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Index

Religion in the Age of Enlightenment

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Equal Portions Of Heavenly Fire: Mary Wollstonecraft And The Sexless Soul, Rachael Givens Johnson

Religion in the Age of Enlightenment

"This female philosopher indignantly rejects the idea of a sex in the soul, pronouncing the sensibility, timidity and tenderness of women, to be merely artificial refinements of character, introduced and fostered by men;' writes the appalled (and fictional) Hindu philosopher Shahcoolen in Benjamin Silliman's series The Letters of Shahcoolen (1802). Published not long after Mary Wollstonecraft's manifesto, A Vindication of the Rights of Woman ( 1796), Silliman's series dedicates four epistles to detailing the nature and influence of the "regenerating system of this female lunatic." Another detractor brands Wollstonecraft "an unsex'd female" in a poetic satire on the author's manifesto …

Providential Empiricism: Suffering And Shaping The Self In Eighteenth~Century British Children's Literature, Adrianne Wadewitz

Religion in the Age of Enlightenment

In "Praise for Creation and Providence" eighteenth-century Dissenting cleric Isaac Watts conveys God's encompassing presence-not only is he in heaven and hell, but he also inhabits (and owns) Earth and everything in it. This poem was reprinted for more than 150 years in Watts's Divine Songs: Attempted in Easy Language for the Use of Children (1775). A child reciting this poem is made keenly aware of how much he or she owes to God-soul, planet, and life. Watts emphasizes how one senses God's physical presence ("Beams of love:' "His Hand;' and "his Eye") with the body ("I stand or move" …

Imagining Methodism In Eighteenth-Century Britain: Enthusiasm, Belief, And The Borders Of The Self: Book Review, Robin Runia

Religion in the Age of Enlightenment

I n her sensitive and thoughtful afterword, Misty Anderson rehearses the investment of literary criticism in "restaging the opposition between a religious past and a secular modernity" (236). She makes clear how the discipline of literary studies has largely refused to acknowledge its own ideology of secularization. Quoting Michael Kauffman, Anderson offers her audience the following call to action: "Anyone constructing a narrative of secularization (even if finally to refute it) needs to evaluate certain ideas, truth claims, or values that may seem more or less spiritual, more or less 'religious"' (236). Following her own thorough consideration of the relationship …

Madonella's Other Convent: "Platonick" Ladies, Randy Rakes, And The "Mahometan" Paradise, Samara Anne Cahill

Religion in the Age of Enlightenment

In eighteenth-century England both the Roman Catholic convent andthe Muslim harem were stereotyped as feminine spaces of religious alterity and sexual subversion. As a result, those who wished to defend women's learning often resorted to complex xenophobic representational strategies as a way of disassociating learned women from these spaces. I argue that the stereotypical "Platonick lady:' as a satirical figure that negotiated both these sites of supposed sexual hypocrisy and foreign dominion, ought to be considered a complex but key trope in the history of feminist orientalism. This is because, in her hypocritical obsession with the disembodied "soul;' the …

''A Dreadful Phenomenon At The Birches": Grace, Nature, And Industry In The Ministry And Writings Of John Fletcher Of Madeley, Peter S. Forsaith

Religion in the Age of Enlightenment

n the morning of Thursday, May 27, 1773, the evangelical Vicar of Madeley, Shropshire, the Reverend John Fletcher, went with throngs of other curious onlookers to view the dramatic scene of a landslip that had occurred in the early hours on the edge of his parish, at a location known locally as "the Birches." Meeting several of his parishioners there, he announced that he would return the following evening to preach a sermon on this "Dreadful Phenomenon:' He took for his text "If the Lord make a new thing, and the earth open her mouth, and swallow them up ... …

"Oppressed With My Own Sensations": The Histories Of Some Of The Penitents And Principled Piety, Robin Runia

Religion in the Age of Enlightenment

Many scholars have observed the sentimentalization of the prostitute throughout the eighteenth century, and while this sentimentalization and its connection to the culture of sensibility have been compellingly theorized, the penitent prostitute's relationship to emotion, sensation, and piety has not been fully developed. The Histories of Some of the Penitents in the Magdalen House (1760) constructs an anxious equivalency between emotion and sensation, reflecting the vexed nature of sentimental discourse-the difficulty of distinguishing clearly between sensibility and sensuality. Examining this slippage reveals anxieties about women's abilities to accurately interpret and act upon the sensations of their bodies and their corresponding …

The Eighteenth-Century Novel And The Secularization Of Ethics: Book Review, Mary Ann Rooks

