In seventeenth- and eighteenth-century England and America,
established society branded as "enthusiasts" those unconventional
but religiously devout extremists who stepped across orthodox lines
and claimed an intimate, emotional relationship with God. John of
Leyden, Anne Hutchinson, William Penn, and George Whitefield all
shared the label "enthusiast." This book is a study of the
enthusiasts who migrated to the American colonies as well as those
who emerged there--from Pilgrim Fathers to pietistic Moravians,
from the martyr-bound Quakers to heaven-bent revivalists of the
1740s.
This study of the role of religious enthusiasm in early America
tells us much about English attitudes toward religion in the New
World and about the vital part it played in the lives of the
colonists. Both friends and enemies of enthusiasm revealed in their
arguments and actions their own conceptions of the America they
inhabited. Was religion in America to be an extension of Old World
institutions or truly a product of the New World? Would enthusiasm
undermine civilized institutions, not only established churches,
but government, social structure, morality, and the economy as
well? Calling enthusiasts first heretics, then subversives and
conspirators, conventional society sought ways to suppress or
banish them. By 1776 enthusiasm had spilled over into politics and
added a radical dimension to the revolutionary struggle.
This timely exploration of the effect of radical religion on
the course of early American history provides essential historical
perspective to the current interest in popular religion.
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