POWER, AUTHORITY, AND THE ORIGINS OF AMERICAN DENOMINATIONAL ORDER by Jon Butler, Keith Harper (Foreword) ( 9780817355258 )

Item Details

Title:

POWER, AUTHORITY, AND THE ORIGINS OF AMERICAN DENOMINATIONAL ORDER
THE ENGLISH CHURCHES IN THE DELAWARE VALLEY, 1680-1730

By:

Jon Butler, Keith Harper (Foreword)

Format:

Paperback

List price:	£36.50
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ISBN 10:

0817355251

ISBN 13:

9780817355258

Publisher:

THE UNIVERSITY OF ALABAMA PRESS

Pub. date:

15 January, 2009

Edition:

2nd ed.

Pages:

218

Description:

Questions the assumption that colonial American churches are seedbeds of democratic sentiment merely awaiting the American Revolution to cast off the shackles of both political and religious domination. This title shows that colonial American religious organization reflected a clear and conscious commitment to British patterns of life and faith.

Synopsis:

This new edition and update of the seminal study, "Power, Authority, and the Origins of American Denominational Order", questions the assumption that colonial American churches were seedbeds of democratic sentiment merely awaiting the American Revolution to cast off the shackles of both political and religious domination. Jon Butler points out that pre-Revolutionary Americans spoke of themselves as British and replicated familiar British forms in their North American settlements. In this work, he shows that colonial American religious organization reflected a clear and conscious commitment to British patterns of life and faith.Examining late-17th - century and early-18th - century North American Quaker, Baptist, Presbyterian, and Anglican groups and religious structures, Butler finds that ministers wielded considerable power over their congregations, and the minutes of their meetings reveal that these ministers were hardly 'proto-democrats' or individualists impatient with religious discipline. On the contrary, they themselves seem to have enthusiastically followed established norms of faith and order, and their congregations seemed quite satisfied with such proceedings.In a nation still grappling with issues about religion in the public sphere and the ways religious bodies assert their own authority, this history of four English Protestant groups in America's earliest plural colonies speaks with a remarkably prescient voice.

Publication:

Imprint:

The University of Alabama Press

Returns:

Returnable

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AMERICAN DENOMINATIONAL HISTORY (HB)

AMERICAN DENOMINATIONAL HISTORY (PB)

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BECOMING AMERICA (PB)

BETWEEN FETTERS AND FREEDOM (HB)