An edition of Cosmos crumbling (1994)

Cosmos crumbling

American reform and the religious imagination

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Last edited by MARC Bot
July 25, 2024 | History
An edition of Cosmos crumbling (1994)

Cosmos crumbling

American reform and the religious imagination

  • 2 Want to read

In the forty years before the Civil War, America rang with the cry of reform. Abolitionists stormed against the cruelties of slavery. Temperance zealots hounded producers and consumers of strong drink. Sabbatarians fought to make Sunday an officially recognized sacred day. Women's rights activists proclaimed the case for sexual equality.

Others offered programs of physiological and spiritual self-reform: phrenology, vegetarianism, the water-cure, spiritualism, and miscellaneous others. "Even the insect world was to be defended," Emerson mused, "and a society for the protection of ground-worms, slugs, and mosquitoes was to be incorporated without delay.".

Cosmos Crumbling brilliantly reassesses the religious roots of these antebellum reform movements through a series of penetrating profiles of key men and women who sought to remake their worlds in sacred terms.

Filled with vivid anecdotes and penetrating analysis, the book presents a genealogy of reform cosmology that begins with the American Revolution and ends with "the woman question," the issue that drove a wedge between traditional evangelical reformers and the more radical reformers who questioned the very foundations of the conventional Christian cosmos. Here is the story of Declaration of Independence signer Benjamin Rush and his lifelong odyssey to bring together his unorthodox Christian ideals and his revolutionary republicanism.

Other portraits highlight the guiding role of religion in the careers of the tireless abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison, the evangelical minister Lyman Beecher and his daughter, influential educational reformer Catharine Beecher, as well as of Angelina and Sarah Crimke, and Lydia Maria Child, fearless women who made enormous strides in reimagining the spiritual and moral power of women and their place in society.

There is also an intriguing chapter on leaders of the body reforms, including phrenologist Orson Squire Fowler, who began his career reading the heads of his fellow students at Amherst College for small change, and William Andrus Alcott, who advocated a bland vegetarian diet, cold water bathing, and a profusion of daily rituals to guide his followers through their every waking moment.

Arguing that we cannot understand American reform movements unless we understand the sacred significance reformers bestowed on the worldly arenas of politics, society, and the economy, Abzug presents these men and women in their own words, placing their cherished ideals and their often heated squabbles within the context of their millennial and sometimes apocalyptic sense of America's role in the cosmic drama.

Tracing the lasting impact of what began as a peculiarly Protestant, largely New England, style of social action on the uniquely American traditions of activism that flourish today, Cosmos Crumbling is a signal contribution to our understanding of the myriad ways in which the quest for enlightenment and salvation continues to shape American politics.

Publish Date
Language
English
Pages
285

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Previews available in: English

Edition Availability
Cover of: Cosmos crumbling
Cosmos crumbling: American reform and the religious imagination
1994, Oxford University Press
in English
Cover of: Cosmos Crumbling
Cosmos Crumbling
September 1994, Oxford University Press
Paperback
Cover of: Cosmos crumbling
Cosmos crumbling: American reform and the religiousimagination
1994, Oxford University Press
in English
Cover of: Cosmos Crumbling
Cosmos Crumbling: American Reform and the Religious Imagination
1994, Oxford University Press, Incorporated
in English

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Book Details


Edition Notes

Includes bibliographical references (p. 231-276) and index.

Published in
New York
Other Titles
Anerican reform and the religious imagination.

Classifications

Dewey Decimal Class
303.48/4/0973
Library of Congress
HN57 .A548 1994, HN57.A548 1994

The Physical Object

Pagination
ix, 285 p. ;
Number of pages
285

ID Numbers

Open Library
OL1397292M
ISBN 10
0195037529
LCCN
93004785
OCLC/WorldCat
28212465
Library Thing
2152947
Goodreads
3567552

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July 25, 2024 Edited by MARC Bot import existing book
January 10, 2023 Edited by MARC Bot import existing book
November 16, 2022 Edited by MARC Bot import existing book
November 11, 2022 Edited by MARC Bot import existing book
April 1, 2008 Created by an anonymous user Imported from Scriblio MARC record