The War against Proslavery Religion

The War against Proslavery Religion PDF Author: John R. McKivigan
Publisher: Cornell University Press
ISBN: 1501728741
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 330

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Book Description
Reflecting a prodigious amount of research in primary and secondary sources, this book examines the efforts of American abolitionists to bring northern religious institutions to the forefront of the antislavery movement. John R. McKivigan employs both conventional and quantitative historical techniques to assess the positions adopted by various churches in the North during the growing conflict over slavery, and to analyze the stratagems adopted by American abolitionists during the 1840s and 1850s to persuade northern churches to condemn slavery and to endorse emancipation. Working for three decades to gain church support for their crusade, the abolitionists were the first to use many of the tactics of later generations of radicals and reformers who were also attempting to enlist conservative institutions in the struggle for social change. To correct what he regards to be significant misperceptions concerning church-oriented abolitionism, McKivigan concentrates on the effects of the abolitionists' frequent failures, the division of their movement, and the changes in their attitudes and tactics in dealing with the churches. By examining the pre-Civil War schisms in the Presbyterian, Baptist, and Methodist denominations, he shows why northern religious bodies refused to embrace abolitionism even after the defection of most southern members. He concludes that despite significant antislavery action by a few small denominations, most American churches resisted committing themselves to abolitionist principles and programs before the Civil War. In a period when attention is again being focused on the role of religious bodies in influencing efforts to solve America's social problems, this book is especially timely.

The War against Proslavery Religion

The War against Proslavery Religion PDF Author: John R. McKivigan
Publisher: Cornell University Press
ISBN: 1501728741
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 330

Get Book Here

Book Description
Reflecting a prodigious amount of research in primary and secondary sources, this book examines the efforts of American abolitionists to bring northern religious institutions to the forefront of the antislavery movement. John R. McKivigan employs both conventional and quantitative historical techniques to assess the positions adopted by various churches in the North during the growing conflict over slavery, and to analyze the stratagems adopted by American abolitionists during the 1840s and 1850s to persuade northern churches to condemn slavery and to endorse emancipation. Working for three decades to gain church support for their crusade, the abolitionists were the first to use many of the tactics of later generations of radicals and reformers who were also attempting to enlist conservative institutions in the struggle for social change. To correct what he regards to be significant misperceptions concerning church-oriented abolitionism, McKivigan concentrates on the effects of the abolitionists' frequent failures, the division of their movement, and the changes in their attitudes and tactics in dealing with the churches. By examining the pre-Civil War schisms in the Presbyterian, Baptist, and Methodist denominations, he shows why northern religious bodies refused to embrace abolitionism even after the defection of most southern members. He concludes that despite significant antislavery action by a few small denominations, most American churches resisted committing themselves to abolitionist principles and programs before the Civil War. In a period when attention is again being focused on the role of religious bodies in influencing efforts to solve America's social problems, this book is especially timely.

Bonds of Salvation

Bonds of Salvation PDF Author: Ben Wright
Publisher: LSU Press
ISBN: 0807174513
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 264

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Book Description
Ben Wright’s Bonds of Salvation demonstrates how religion structured the possibilities and limitations of American abolitionism during the early years of the republic. From the American Revolution through the eruption of schisms in the three largest Protestant denominations in the 1840s, this comprehensive work lays bare the social and religious divides that culminated in secession and civil war. Historians often emphasize status anxieties, market changes, biracial cooperation, and political maneuvering as primary forces in the evolution of slavery in the United States. Wright instead foregrounds the pivotal role religion played in shaping the ideological contours of the early abolitionist movement. Wright first examines the ideological distinctions between religious conversion and purification in the aftermath of the Revolution, when a small number of white Christians contended that the nation must purify itself from slavery before it could fulfill its religious destiny. Most white Christians disagreed, focusing on visions of spiritual salvation over the practical goal of emancipation. To expand salvation to all, they created new denominations equipped to carry the gospel across the American continent and eventually all over the globe. These denominations established numerous reform organizations, collectively known as the “benevolent empire,” to reckon with the problem of slavery. One affiliated group, the American Colonization Society (ACS), worked to end slavery and secure white supremacy by promising salvation for Africa and redemption for the United States. Yet the ACS and its efforts drew strong objections. Proslavery prophets transformed expectations of expanded salvation into a formidable antiabolitionist weapon, framing the ACS's proponents as enemies of national unity. Abolitionist assertions that enslavers could not serve as agents of salvation sapped the most potent force in American nationalism—Christianity—and led to schisms within the Presbyterian, Baptist, and Methodist churches. These divides exacerbated sectional hostilities and sent the nation farther down the path to secession and war. Wright’s provocative analysis reveals that visions of salvation both created and almost destroyed the American nation.

Let Justice Be Done

Let Justice Be Done PDF Author: Walters, Kerry
Publisher: Orbis Books
ISBN: 1608338282
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 215

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Book Description
"Compilation of writings by American Abolitionists from 1688-1865"--

Puritan Spirits in the Abolitionist Imagination

Puritan Spirits in the Abolitionist Imagination PDF Author: Kenyon Gradert
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 022669402X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 255

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Book Description
The Puritans of popular memory are dour figures, characterized by humorless toil at best and witch trials at worst. “Puritan” is an insult reserved for prudes, prigs, or oppressors. Antebellum American abolitionists, however, would be shocked to hear this. They fervently embraced the idea that Puritans were in fact pioneers of revolutionary dissent and invoked their name and ideas as part of their antislavery crusade. Puritan Spirits in the Abolitionist Imagination reveals how the leaders of the nineteenth-century abolitionist movement—from landmark figures like Ralph Waldo Emerson to scores of lesser-known writers and orators—drew upon the Puritan tradition to shape their politics and personae. In a striking instance of selective memory, reimagined aspects of Puritan history proved to be potent catalysts for abolitionist minds. Black writers lauded slave rebels as new Puritan soldiers, female antislavery militias in Kansas were cast as modern Pilgrims, and a direct lineage of radical democracy was traced from these early New Englanders through the American and French Revolutions to the abolitionist movement, deemed a “Second Reformation” by some. Kenyon Gradert recovers a striking influence on abolitionism and recasts our understanding of puritanism, often seen as a strictly conservative ideology, averse to the worldly rebellion demanded by abolitionists.

