- Hardcover: 214 pages
- Publisher: OUP USA (17 May 2001)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 0195129865
- ISBN-13: 978-0195129861
- Product Dimensions: 24.1 x 16.3 x 2.1 cm
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 2,391,977 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
The Universalist Movement in America, 1770-1880
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Review
This revisionist account of Universalism's first century in the United States profits from its close attention to theological issues and to the ironies of historical development. (Journal of Ecclesiastical History )
Competently written and clearly argued ... meticulously researched ... the only recent history of the Universalist denomination from its origins until its period of retrenchment in the late nineteenth century. (The Journal of American History )
An erudite and coherent analysis of Universalism as a powerful religious idea in the wider culture of American Protestantism. (David Hempton, Times Literary Supplement )
Competently written and clearly argued ... meticulously researched ... the only recent history of the Universalist denomination from its origins until its period of retrenchment in the late nineteenth century. (The Journal of American History )
An erudite and coherent analysis of Universalism as a powerful religious idea in the wider culture of American Protestantism. (David Hempton, Times Literary Supplement )
Product Description
This book offers the first cultural history of Universalism and the Universalist idea - the idea that an all-good and all-powerful God saves all souls. Ann Bressler argues that Universalism begins as a radical, eschatological, and communally-oriented faith and only later became a 'comfortably established' progressive and individualistic one. Although Universalists are usually classed with Unitarians as pioneering Protestant liberals, says Bressler, they were in fact quite different from both contemporary and later liberalism in their ideas and goals. Unitarians began by rejecting the Calvinist idea of sin as corporate, universal, and absolute, replacing it with their moral self-cultivation. Universalists, on the other hand, accepted the Calvinist view of absolute corporeal sinfulness but insisted on absolute corporeal salvation. Bressler's surprising claim is that Universalists, in their defiance of individualistic moralism, were for much of the 19th century the only consistent Calvinists in America. Bressler traces the emergence of the Universalists' 'improved' Calvinism and its gradual erosion over the course of the 19th century.
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At first glance, American Universalism seems to have been one of the clearest manifestations of the rational spirit of the revolutionary era. Read the first page
Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Index | Back Cover
At first glance, American Universalism seems to have been one of the clearest manifestations of the rational spirit of the revolutionary era. Read the first page
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Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Index | Back Cover
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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
Unexpected History
23 Aug 2010
Format:Hardcover
This very well researched and sourced book has one over-arching virtue. The theme with which it starts, that Universalism was a sort of improved Calvinism, is actually rigorously and creatively brought throughout the whole book like a fascinating leitmotiv. On the way you are filled in on all sorts of curious social corners of American history, like the haughtiness of Unitarians, or the salvific pretensions of Phrenologists. But somehow the author manages to keep the notion of a Calvinism, disengaged from the limitations of Predestination, as a recurring rubric by which to see a complex subject throughout a tangled history. That made it very fascinating to read. One is left with the inevitable question whether the average believer of this type would have had anything like the complex combination of freed-up Calvinism and rationalist optimism which the main thinkers of the Universalist movement had. In fact the later speculations by the author of why the movement lessened later, namely that the liberal viewpoint was too much like others easily available elsewhere, raises the previous doubt. The cumulative effect of the books insights, at least for me, was that it was an attenuated form of opposition, both in terms of social class and religion. But the good thing is that the dense history provided could be read a different way. On that reading Universalism really was a Calvinist logic taken in a very different direction. From their perspective, the ineluctably correct one. The whole book is so well done that it raises a variety of cultural and religious questions powerfully. It is also a good read, if you are into religious topics. I took it on a trip to California a while ago, and was drawn to reading it straight through even on vacation.
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