Religion in the Age of Enlightenment

For many reasons-including religious reforms and controversies, doubts about the effectiveness of the clergy, the development of scientific advancements and Enlightenment ideologies, and disruptions of class and gender expectations coinciding with the emergence of a consumer economy-it is easy to imagine writers and readers in the eighteenth century searching for a locus of moral authority. The frequency of claims to "entertain and instruct;' a mantra of eighteenth-century prose fiction, indicates a need felt by many authors to address the suspected dangers of novel reading and defend the legitimacy-in part_icular the moral efficacy-of this emergent genre. In The Eighteenth-Century Novel and …

Wherein Lies Virtue? Secular Matters And Godly Matters In The Works Of Sarah Fielding, Mary Ann Rooks

Religion in the Age of Enlightenment

Like many writers of the eighteenth century, Sarah Fielding frequently proclaims that the function of her narratives, and of fiction in general, is to inculcate virtue through entertaining storytelling; in her novels she forthrightly intends, as she says in the introduction to The Cry, to "entertain and instruct:' In her prefatory and other critical materials, she tends to draw from an arsenal of commonly referenced classical poets and early modern philosophers, essayists, and literary masters to illustrate and defend her moral purpose. Indeed, one might be led to believe, based solely on reading the ancillary, nonfiction expressions surrounding Fielding's …

Kathryn Duncan, Editor Religion In The Age Of Reason: A Transatlantic Study Of The Long Eighteenth Century: Book Review, David B. Paxman

Religion in the Age of Enlightenment

When asked what would follow race, class, and gender as the new "center of intellectual energy in the academy:' Stanley Fish answered, "religion" (ix). Kathryn Duncan's collection of twelve essays in Religion in the Age of Reason: A Transatlantic Study of the Long Eighteenth Century turns our attention in that direction and, in so doing, demonstrates why religion merits greater attention. Six of the twelve essays have appeared in an issue of AMS's Symbolism: An International Annual of Critical Aesthetics, volume 4, edited by Duncan.

Daniella Kostroun And Lisa Vollendorf, Editors Women, Religion, And The Atlantic World (1600-1800): Book Review, Robin Runia

Religion in the Age of Enlightenment

This recent collection of essays promises to transcend the Old vs. New World, Catholic vs. Protestant, and European vs. indigenous dichotomies that have dominated the emerging field of Atlantic studies. Edited by Daniella Kostroun and Lisa Vollendorf and drawing from a colloquium sponsored by UCLA's Center for Seventeenth- and Eighteenth-Century Studies at the William Andrews Clark Memorial Library, Women, Religion, and the Atlantic World (1600-1800)explores how religion and spirituality shaped local politics, economics, gender, and race in Europe, the Caribbean, and North and South America. The alternative directions described and modeled in the volume all assume a women's and …

Anti~Catholicism And The Gothic Imaginary: The Historical And Literary Contexts, Diane Long Hoeveler

Religion in the Age of Enlightenment

General historical consensus (long in the grip of Whig assumptions) has frequently proclaimed that religion during the Enlightenment period was no longer the highly contentious issue that it had been since the reformation in England. By the mid-eighteenth century, the long siege of fighting and dying over religious beliefs was, in fact, believed to be safely in the past as an elite class and an enlightened bourgeoisie embraced the brave new world of rationalism. This upper crust relegated religious disputes to a much earlier European culture that had been prone to such primitive, superstitious, and irrational behaviors and beliefs. The …

''A Prodigious Execution": The Confessional Politics Of Robert Paltock's The Life And Adventures Of Peter Wilkins, Patrick Mello

Religion in the Age of Enlightenment

The only extant eighteenth-century review of Robert Paltock's The Life and Adventures of Peter Wilkins, a Cornish Man (1750) compares the novel to both Gulliver's Travels (1726) and Robinson Crusoe (1719), claiming that Paltock attempts to blend qualities of those two books but fails because there is "no very natural conjunction" between them. The reviewer's judgment, however, seems excessively harsh-in fact, positioning Peter Wilkins between these two novels makes a great deal of sense. Like Crusoe, Peter Wilkinsfeatures a reasonable, Whiggish male protagonist who, through labor and solitude, undergoes a spiritual transformation while stranded on a deserted island. What …

The Enlightenment Tradition Of Hume And Smith In Austen: Windows To Understanding, Nicole Coonradt

