Zion on the Hudson: Dutch New York and New Jersey in the Age of Revivals

by Firth Haring Fabend

Overview

Winner of the 2001 New Jersey Author's Award by the New Jersey Academic Alliance

The Dutch came to the New World in the seventeenth century as explorers and traders, but religion soon followed, for it was accepted in the Netherlands that state and church were mutually benefited by advancing the “true Christian religion.” The influence of “Dutchness”—defined here as loyalty to what are presumed to be the distinctive qualities of Dutch national character and culture—persisted in New York and New Jersey for more than 200 years after Dutch emigration ended. Why?

Firth Haring Fabend finds the explanation in the devotion of the Reformed Dutch Church membership to the doctrines and traditions of their church. She looks at the individual and personal beliefs and behaviors of this often-neglected ethnic group. Thus, Zion on the Hudson presents both a broad and an intimate look at the way one mainstream Protestant denomination dealt with the transformative events of the evangelical era.

As Fabend describes the efforts of the Dutch to preserve the European standards and traditions of their church, while developing a taste for a new kind of theology and a preference for an American identity, she documents how Dutchness finally became a historical memory. The Americanization of the Reformed Dutch Church, Fabend writes, is a microcosm of the story of the Americanization of the United States itself.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780813527710
Publisher:	Rutgers University Press
Publication date:	03/01/2000
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	352
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.90(d)

About the Author

Firth Haring Fabend is the author of A Dutch Family in the Middle Colonies, 1660-1800 (Rutgers University Press), winner of the New York State Historical Association Annual Book Award and the Hendricks Prize of the New Netherland Project

What People are Saying About This

Charles T. Gehring

Charles T. Gehring, Director, New Netherland Project

Zion on the Hudson is required reading for anyone struggling with the questions of why 'Dutchness' persisted in New York and New Jersey, and what eventually caused it to disappear. Making use of a wide array of previously untapped sources, Fabend unfolds the story of Dutch persistence in a beautifully written style.

David Stern Cohen

David Stern Cohen, New Jersey Historical Commission

Fabend relates developments in the Reformed Dutch Church during the Second Great Awakening to larger themes in American social history, such as the evolution of ethnic identity, the changing roles of women, and the history of reform movements. It is serious scholarship, yet it is written in a style that is accessible to the general reader.