Search citation statements
Paper Sections
Citation Types
Year Published
Publication Types
Relationship
Authors
Journals
Simon Legree's taunting invitation to “join [his] church” reminds us that the novel routinely credited with abolishing slavery relied for part of its force on anxieties surrounding religious conversion. Although conversion as the emotional surrender to faith under one or another form of Protestantism remained the norm when Harriet Beecher Stowe was writingUncle Tom's Cabin, as many as 700,000 Americans did join the Roman Catholic Church as converts in the 19th century. The middle third of the century also saw the arrival of nearly 3 million Catholic immigrants, whose perceived intemperance, sexual license, and conspiratorial designs on American institutions animated white Protestant preaching and political action more consistently than did the evils of slavery or racism.
Simon Legree's taunting invitation to “join [his] church” reminds us that the novel routinely credited with abolishing slavery relied for part of its force on anxieties surrounding religious conversion. Although conversion as the emotional surrender to faith under one or another form of Protestantism remained the norm when Harriet Beecher Stowe was writingUncle Tom's Cabin, as many as 700,000 Americans did join the Roman Catholic Church as converts in the 19th century. The middle third of the century also saw the arrival of nearly 3 million Catholic immigrants, whose perceived intemperance, sexual license, and conspiratorial designs on American institutions animated white Protestant preaching and political action more consistently than did the evils of slavery or racism.
The publication of The Minister's Wooing in 1859 marked a turn in Harriet Beecher Stowe's fictional output. Having published two antislavery novels earlier in the decade, the first of which, of course, made her an international celebrity, she turned to what we think of now as the next phase of her writing career, a series of nostalgic, partly autobiographical novels about historic New England, following Minister's Wooing with The Pearl of Orr's Island (1862), Oldtown Folks (1978), and Poganuc People (1878).Set in 18th-century Newport, Rhode Island, The Minister's Wooing is built around the historical character of Samuel Hopkins, one of the generation of New Divinity theologians, who, having studied under Jonathan Edwards, attempted to carry on his legacy. Stowe's Hopkins is historically accurate to the extent that he is identified in the book with one of the theological teachings for which he was known, “disinterested benevolence,” which meant for him that a true Christian duty was to accede to one's own damnation for the glory of God; he is also, as was the historical Hopkins, an antislavery activist, prodding his Newport congregants who are slave owners or are profiting by the slave trade to exercise that disinterested benevolence in a socially conscious way and withdraw from the sinful practice, even though it may cost them dearly. What Stowe adds is the romance plot alluded to in the title: Hopkins falls in love with the daughter of his landlady, Mary Scudder; she loves a young sailor, James Marvyn, who has been her companion since youth but who is, it seems, unre-generate.
The religious culture of late nineteenth-century America involves a curious combination of theological debate and popular social reform rhetoric. A battle for cultural authority emerges in print culture between church leaders and social reform writers, particularly domestic novelists. This discourse is exhibited in the proliferation of religious biographies, which were profoundly influenced in American popular culture by Congregationalist clergyman Henry Ward Beecher, who published The Life of Jesus, the Christ in 1871. This genre was quickly appropriated by popular novelists, and read in tandem, these biographies allow us to view a discourse that represents a shifting of power in the mediation of social reform rhetoric that ultimately materializes in the social gospel movement, a reform platform that marries Christian ethics with modern cultural concerns that are largely related to the Industrial Age. While American Protestantism in the nineteenth century, particularly in the Northeast, seemed to be moving away from its Calvinist roots and arguably toward an ecumenical Christianity, or at a least nondenominational Protestantism, Calvinist clergy nevertheless played a key role in the negotiation of both religious and social liberal reform. Because of increased access to the written word, the impact of such reform efforts affected national audiences with farreaching results. Popular preachers coming out of various Calvinist creeds, such as Presbyterian Thomas De Witt Talmage and Congregationalists Henry Ward Beecher and Charles Sheldon, relied on the printed word to reach audiences of thousands although each was equally skilled in oratory, drawing in huge crowds to their affiliated churches. These three prominent figures, along with several other popular literary figures, such as Harriet Beecher Stowe, Elizabeth Stuart Phelps, and Mary Austin, experimented with a variety of literary forms including sermons, religious tracts, fiction, and even religious biography in their reconsideration of biblical authority in relation to contemporary moral ethics.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.
hi@scite.ai
10624 S. Eastern Ave., Ste. A-614
Henderson, NV 89052, USA
Copyright © 2024 scite LLC. All rights reserved.
Made with 💙 for researchers
Part of the Research Solutions Family.