Religion in the Age of Enlightenment

In his Theory of Moral Sentiments (1759), Adam Smith notes the importance of "little department[s]"-those smaller circles of social contact: "By Nature the events which immediately affect that little department in which we ourselves have some little management and directions, which immediately affect ourselves, our friends, our country, are the events which interest us the most, and which chiefly excite our desires and aversions, our hopes and fears, our joys and sorrows:' Alasdair MacIntyre would agree with this idea of one's sphere of influence, especially in the works of Jane Austen. Clearly, this concern with self, others, and country might …

Gil Skidmore, Editor Strength In Weakness: Writings Of Eighteenth~ Century Quaker Women: Book Review, Laura Miller

Religion in the Age of Enlightenment

This anthology showcases the experience of an underrepresented group of women: eighteenth-century Quakers. This group has received comparatively little critical attention in contrast to Quaker women of the seventeenth century; Skidmore's anthology helps to fill this void. Skidmore's edition begins with an introductory chapter that helps to define Quakerisms origins, the value of testimony, and the comparative equality of women who participated in a faith that acknowledged "the 'priesthood of all believers'" (2). The eight women whose writings Skidmore anthologizes have lives full of mobility and agency and were, these accounts imply, respected members of their communities. Following is a …

Emptied And Filled: Catherine Livingston Garrettson's Quest For Sanctification, Rachel Cope

Religion in the Age of Enlightenment

In October 1837, Catherine Livingston Garrettson, a devout Methodist and a prolific writer, made note of a personal jubilee in her diary: "This blessed month is near its end and I have been honored to see my 85 years, and the 50 years of my spiritual birth:' Just as 14 October 1752 dated her entrance into mortal life, for Catherine, 13 October 1787 marked an even more meaningful "birthday" -the anniversary of the day she experienced justification and came to desire personal sanctification ( the point in which a believer is transformed and purified through the grace of Christ and …

Full Issue

Religion in the Age of Enlightenment

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Front Matter

Religion in the Age of Enlightenment

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Preface, Brett C. Mcinelly

Religion in the Age of Enlightenment

Volume 2 of Religion in the Age of Enlightenment brings together the work of both established and up-and-coming scholars from a variety of fields of study and helps to solidify RAE's thematic and methodological scope. Looked at collectively, their work spans more than a century, from the late seventeenth to the early nineteenth centuries, and the varied topics and approaches demonstrate the rich possibilities for the study of religion during the Enlightenment.

"If God ... See Fit To Call You Out": "Public" And "Private" In The Writings Of Methodist Women, 1760-1840, Joanna Cruickshank

Religion in the Age of Enlightenment

In 1770, the renowned Methodist leader Mary Bosanquet (later Fletcher) published a letter of advice she had written to a young woman named Elizabeth Andrews. Amidst a flood of detailed advice about the life of faith, including recommendations about spiritual disciplines, reading matter, and marriage, Bosanquet urged her young friend:

Strive to be little and unknown; and remember that our Lord lived thirty years in private, and only three in publick, and that the word of God allows a woman, professing godliness, no adorning but that of a meek and quiet spirit. Strive, I say, to be little and unknown; …

"Expectation And Amendment Maketh Me To Become An Usurer": Usury, Providentialism, And The Age Of Projects, Dwight D. Codr

Religion in the Age of Enlightenment

In an Internet postscript to his 1989 history of usury, Norman Jones remarks that "by the eighteenth century the moral issue of usury was no longer of interest to most Protestant thinkers. In practice lending at interest with collateral had become normal, as had deposit banking:'1 Indeed, usury itself was of relatively minor importance to economic theorization and debate in the eighteenth century when compared to the financial debates of the period Jones's work covers, 1571-1624, spanning Elizabeth's Act Against Usury and the Usury Act of 1624. During the earlier period, usury was not simply linked to an emerging system …

Jonathan Edwards's Metaphors Of Sin In Indian Country, Joy A. J. Howard

Religion in the Age of Enlightenment

T he move to Indian country was an uncommon one for a preacher of Jonathan Edwards's status and age, but the seven years he lived in Stockbridge preaching to Mohawks, Mahicans, and colonial settlers proved to be some of the most fruitful of his career. Jonathan Edwards accepted the position in Stockbridge after his Northampton congregation voted to dismiss him in 1750 and, after visiting the mission town multiple times, he was officially installed as pastor in August of 1751. Edwards valued Protestant mission imperatives, and although the pastorate was remote and he faced a significant language barrier between him …

Trauma And Transformation: The Political Progress Of John Bunyan: Book Review, Jeffrey Galbraith

