Bodies of belief : Baptist community in early America / Janet Moore Lindman.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Lindman, Janet Moore.

Series:

Early American studies

Early American Studies

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Baptists--North America--History.

Baptists.

Human body--Religious aspects--Baptists--History of doctrines.

Human body.

Human body--Social aspects--North America--History.

North America--Church history.

North America.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (281 p.)

Edition:

1st ed.

Place of Publication:

Philadelphia : University of Pennsylvania Press, c2008.

Language Note:

English

Summary:

The American Baptist church originated in British North America as "little tabernacles in the wilderness," isolated seventeenth-century congregations that had grown into a mainstream denomination by the early nineteenth century. The common view of this transition casts these evangelicals as radicals who were on society's fringe during the colonial period, only to become conservative by the nineteenth century after they had achieved social acceptance. In Bodies of Belief, Janet Moore Lindman challenges this accepted, if oversimplified, characterization of early American Baptists by arguing that they struggled with issues of equity and power within the church during the colonial period, and that evangelical religion was both radical and conservative from its beginning.Bodies of Belief traces the paradoxical evolution of the Baptist religion, including the struggles of early settlement and church building, the varieties of theology and worship, and the multivalent meaning of conversation, ritual, and godly community. Lindman demonstrates how the body-both individual bodies and the collective body of believers-was central to the Baptist definition and maintenance of faith. The Baptist religion galvanized believers through a visceral transformation of religious conversion, which was then maintained through ritual. Yet the Baptist body was differentiated by race and gender. Although all believers were spiritual equals, white men remained at the top of a rigid church hierarchy. Drawing on church books, associational records, diaries, letters, sermon notes, ministerial accounts, and early histories from the mid-Atlantic and the Chesapeake as well as New England, this innovative study of early American religion asserts that the Baptist religion was predicated simultaneously on a radical spiritual ethos and a conservative social outlook.

Contents:

Introduction: A new people of God

"Little tabernacles in the wilderness": Baptists in colonial Pennsylvania

"Sons and daughters in zion": Baptists in colonial Virginia

"A heaven-born stroke": evangelical conversion

"Putting on Christianity": ritual practice

"Holy walking and conversation": church discipline

Sisters in Christ: gender and spirituality

Free people in the Lord: race and religion

The manly Christian: evangelical white manhood

Conclusion: Baptists in the early republic

Appendix: Baptist ministers in the Delaware Valley and Chesapeake.

Notes:

Bibliographic Level Mode of Issuance: Monograph

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

9781283897686

1283897687

9780812206760

0812206762

OCLC:

794702287