Redeeming America: Evangelicals and the Road to Civil War

by Curtis D. Johnson

Overview

Analyzing the struggle by evangelical Protestants for the mind and soul of America in the decades before the Civil War, Johnson lucidly explores the nature of the evangelical message, the conflict of ideas within the movement, and the influence of these forces—both immediate and far-reaching—on American culture. American Ways Series.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781566630313
Publisher:	Dee, Ivan R. Publisher
Publication date:	08/01/1993
Series:	American Ways
Pages:	224
Sales rank:	226,245
Product dimensions:	5.70(w) x 8.48(h) x 0.92(d)

About the Author

Curtis D. Johnson teaches history at Mount Saint Mary’s College in Emmitsburg, Maryland. He has also written Islands of Holiness.

Editorial Reviews

Accessible and innovative...This major contribution will find wide acceptance.

Journal of Southern History - John Daly

Accessible and innovative...This major contribution will find wide acceptance.
— John Daly

The Journal of Southern History

Accessible and innovative...This major contribution will find wide acceptance.
— John Daly

Journal Of Southern History

Accessible and innovative...This major contribution will find wide acceptance.
— Journal of Southern History

Daly

In the absence of a state-supported religion, the years 1820-60 saw tremendous expansion and influence of the Evangelicals in the United States. Johnson ( Islands of Holiness , Cornell Univ. Pr., 1989) discusses the many ways in which these Evangelical sects attempted to shape American society. Generally drawn along socioeconomic lines, there were three major groups: Formalists (Congregationalists, Presbyterians), Antiformalists (Methodists, Baptists), and the African American groupings. Johnson discusses in serviceable but tedious prose how these groups varied in their beliefs on biblical authority, rebirth, the Second Coming, and Perfectionism. Slavery also divided Southern from Northern Evangelicals. By the time of the Civil War, changes in American society had altered the character and composition of the Evangelicals, and they were never again as powerful. For collections specializing in American religious history.-- Deborah Owen, Fairview Heights P.L., Ill.

Library Journal

Explores the impact of evangelical Protestantism on antebellum American culture, synthesizing much of the scholarship on this topic that has been produced over several decades. The study examines five theological ideas that evangelicals upheld with great seriousness and discusses how these ideas were interpreted by middle- to upper-class whites, lower- to middle-class whites, and African Americans. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

Booknews

Redeeming America offers a deft guide through the subdivision of evangelical Protestantism in the antebellum U. S.

The Historian