In 1843 in Seneca Falls, New York, Rhonda Bement was brought
before a disciplinary trial at her church, the First Presbyterian
Church, charged with "unchristian and unladylike" behavior. Her
transgression was to challenge the authority and integrity of her
minister because he had refused to read to the congregation her
announcement about abolitionist lectures taking place in the
village, and she was eventually excommunicated. The transcript of
her trial is the centerpiece of Revivalism, Social Conscience, and
Community in the Burned-Over District, which presents through the
testimonies of the witnesses the tensions between organized
religion and the reform movements of abolitionism, temperance, and
women's rights that were sweeping the country in this period.
The book is divided into three parts. Jan M. Saltzgaber sets the
stage in an introductory essay that examines the religious and
social ramifications of the Second Great Awakening in the
"burned-over" region of New York, analyzing in detail the changing
social and economic environment of Seneca Falls and delineating
connections between these changes and the currents of revival and
reform in the 1830s and 1840s. The fully-annotated text of the
trial is then presented in its entirety. In the epilogue, Glenn C.
Altschuler uses the trial and evidence from other local churches to
reassess the divisive effects of revivalism, stressing local
conditions and church practices that acted as centripetal forces
that impressed conservatives, moderates, and even "ultraists" with
the importance of church unity.
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