Revolution as Reformation
304 pages, 6 x 9
1 B&W figure
Hardcover
Release Date:19 Jan 2021
ISBN:9780817320751
Revolution as Reformation
Protestant Faith in the Age of Revolutions, 1688–1832
Edited by Peter C. Messer and William Harrison Taylor
SERIES:
Religion and American Culture
University of Alabama Press
Essays that explore how Protestants responded to the opportunities and perils of revolution in the transatlantic age
Revolution as Reformation: Protestant Faith in the Age of Revolutions, 1688–1832 highlights the role that Protestantism played in shaping both individual and collective responses to revolution. These essays explore the various ways that the Protestant tradition, rooted in a perpetual process of recalibration and reformulation, provided the lens through which Protestants experienced and understood social and political change in the Age of Revolutions. In particular, they call attention to how Protestants used those changes to continue or accelerate the Protestant imperative of refining their faith toward an improved vision of reformed religion.
The editors and contributors define faith broadly: they incorporate individuals as well as specific sects and denominations, and as much of “life experience” as possible, not just life within a given church. In this way, the volume reveals how believers combined the practical demands of secular society with their personal faith and how, in turn, their attempts to reform religion shaped secular society.
The wide-ranging essays highlight the exchange of Protestant thinkers, traditions, and ideas across the Atlantic during this period. These perspectives reveal similarities between revolutionary movements across and around the Atlantic. The essays also emphasize the foundational role that religion played in people’s attempts to make sense of their world, and the importance they placed on harmonizing their ideas about religion and politics. These efforts produced novel theories of government, encouraged both revolution and counterrevolution, and refined both personal and collective understandings of faith and its relationship to society.
Revolution as Reformation: Protestant Faith in the Age of Revolutions, 1688–1832 highlights the role that Protestantism played in shaping both individual and collective responses to revolution. These essays explore the various ways that the Protestant tradition, rooted in a perpetual process of recalibration and reformulation, provided the lens through which Protestants experienced and understood social and political change in the Age of Revolutions. In particular, they call attention to how Protestants used those changes to continue or accelerate the Protestant imperative of refining their faith toward an improved vision of reformed religion.
The editors and contributors define faith broadly: they incorporate individuals as well as specific sects and denominations, and as much of “life experience” as possible, not just life within a given church. In this way, the volume reveals how believers combined the practical demands of secular society with their personal faith and how, in turn, their attempts to reform religion shaped secular society.
The wide-ranging essays highlight the exchange of Protestant thinkers, traditions, and ideas across the Atlantic during this period. These perspectives reveal similarities between revolutionary movements across and around the Atlantic. The essays also emphasize the foundational role that religion played in people’s attempts to make sense of their world, and the importance they placed on harmonizing their ideas about religion and politics. These efforts produced novel theories of government, encouraged both revolution and counterrevolution, and refined both personal and collective understandings of faith and its relationship to society.
Revolution as Reformation is an important addition to studies of the Atlantic world and to histories of Protestantism. Any scholar working on the intersection between religion and politics in this era would be happy to have this volume handy.’
—Amanda Porterfield, author of Corporate Spirit: Religion and the Rise of the Modern Corporation
‘For anyone who thinks the road from medieval hierarchies to modern liberties is straight and smooth, these essays show the need for a new map. The curves and rough surfaces on which the modern West traveled were often the result not of conflicts between faith and reason but tensions between religious establishments and religious dissent. This book’s strength is the addition of French examples to a story dominated by Anglo-American developments. Readers should buckle up.’
—D. G. Hart, author of American Catholic: The Politics of Faith during the Cold War
Revolution as Reformation is an immensely helpful and refreshing set of essays on a timely topic: the relationship of Protestantism to the so-called democratic revolutions in Europe and America during the long eighteenth century. These smart, historically rich, well-documented, and original pieces demonstrate the variety of ways in which religious faith shaped the modern political world. They eschew outworn generalizations about religion, secularization, and modernity and offer real insight based on historical specificity.’
—Mark Valeri, The Reverend Wood Neaves Distinguished Professor at the John C. Danforth Center on Religion and Politics, Washington University in St. Louis
‘This rich, wide-ranging volume demonstrates the multitude of ways that religion could influence and foster political revolution in the long eighteenth century. I recommend it highly.’
—Thomas S. Kidd, Distinguished Professor of History, Baylor
Peter C. Messer is associate professor of history at Mississippi State University. He is the author of Stories of Independence: Identity, Ideology, and History in Eighteenth-Century America and coeditor, with William Harrison Taylor, of Faith and Slavery in the Presbyterian Diaspora.
William Harrison Taylor is associate professor of history at Alabama State University. He is author of Unity in Christ and Country: American Presbyterians in the Revolutionary Era, 1758–1801 and coeditor, with Peter C. Messer, of Faith and Slavery in the Presbyterian Diaspora.
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