Ethical norms for American citizenship underwent a discernible transition from the ratification of the Bill of Rights, when the First Amendment affirmed the disestablishment of religion, until the beginning of the Civil War. This study traces and analyzes that transition by examining selected influential religious figures of this period. / Timothy Dwight conflated the classical concept of republican virtue, an anthropocentric concept which was transmitted by thinkers of the Enlightenment, with the Calvinist-Puritan concept of public virtue, a theocentric concept. He sought the evangelical sanctification of the republic. / Lyman Beecher worked feverishly to increase this community-oriented concept of public virtue, extending and maintaining the influence of evangelical sanctification in the rapidly-expanding nation. He sought to save it from infidelism, irreligion, and Catholicism, its perceived adversaries. / Charles Grandison Finney, with his Oberlin Perfectionism, a new version of evangelical sanctification, shifted the focus away from community-oriented public virtue toward the private Christian virtue of individuals. This change introduced a new ambivalence toward Christian involvement in social and political action. / Phoebe Worrall Palmer popularized a modified version of John Wesley's Methodist doctrine of entire sanctification similar to Finney's perfectionism. Her stronger emphasis upon individualism and her aversion to politics became the seeds of sectarianism that were part of her legacy to succeeding generations of holiness perfectionists. / When the threat of a Civil War loomed ominously and these perfectionist ideals proved inadequate to address the deepening social and political crisis of mid-century, Harriet Beecher Stowe revived the Calvinist-Puritan concern for the evangelical sanctification of the republic, with its emphasis upon Christian public virtue, uniting it with the Christian perfectionism advocated by Finney and Palmer. She applied the combined ethics of public virtue and of Christian perfection to the slavery question, contributing to the political and religious polarization of the nation before the Civil War. / Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 54-03, Section: A, page: 0982. / Major Professor: Leo Sandon. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--The Florida State University, 1993.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:fsu.edu/oai:fsu.digital.flvc.org:fsu_76886 |
| Contributors | Pepper, Francis Leroy., Florida State University |
| Source Sets | Florida State University |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Text |
| Format | 260 p. |
| Rights | On campus use only. |
| Relation | Dissertation Abstracts International |
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