<p> On 17 March 1842, twenty-two women of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints gathered in Nauvoo, Illinois, under the direction of their prophet, Joseph Smith, to organize a female counterpart to priesthood and patriarchal leadership. The women elected lady leaders and established a purpose: to save souls and provide relief to the poor. "We are going to do something extraordinary," said Emma Smith, first Relief Society president. "We expect pressing calls and extraordinary occasions." The Relief Society engaged in religious, charitable, economic, political, and cultural activity and initiated a new emphasis on recording, remembering, and retaining the authority of the past. </p><p> This dissertation examines the way Mormon women remembered and commemorated the Nauvoo Relief Society for the next fifty years through the lens of material culture. Hair wreaths, quilts, buildings, posters, and hand-painted poetry books illustrate the transition of Mormonism through isolation in Utah to acceptance by mainstream America, based on the way the women presented their identity and their heritage. They selected the pieces of the past that would appeal to their audience, always maintaining a memory of their Nauvoo roots. </p>

<p> In the Anglo-American world of the late 1790s, Thomas Paine's <i> The Age of Reason</i> (published in two parts) was not well received, and his volumes of Deistic theology were characterized as extremely dangerous. Over seventy replies to <i>The Age of Reason</i> appeared in Britain and the United States. It was widely criticized in the periodical literature, and it garnered Paine the reputation as a champion of irreligion. </p><p> This dissertation is a study of the rhetoric of refutation, and I focus on the replies to <i>The Age of Reason</i> that were published during Paine's lifetime (d. 1809). I pay particular attention to the ways that the replies characterized both Paine and <i>The Age of Reason</i>, and the strategies that his respondents employed to highlight and counteract its &ldquo;poison.&rdquo; To effectively refute <i>The Age of Reason</i>, Paine's respondents had to contend not only with his Deistic arguments, but also with his international reputation, his style of writing, and his intended audience. I argue that much of the driving force behind the controversy over <i> The Age of Reason</i> stems from the concern that it was geared towards the &ldquo;uneducated masses&rdquo; or the &ldquo;lower orders.&rdquo; Much of the rhetoric of the respondents therefore reflects their preoccupation with Paine's &ldquo;vulgar&rdquo; style, his use of ridicule and low-humor, his notoriety, and the perception that <i>The Age of Reason</i> was being read by common people in cheap editions. For Paine's critics, when the masses abandon their Christianity for Deism, bloody anarchy is the inevitable result, as proven by the horrors of the French Revolution.</p><p> This dissertation argues that while Paine's respondents were concerned about what he wrote in <i>The Age of Reason</i>, they were more concerned about how he wrote it, for whom he wrote it, and that Paine wrote it. Drawing on J&uuml;rgen Habermas's theories of the bourgeois public sphere, I focus on how respondents to <i>The Age of Reason</i> reveal not only their concerns and anxieties over the book, but also what their assumptions about authorial legitimacy and expectations about qualified reading audiences say about late eighteenth century print culture.</p>

<p> John Adams and Thomas Jefferson proposed that in order for republican values to flourish in the republic virtue must be cultivated in society. They believed a reasonable religion was the necessary foundation to uphold this virtue. The letters they shared suggested a rationally critiqued faith that would provide the necessary foundation for the republic, one at odds with the rising evangelical religion so popular in the republic. The first goal of this project is to examine their correspondence to show how they used enlightened principles of reason and debate to provide an intellectual inquiry into the historical perversions they perceived in their "Christian" society. For Adams and Jefferson, a properly constructed religion emerged from a series of discussions about its content. The language that they used with each other revolved around three intellectual suppositions about religion. First, the essence of understanding religion, for them, was to examine and critique religious writers, materials, and doctrines. Second, such a critique led them to question specific points of religious doctrine and to determine the accuracy or inconsistency in their faith. Third, this questioning of doctrine led them to an enlightened, well-reasoned, and reformed religious belief. </p><p> While this study speaks to the current historiography and the "culture wars" regarding religion during the Revolution presently debated in American politics, it also provides the ancient and colonial religious context into which Adams's and Jefferson's discussion may be placed. Historians must recover the theological meaning behind the religious conversations these men had with one another to explain what they meant when they chose to define themselves as "Christian." The process of recovering their faith by contextualizing the correspondence of Adams and Jefferson is the second goal of this project. </p><p> By contextualizing their correspondence, historians may decipher Adams's and Jefferson's intentions about religion. The language they use in their letters demonstrates four things. First, they viewed themselves as "real Christians," not as "Deists" or "Unitarians" or "Atheists" as they have been labeled at various stages in their lives and by historians since. Second, they were willing&mdash;though privately and only with each other&mdash;to use reason and rationality as the basis for their faith. Third, having reason and rationality as the basis for their faith, they critiqued commonly held beliefs of "Christian" society at the time discovering many of those beliefs to be corrupt. Finally, these letters indicate what they believed was an accurate understanding of the religion of their culture without any doctrinal corruption. Interpreting their letters in this context Adams and Jefferson defined religion very differently in their era: they implemented revolutionary enlightenment thinking to reassess their religious beliefs to arrive at a "rational Christianity" which, to them, represented a "purified and enlightened Christianity." Both men understood that this religion was highly contentious and problematic. The faith that emerged was a very different and unorthodox "Christianity," one that would be wholly unrecognizable and unacceptable to not only their culture, but to the cultures that followed.</p>

