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The co-op bookstore for avid readers
Damned Nation: Hell in America from the Revolution to Reconstruction
Among the pressing concerns of Americans in the first century of nationhood were day-to-day survival, political harmony, exploration of the continent, foreign policy, and--fixed deeply in the collective consciousness--hell and eternal damnation. The fear of fire and brimstone and the worm that never dies exerted a profound and lasting influence on Americans' ideas about themselves, their neighbors, and the rest of the world.
Book Details
- Publisher: Oxford University Press
- Publish Date: Dec 1st, 2016
- Pages: 330
- Language: English
- Edition: undefined - undefined
- Dimensions: 9.10in - 6.10in - 0.90in - 1.15lb
- EAN: 9780190662042
- Categories: • United States - Colonial Period (1600-1775)• United States - Revolutionary Period (1775-1800)• Christianity - History
About the Author
Kathryn Gin Lum is Assistant Professor in the Department of Religious Studies at Stanford University. She received her PhD in History from Yale and her BA in History from Stanford. She is an Annenberg Faculty Fellow (2012-14), is affiliated with the Center for Comparative Studies in Race and Ethnicity (CCSRE) and the Department of History (by courtesy), and organizes the American Religions Workshop at Stanford.
Praise for this book
"Damned Nation is a heavenly book. It is beautifully written, deeply researched, and clearly argued.... Kathryn Gin Lum meticulously examines one of the least noticed yet most pervasive and powerful forces in the culture: the conviction that people who died outside the faith would endure everlasting damnation in hell.... [R]ich with insight and scholarly
achievement." --Journal of American History"This fascinating, original, beautifully written account deals with how ministers formulated threats of Hell and how lay people responded. We read a multitude of introspections by men and women of every race and social station, Christian and non-Christian, sometimes leading them to belief in Hell, sometimes to its rejection. Throughout, the author takes the debate over Hell seriously. Her concluding section applies her analyses to the slavery controversy and the Civil War." --Daniel Walker Howe, Pulitzer-Prize-winning author of What Hath God Wrought: The Transformation of America, 1815-1848"Damned Nation is damned good and its contributions are legion. We enter American labyrinths where fears of hellfire singed souls and heated political discord in the early republic. We encounter abolitionists who damned the souls of black folk in order to free their bodies. We witness leaders and laity bickering as if rehearsing the conclave of fallen angels that began John Milton's Paradise Lost. And we march into a Civil War where the destruction drove new approaches to damnation. This book signals a new and evocative voice in the realm of American religious history, one that is not afraid to entertain its dark sides." --Edward J. Blum, co-author of The Color of Christ: The Son of God and the Saga of Race in America"In this brilliant reassessment, Kathryn Gin Lum shows that the idea of hell, far from withering away under the weight of Enlightenment rationalism, was a fixture of the antebellum religious marketplace-a doctrine calculated to win converts both through attraction and aversion. Americans took the notion of eternal hell torments with deadly seriousness, and Gin Lum reveals just how central the doctrine was. An essential and compelling account." --Peter J. Thuesen, author of Predestination: The American Career of a Contentious Doctrine"A superb book." --American Historical Review
achievement." --Journal of American History"This fascinating, original, beautifully written account deals with how ministers formulated threats of Hell and how lay people responded. We read a multitude of introspections by men and women of every race and social station, Christian and non-Christian, sometimes leading them to belief in Hell, sometimes to its rejection. Throughout, the author takes the debate over Hell seriously. Her concluding section applies her analyses to the slavery controversy and the Civil War." --Daniel Walker Howe, Pulitzer-Prize-winning author of What Hath God Wrought: The Transformation of America, 1815-1848"Damned Nation is damned good and its contributions are legion. We enter American labyrinths where fears of hellfire singed souls and heated political discord in the early republic. We encounter abolitionists who damned the souls of black folk in order to free their bodies. We witness leaders and laity bickering as if rehearsing the conclave of fallen angels that began John Milton's Paradise Lost. And we march into a Civil War where the destruction drove new approaches to damnation. This book signals a new and evocative voice in the realm of American religious history, one that is not afraid to entertain its dark sides." --Edward J. Blum, co-author of The Color of Christ: The Son of God and the Saga of Race in America"In this brilliant reassessment, Kathryn Gin Lum shows that the idea of hell, far from withering away under the weight of Enlightenment rationalism, was a fixture of the antebellum religious marketplace-a doctrine calculated to win converts both through attraction and aversion. Americans took the notion of eternal hell torments with deadly seriousness, and Gin Lum reveals just how central the doctrine was. An essential and compelling account." --Peter J. Thuesen, author of Predestination: The American Career of a Contentious Doctrine"A superb book." --American Historical Review