AMONG social historians of the last two decades it has become standard to classify the post-Revolutionary generation of religious humanitarians as conservative and self-serving. Fearful of rising currents of secularism and egalitarianism in the new nation, these churchmen, so many students would have it, mounted a campaign of religious evangelism and created a system of local and national religious and benevolent societies in order to preserve their own declining status and to regain their earlier colonial position as the moral arbiters of American society. Such a conclusion about the nature of religious humanitarianism was first advanced in 1954 by John R. Bodo and Charles C. Cole. Charles 1. Foster and Clifford S. Griffin offered in 1960 important variations on the main theme: Each approached the subject from a different perspective. While Bodo and Cole organized their studies around individual representatives from the clergy and focused on sermons as their sources, Foster and Griffin centered on both ministerial and lay members of the interdenominational societies and focused on the societies' reports. Yet all agreed that when these religious humanitarians founded Bible and tract societies, or promoted temperance and Sabbath observance, or tried to aid the urban poor, what they wanted in reality was to gain power over society for their own conservative, if not reactionary, ends. It was the desire for "social control," not social improvement, which lay behind their seemingly benevolent schemes.'Moreover, it has recently been customary to stress the differences rather than Lois W. Banner is assistant professor of history in Rutgers University.lJohn R.
JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.. The MIT Press and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the editors of The Journal ofInterdisciplinary History are collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to The Journal of Interdisciplinary History.After a long era of neglect, women are once again becoming a subject of serious historical investigation. The roots of this new interest are twofold. First, a number of advances within historical thought and methodology in general have turned the attention of many social historians toward subjects like adolescence, marriage, the family, and women-subjects once thought peripheral to the central concern of describing the structures and conflicts of social classes. The perspectives of social historians have shifted away from Marxism, with its rigid class divisions and its emphasis on social power, to new sociological theories which view classes as dynamic entities, which focus on the more complex categories of role and status, and which increasingly try to integrate all types of people into their analyses. Second, the feminist movement of the I96os has thrust the subject of women into public prominence. Once again contemporary militancy has made historians Lois W. Banner is Assistant Professor of History at Douglass College, Rutgers-The State University. On Writing Women's History Sexual Politics. By Kate Millet (New York, Doubleday, 1970) 393 pp. $7.95 Essays on Sex Equality.After a long era of neglect, women are once again becoming a subject of serious historical investigation. The roots of this new interest are twofold. First, a number of advances within historical thought and methodology in general have turned the attention of many social historians toward subjects like adolescence, marriage, the family, and women-subjects once thought peripheral to the central concern of describing the structures and conflicts of social classes. The perspectives of social historians have shifted away from Marxism, with its rigid class divisions and its emphasis on social power, to new sociological theories which view classes as dynamic entities, which focus on the more complex categories of role and status, and which increasingly try to integrate all types of people into their analyses. Second, the feminist movement of the I96os has thrust the subject of women into public prominence. Once again contemporary militancy has made historians Lois W. Banner is Assistant Professor of History at Douglass College, Rutgers-The State University. On Writing Women's History Sexual Politics. By Kate Millet (New York, Doubleday, 1970) 393 pp. $7.95 Essays on Sex Equality. After a long era of neglect, women are once again becoming a subject of serious historical investigation. The r...
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