<p> This thesis uses the diaries of Catherine Robertson McCartney (1838-1922) to define the distinctive characteristics of the Reformed Presbyterian Church in Scotland and America between 1856 and 1881. It gives a window into the history of the denomination during the mid-nineteenth century, using cultural, ethnographic, institutional, and gender analyses. The thesis explores the logocentric heritage of the tradition and shows how the denomination as a whole, and Catherine particularly, continued to define their identity in the Victorian and Evangelical milieu of the period.</p><p> Reformed Presbyterian institutional identity had begun to shift away from political dissent due partly to a continued interaction with the broader Evangelical tradition of the time. As a result, the historic logocentric forms of worship, developed largely during the Scottish Reformation, became key to Reformed Presbyterian identity. This logocentricsm and shared commitment with other Evangelicals to revivals, Scripture, evangelism, atonement, and conversion provided Catherine access into the broader religious culture of her time. Yet, the separateness that the dissenters had historically practiced, displayed in the testimonies, meant Catherine and other Reformed Presbyterians were indeed within the category of Evangelicalism, but could never be wholly a part of, nor formally identify as Evangelicals.</p>

<p> West Virginia underwent significant changes in the four decades between 1880 and 1920. The Gilded Age and the Progressive Era witnessed political, social, cultural, and economic upheavals as industrialists looked to exploit natural resources and propel the Mountain State into a position of leadership in a modern national economy. Railroads opened up the remote interior counties, paving the way for the oil, coal, and timber industries. The West Virginia Central and Pittsburg Railway, under the direction of Henry Gassaway Davis, scaled the highest peaks of the Allegheny Mountains. Davis and his business associates quickly took control of the timber and coal reserves in the mountain counties. Local elites allied themselves with larger capitalists, forming partnerships which enabled outsiders to dominate local political and economic life throughout the period. </p><p> Religious transformations characterized the period as well. Nation-wide, Protestant missionaries moved into the South, seeking to evangelize, educate, and uplift whites and blacks. Northern churches paid particular attention to the mountain South. However, West Virginia received significantly less money and manpower from national denominations than the other states in Appalachia. State and local religious organizations stepped in and ensured that the rapidly in-creasing population of the state would not go unreached. They used the railroad to their ad-vantage as well. </p><p> Methodists, Baptists, and Presbyterians, the three largest Protestant groups in the country and in West Virginia, led the way. All three already had some presence in the mountains, and denominational networks ensured that these mountain churches had some ties to mainline Christianity. Missionaries working in the most remote regions reinforced traditional doctrine and practice while strengthening denominational ties. Churches attracted people of all social ranks, although Methodists and Baptists offered more opportunities for working class members. While the secular affairs of mountain communities and counties remained firmly in control of industrialists and their local affiliates, the sacred sphere remained open for all. </p><p> At the same time, churches across the state joined in increasingly loud calls for moral re-form, particularly for new Sabbath and temperance laws. Thus, Protestant churches across the state reflected a mainline yet conservative doctrinal outlook that emphasized denominational distinctives while championing a unified, broadly Protestant culture for the creation of sought-after Christian America. Industrialists such as Henry Gassaway Davis shared the vision of a Christian America and favored many of the same moral reforms. They worked together with churches to achieve common goals. However, despite the autonomy of the sacred sphere, the secular sphere had become dominant in the Alleghenies, in West Virginia, and in the United States. Thus, when the goals conflicted, as in the case of Sabbath reform, the secular usually won, thus further weakening and isolating the sacred.</p>

<p> This dissertation examines the cultural and religious dynamics of the North Carolina Piedmont's non-planter social order. I look in depth at the modernizing elements of antebellum religion, particularly the sensibility of liberality that accompanied institutional development, how church disciplinary procedures adapted to changing social reality, and the formation of middle class style nuclear families under the aegis of evangelical prescription. In addition to using denominational records, I utilize four diaries of ordinary Piedmont residents in extended explorations of how individuals enacted in their private lives the public lessons of evangelicalism. I conclude that an evangelical ethic developed that existed alongside the dominant planter ideology, and that ethic formed the basis for both unity, and dissent, in the late antebellum period.</p>

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Washington. / Bibliography: l. [121]-126.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Indiana University, Dept. of History, 2007. / Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 68-09, Section: A, page: 4025. Adviser: Claude Clegg. Title from dissertation home page (viewed May 7, 2008).

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Indiana University, Dept. of History, 2008. / Title from PDF t.p. (viewed on May 11, 2009). Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 69-08, Section: A, page: 3288. Advisers: Claude A. Clegg; Steven M. Stowe.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Notre Dame, 2008. / Thesis directed by Michael Zuckert for the Department of Political Science. "April 2008." Includes bibliographical references (leaves 278-307).