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Shakers And Jerkers: Letters From The "Long Walk," 1805, Part 2, Douglas L. Winiarski
Shakers And Jerkers: Letters From The "Long Walk," 1805, Part 2, Douglas L. Winiarski
Religious Studies Faculty Publications
Throughout the bitterly cold month of January 1805, John Meacham (1770-1854), Issachar Bates (1758-1837), and Benjamin Youngs (1774- 1855), struggled through mud and ice, biting winds, blinding snow, and drenching rains, on a 1,200-mile “Long Walk” to the settlements of the trans-Appalachian West. Traveling south toward Cumberland Gap, the three Shaker missionaries from New Lebanon, New York, were tracking a strange new convulsive religious phenomenon that had gripped Scots-Irish Presbyterians during the frontier religious awakening known as the Great Revival (1799-1805). Observers called the puzzling somatic fits “the Jerks.” Ardent supporters of the revivals believed the jerks were a sign …
Shakers And Jerkers: Letters From The "Long Walk," 1805, Part I, Douglas L. Winiarski
Shakers And Jerkers: Letters From The "Long Walk," 1805, Part I, Douglas L. Winiarski
Religious Studies Faculty Publications
Reports of a bizarre new religious phenomenon made their way over the mountains from Tennessee during the summer and fall of 1804. For several years, readers in the eastern states had been eagerly consuming news of the Great Revival, the powerful succession of Presbyterian sacramental festivals and Methodist camp meetings that played a formative role in the development of the southern Bible Belt and the emergence of early American evangelicalism. Letters from the frontier frequently included vivid descriptions of the so-called “falling exercise,” in which the bodies of revival converts crumpled to the ground during powerful sermon performances on the …
New Perspectives On The Northampton Communion Controversy Iv: Experience Mayhew’S Dissertation On Edwards’S Humble Inquiry, Douglas L. Winiarski
New Perspectives On The Northampton Communion Controversy Iv: Experience Mayhew’S Dissertation On Edwards’S Humble Inquiry, Douglas L. Winiarski
Religious Studies Faculty Publications
This fourth installment in a series exploring newly discovered manuscripts relating to the “Qualifications Controversy” that drove Edwards from his Northampton pastorate presents an unpublished oppositional dissertation by Experience Mayhew, a prominent eighteenth-century Indian missionary from Martha’s Vineyard. Next to Solomon Stoddard, Mayhew was Edwards’s most important theological target during the conflict. Where Edwards pressed toward precision in defining the qualifications for admission to the Lord’s Supper, Mayhew remained convinced that the standards for membership in New England’s Congregational churches should encompass a broad range of knowledge and experience. His rejoinder to Edwards’s Humble Inquiry provides a rare opportunity to …
Here Come The Nones! Pluralism And Evangelization After Denominationalism And Americanism, William L. Portier
Here Come The Nones! Pluralism And Evangelization After Denominationalism And Americanism, William L. Portier
Religious Studies Faculty Publications
This essay begins with a four-part overview of American Catholic history focused on the building and dissolution of an immigrant Catholic subculture. The final period, “Catholics and the Dynamics of Pluralism (1968-present)” leads naturally into a discussion of the demography of Catholics in the United States. Particular attention is given to the trend to disaffiliation among millennials and how best to interpret it. Pastoral and theological reflections on the demography of disaffiliation emphasize the need for the church in the United States to take on an evangelical form more suited to a pluralism that is post-denominational and post-Americanist, and how …
The Newbury Prayer Bill Hoax: Devotion And Deception In New England's Era Of Great Awakenings, Douglas L. Winiarski
The Newbury Prayer Bill Hoax: Devotion And Deception In New England's Era Of Great Awakenings, Douglas L. Winiarski
Religious Studies Faculty Publications
[...] [T]he “Tappin manuscript,” as I refer to it in the essay that follows, presents an intriguing puzzle. If Christopher Toppan did not compose the unusual prayer request, then who did? When? Why? Solving the riddle of the Tappin manuscript leads us into the troubled final years of one of New England’s most pugnacious ministers and the evangelical underworld of the Great Awakening that he had come to despise.