Perfectionist Politics

Perfectionist Politics PDF Author: Douglas M. Strong
Publisher: Syracuse University Press
ISBN: 9780815627937
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 288

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Book Description
The story of an important but overlooked antebellum reform movement: ecclesiastical abolitionism. Perfectionist Politics is the story of an important, but overlooked, antebellum reform movement: ecclesiastical abolitionism. Douglas M. Strong examines those radical evangelical Protestants who seceded from proslavery denominations and reorganized themselves into independent antislavery congregations. Mirroring political abolitionist activity-particularly in the "burned-over district" of New York State-the ecclesiastical abolitionists formed a network of abolition churches and became the primary focus of Liberty Party electioneering strategy. Ecclesiastical abolitionists justified this clear connection between church and state through the ethical experience of evangelical perfectionism. A vote for the Liberty Party became a mark of one's holiness. Perfectionist concepts also provided ecclesiastical abolitionists with a theological compass that enabled them to steer a middle course between two poles of U.S. democratic society-the need for institutional structure on one hand and the desire for greater individual liberty on the other. Strong contends that Liberty Party politics can be understood only as part of a broader perfectionist religious culture and specifically as an antebellum reflection of the popularized theological principle of "entire sanctification."

Oberlin, Hotbed of Abolitionism

Oberlin, Hotbed of Abolitionism PDF Author: J. Brent Morris
Publisher: UNC Press Books
ISBN: 1469618273
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 351

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Book Description
Oberlin, Hotbed of Abolitionism: College, Community, and the Fight for Freedom and Equality in Antebellum America

Break Every Yoke

Break Every Yoke PDF Author: Joshua Dubler
Publisher:
ISBN: 0190949155
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 265

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Book Description
Changes in the American religious landscape enabled the rise of mass incarceration. Religious ideas and practices also offer a key for ending mass incarceration. These are the bold claims advanced by Break Every Yoke, the joint work of two activist-scholars of American religion. Once, in an era not too long past, Americans, both incarcerated and free, spoke a language of social liberation animated by religion. In the era of mass incarceration, we have largely forgotten how to dream-and organize-this way. To end mass incarceration we must reclaim this lost tradition. Properly conceived, the movement we need must demand not prison reform but prison abolition. Break Every Yoke weaves religion into the stories about race, politics, and economics that conventionally account for America's grotesque prison expansion of the last half century, and in so doing it sheds new light on one of our era's biggest human catastrophes. By foregrounding the role of religion in the way political elites, religious institutions, and incarcerated activists talk about incarceration, Break Every Yoke is an effort to stretch the American moral imagination and contribute resources toward envisioning alternative ways of doing justice. By looking back to nineteenth century abolitionism, and by turning to today's grassroots activists, it argues for reclaiming the abolition "spirit."

Quakers and Abolition

Quakers and Abolition PDF Author: Brycchan Carey
Publisher: University of Illinois Press
ISBN: 0252096126
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 281

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Book Description
This collection of fifteen insightful essays examines the complexity and diversity of Quaker antislavery attitudes across three centuries, from 1658 to 1890. Contributors from a range of disciplines, nations, and faith backgrounds show Quaker's beliefs to be far from monolithic. They often disagreed with one another and the larger antislavery movement about the morality of slaveholding and the best approach to abolition. Not surprisingly, contributors explain, this complicated and evolving antislavery sensibility left behind an equally complicated legacy. While Quaker antislavery was a powerful contemporary influence in both the United States and Europe, present-day scholars pay little substantive attention to the subject. This volume faithfully seeks to correct that oversight, offering accessible yet provocative new insights on a key chapter of religious, political, and cultural history. Contributors include Dee E. Andrews, Kristen Block, Brycchan Carey, Christopher Densmore, Andrew Diemer, J. William Frost, Thomas D. Hamm, Nancy A. Hewitt, Maurice Jackson, Anna Vaughan Kett, Emma Jones Lapsansky-Werner, Gary B. Nash, Geoffrey Plank, Ellen M. Ross, Marie-Jeanne Rossignol, James Emmett Ryan, and James Walvin.

Quakers and Their Allies in the Abolitionist Cause, 1754-1808

Quakers and Their Allies in the Abolitionist Cause, 1754-1808 PDF Author: Maurice Jackson
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 131727279X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 219

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Book Description
This volume explores the significant connections between the Quaker community and the abolitionist cause in America. The case studies that make up the collection mainly focus on the greater Philadelphia area, a hotbed of the abolitionist movement and the location of the first American abolition society founded in 1775. Despite the importance of Quakers to the abolitionist movement, their significance has been largely overlooked in the existing historiography. These studies will be of interest to scholars of slavery and abolition, religious history, Atlantic studies and American social and political history.

Appeal to the Christian women of the South

Appeal to the Christian women of the South PDF Author: Angelina Emily Grimké
Publisher: DigiCat
ISBN:
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 58

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Book Description
But after all, it may be said, our fathers were certainly mistaken, for the Bible sanctions Slavery, and that is the highest authority. Now the Bible is my ultimate appeal in all matters of faith and practice, and it is to this test I am anxious to bring the subject at issue between us. Let us then begin with Adam and examine the charter of privileges which was given to him. "Have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth."