Heart Religion in the British Enlightenment: Gender and Emotion in Early Methodism

by Phyllis Mack

Overview

This is a major study of the daily life and spirituality of early Methodist men and women. Phyllis Mack challenges traditional, negative depictions of early Methodism through an analysis of a vast array of primary sources - prayers, pamphlets, hymns, diaries, recipes, private letters, accounts of dreams, and rules for housekeeping. She examines how ordinary men and women understood the seismic shift from the religious culture of the seventeenth century to the so-called 'disenchantment of the world' that developed out of the Enlightenment. She places particular emphasis on the experience of women, arguing that both their spirituality and their contributions to the movement were different from men's. This revisionist account sheds light on how ordinary people understood their experience of religious conversion, marriage, worship, sexuality, friendship, and the supernatural, and what motivated them to travel the world as missionaries.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780521889186
Publisher:	Cambridge University Press
Publication date:	08/14/2008
Pages:	342
Product dimensions:	6.20(w) x 9.00(h) x 1.00(d)
Age Range:	3 Months

About the Author

Phyllis Mack is Professor of History and Women's Studies at Rutgers University, New Jersey. Her previous publications include Calvinist Preaching and Iconoclasm in the Netherlands, 1544-1569 (1978) and Visionary Women: Ecstatic Prophecy in 17th Century England (1992).

Table of Contents

Introduction; 1. The managed heart: educating the emotions in Methodist discourse; 2. 'Out of the paw of the lion': first conversion; 3. Men of feeling: natural and spiritual affection in the lives of the preachers; 4. Women in love: Eros and piety in the minds of Methodist women; 5. Mary Fletcher on the cross: gender and the suffering body; 6. Agency and the unconscious: the Methodist culture of dreaming; 7. Methodism and modernity.

Editorial Reviews

"[This book] is a fascinating account of gender difference in Methodism. It is also an important contribution to efforts aimed at bringing genuine religious belief back to the history of the eighteenth century."
Canadian Journal of History, Jeffrey R. Wigelsworth, Mount Royal University

"Mack's Heart Religion, whether read singly or in interrogative tandem with her earlier Visionary Women, is a challenging and thought‐provoking book. It prompts the reader to question the very basis upon which the historical interaction of religion, gender, and wider cultural trends can be written as well as offering insightful interpretations of the experience and culture of early Methodism." -American Historical Review

"In this groundbreaking work by Phyllis Mack....we find a helpful model for Adventist studies." -Michael W. Campbell, Seminary Studies

"a path-breaking work of meticulous scholarship and shrewd analysis." -Bruce Hindmarsh, Books and Culture

From the Publisher