of ancient cities for understanding urbanism and its challenges today.