Religion in the Age of Enlightenment

In these papers from the Third Triennial Conference of the International John Bunyan Society, the life and writings of John Bunyan assume a less tidy shape than appears in standard biographies. Bunyan braved the consequences of defying the Act of Uniformity of 1662, yet Trauma and Transformation does not view the Dissenting author as possessing an identity galvanized by persecution. Nor, on the other hand, do the essays reduce Bunyan's religious sensitivity to a psychological disorder. Rather, the contributors to this collection work to excavate the gaps in the existing record of Bunyan's life. Notably, they address Bunyan's silence concerning …

Preface, Brett C. Mcinelly

Religion in the Age of Enlightenment

As I was breaking into the profession some years ago, religion was a mere blip on my radar of scholarly interests. Having come through graduate school in the 1990s, I naturally followed disciplinary trends in literary and eighteenth-century studies, focusing much of my research on issues of race, class, and gender and examining the relationships between Britain's imperial history and the literature and culture of the period. Religion factored into my queries at times, say, in considering the ways Crusoe's Protestantism informed his sense of self while taking possession of a West Indian island. But religion itself remained on the …

Religion In The Age Of Enlightenment: Putting John Wesley In Context, Jeremy Gregory

Religion in the Age of Enlightenment

Wesley's long life ( 1703-91) spanned almost the whole of the eighteenth century, and any attempt to understand him undoubtedly needs to include some sense of the period in which he lived. There have, of course, been many attempts to evoke Wesley's context, whether broadly defined-as in the thousands of books and scholarly articles that have been written about the era in general, ranging from the economy, politics, and society to cultural, intellectual, and religious matters (and much else besides), or in the various studies that have more directly positioned Wesley, and early Methodism, within his, and its, time. Most …

Full Issue

Religion in the Age of Enlightenment

No abstract provided.

Early American Mikvaot: Ritual Baths As The Hope Of Israel, Laura Arnold Leibman

Religion in the Age of Enlightenment

On July 27, 1656, at the age of twenty-three, Baruch Spinoza was cast out of the Jewish community of Amsterdam. In a proclamation read publicly in the Portuguese Synagogue, the "Lords of the ma'amad" [Synagogue Board] declared that,

having long known of the evil opinions and the acts of Baruch de Spinoza... [and] having failed to make him mend his wicked ways, and, on the contrary, daily receiving more and more serious information about the abominable heresies which he practiced and taught and about his monstrous deeds... [we] have decided... that the said Espinoza should be excommunicated and expelled …

The Mentor's Anxiety: Conduct Books And The Proliferation Of Virtuous Guidance, David B. Paxman

Religion in the Age of Enlightenment

Thomas Fuller's Directions, Counsels and Cautions, Tending to Prudent Management of Affairs in Common Life (London, 1725) gives its audience of young readers 1,761 axioms of conduct. Later editions swelled the number to 3,152. Fuller's phrase "prudent management" seems ironic: no one could possibly remember so many points of advice, much less apply them in an orderly way. This book exemplifies a tendency that may deserve notice. In the late seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, guidance on virtue and goodness, in one sense a simple and unified project, tends to fragment into levels of multiplicity that outstrip the ability of basic …

"This Interesting Female Shone As The Morning Star": Protestant Missions, American Indian Schoolgirls, And The Rhetoric Of True Womanhood, Elizabeth J. Thompson

Religion in the Age of Enlightenment

During the settlement era of the English colonies in North America, narratives that expressed hopefulness about the assimilation of Indians often did so through tropes of intermarriage. From William Byrd to Thomas Jefferson, writers fantasized that the most obvious, effective, and nonviolent solution to the ongoing Indian problem could have been-even should have been-intermarriage. Writers, however, seldom suggested their contemporary readers actually seize on this solution. Instead, the overwhelming majority cast such panaceas in the distant past, while a few imagined them taking place in the remote future. Almost all of them ignored actual intermarriage taking place between white men …

The Primitive Church, The Primitive Mind, And Methodism In The Eighteenth Century, Kathryn Stasio, Micheal J. Stasio

Religion in the Age of Enlightenment

In The Evangelist of Desire: John Wesley and the Methodists, Henry Abelove reminds his readers that Methodism was part of a larger evangelical movement that began in the 1730s but, while it grew, other sects barely sustained their numbers or disappeared entirely. Citing Frank Baker, Abelove notes that when Wesley died in 1791, Methodists owned 558 preaching houses in the British Isles, and membership totaled 72,476.1 Abelove then chronicles Wesley's ability to lead the Methodist movement, crediting much of its success to the force of Wesley's personality. Yet not all of Wesley's contemporaries found him so charming, as the anti-Methodist …