Apocalypse and the Millennium in the American Civil War Era
Apocalypse and the Millennium in the American Civil War Era

Author: Ben Wright

Publisher: LSU Press

Published: 2013-11-04

Total Pages: 270

ISBN-13: 0807151939

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In the Civil War era, Americans nearly unanimously accepted that humans battled in a cosmic contest between good and evil and that God was directing history toward its end. The concept of God's Providence and of millennialism -- Christian anticipations of the end of the world -- dominated religious thought in the nineteenth century. During the tumultuous years immediately prior to, during, and after the war, these ideas took on a greater importance as Americans struggled with the unprecedented destruction and promise of the period. Scholars of religion, literary critics, and especially historians have acknowledged the presence of apocalyptic thought in the era, but until now, few studies have taken the topic as their central focus or examined it from the antebellum period through Reconstruction. By doing so, the essays in Apocalypse and the Millennium in the American Civil War Era highlight the diverse ways in which beliefs about the end times influenced nineteenth-century American lives, including reform culture, the search for meaning amid the trials of war, and the social transformation wrought by emancipation. Millennial zeal infused the labor of reformers and explained their successes and failures as progress toward an imminent Kingdom of God. Men and women in the North and South looked to Providence to explain the causes and consequences of both victory and defeat, and Americans, black and white, experienced the shock waves of emancipation as either a long-prophesied jubilee or a vengeful punishment. Religion fostered division as well as union, the essays suggest, but while the nation tore itself apart and tentatively stitched itself back together, Americans continued looking to divine intervention to make meaning of the national apocalypse. Contributors:Edward J. BlumRyan CordellZachary W. DresserJennifer GraberMatthew HarperCharles F. IronsJoseph MooreRobert K. NelsonScott Nesbit Jason PhillipsNina Reid-MaroneyBen Wright

New Voyages to Carolina
New Voyages to Carolina

Author: Larry E. Tise

Publisher: UNC Press Books

Published: 2017-09-14

Total Pages: 425

ISBN-13: 1469634600

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New Voyages to Carolina offers a bold new approach for understanding and telling North Carolina's history. Recognizing the need for such a fresh approach and reflecting a generation of recent scholarship, eighteen distinguished authors have sculpted a broad, inclusive narrative of the state's evolution over more than four centuries. The volume provides new lenses and provocative possibilities for reimagining the state's past. Transcending traditional markers of wars and elections, the contributors map out a new chronology encompassing geological realities; the unappreciated presence of Indians, blacks, and women; religious and cultural influences; and abiding preferences for industrial development within the limits of "progressive" politics. While challenging traditional story lines, the authors frame a candid tale of the state's development. Contributors: Dorothea V. Ames, East Carolina University Karl E. Campbell, Appalachian State University James C. Cobb, University of Georgia Peter A. Coclanis, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Stephen Feeley, McDaniel College Jerry Gershenhorn, North Carolina Central University Glenda Elizabeth Gilmore, Yale University Patrick Huber, Missouri University of Science and Technology Charles F. Irons, Elon University David Moore, Warren Wilson College Michael Leroy Oberg, State University of New York, College at Geneseo Stanley R. Riggs, East Carolina University Richard D. Starnes, Western Carolina University Carole Watterson Troxler, Elon University Bradford J. Wood, Eastern Kentucky University Karin Zipf, East Carolina University

Victorian Religious Revivals
Victorian Religious Revivals

Author: David Bebbington

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2012-05-31

Total Pages:

ISBN-13: 0191611794

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Revivals are outbursts of religious enthusiasm in which there are numerous conversions. In this book the phenomenon of revival is set in its broad historical and historiographical context. David Bebbington provides detailed case-studies of awakenings that took place between 1841 and 1880 in Britain, North America and Australia, showing that the distinctive features of particular revivals were the result less of national differences than of denominational variations. These revivals occurred in many places across the globe, but revealed the shared characteristics of evangelical Protestantism. Bebbington explores the preconditions of revival, giving attention to the cultural setting of each episode as well as the form of piety displayed by the participants. No single cause can be assigned to the awakenings, but one of the chief factors behind them was occupational structure and striking instances of death were often a precipitant. Ideas were far more involved in these events than historians have normally supposed, so that the case-studies demonstrate some of the main patterns in religious thought at a popular level during the Victorian period. Laymen and women played a disproportionate part in their promotion and converts were usually drawn in large numbers from the young. There was a trend over time away from traditional spontaneity towards more organised methods sometimes entailing interdenominational co-operation.