Cholera, Christ, and Jackson: The Epidemic of 1832 and the Origins of Christian Politics in Antebellum America

Jortner, Adam

doi:10.1353/jer.2007.0025

Cited by 5 publications

(2 citation statements)

References 57 publications

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“…Further, Dols argues that 'the European Christian viewed the Black Death as an overwhelming pun ishment from God for his sins and those of his fellow Christians ' (1974: 272). Closer to present time, the cholera outbreak in the nineteenth century or the Spanish flu of the twentieth can be shown to have been seen in a similar light (Carton 2003;Jortner 2007;Phillips 1987; see also Dein 2021: 6). Discussing the reception of the first of these two epidemics among the followers of Joseph Smith (1805-44), Robert T. Divett notes that 'While cholera swept the Old World, millennialists in America watched for harbingers of the awaited second advent of Jesus Christ.…”

Section: Introduction: Death and Disease As Sites For Cultural Meaningmentioning

confidence: 87%

‘The wrath of God on children of disobedience’

Östling

2021

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The arrival of pandemic diseases (of which COVID-19 is the latest, but not likely to be the last) could be understood, along with impending ecological disaster and global warming, to be the major existential threats envisioned by, and facing, our contemporary culture. This article focuses on the use made of the theme of COVID-19 in the theology and ideology of the Westboro Baptist Church – a Calvinist and Primitive Baptist church founded in Topeka, Kansas in the 1950s by Fred Phelps Sr (1929–2014). While numerically small, the church has become infamous through its practice of picketing funerals, and has been characterized as a hate group espousing antisemitic and anti-LGBTQ positions. Through a reading and analysis of sermons and other published materials from the Westboro Baptist Church, the article maps the motif of COVID-19 as it is used by a church whose members perceive themselves as the heralds of an angry God.

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Section: Introduction: Death and Disease As Sites For Cultural Meaningmentioning

confidence: 87%

‘The wrath of God on children of disobedience’

Östling

2021

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“…The 1832 cholera epidemic occurred during the Second Great Awakening, a time of fervent Christian belief that gave rise to many new evangelical denominations. 36 Human perfectibility was a hallmark of the return to fundamental Christian ideas in the 1832 milieu. 37 Disease was a consequence of moral debility and the violation of natural laws, and was independent of broader social and economic conditions; accordingly, the benefits of abstinence from excesses of food, drink, and sex, accrued to both the physical and spiritual self.…”

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confidence: 99%