Resistance within and by the Edessan Christian community 150-250 CE

Introduction

The apothegm, “Dead men don’t tell tales,” is especially relevant in the study of vanished peoples. The purpose of this paper is to construct a method to uncover the lived religion in the everyday lives of a people-group located in the past, specifically, the people-group behind both the Gospel of Thomas and the Acts of Thomas. One only knows this group from the text that was left behind. However, this in and of itself is a lucky break. The text at least alerts us about this group. Otherwise, their voices would be completely lost. A surface-level, or prime facie analysis of the text only reveals the beliefs and ideas utilized by the groups, or more specifically, about the leader or teacher’s beliefs and ideas. One cannot imagine that the texts were built with the consensus of the community as a whole. They are what James C. Scott called “official transcripts” of the community.

I am approaching this people-group and texts from a great distance, spatially, temporally, and culturally. Without further inquiry and qualification, the risk of importing my culture and beliefs onto the texts and as an extension, the people-group, is insurmountable. In the absence of intimate or first-hand knowledge of their culture, one must take great pains to reconstruct it from the ground up before analyzing the texts. It is also paramount to note that every people-group is located in a specific space at a specific time, even if the people-group persists through the before mentioned spaces and times. At every moment, their culture is being negotiated and transformed. Each text represents one such attempt at negotiation of the group’s values, beliefs practices, morale, and so forth. Thus, while a text can tell us about an instance of the negotiation process and as an extension, the phases before and after the text, one cannot assume that the text merely represents a static reconstruction of the community. It is also a record of an instance of the creative process of culture formation. It is with this attitude that texts will be approached.

Both the Gospel of Thomas and the Acts of Thomas originated from the same community, Edessa, located in ancient Syria. (Klijn, p. 70) (Bernard, p. 161) The Gospel of Thomas date from the second half of the second century and the Acts of Thomas originate around 60-100 years later. Because of their proximity in both space and time, the two texts provide an excellent opportunity to look at snapshots of the same community in two periods of time. However, the question still remains of how to go about analyzing these texts. I will draw heavily on the theory of James C. Scott and the method of Burton Mack with the hope of obtaining an accurate comparative look at each community in their specific time period.

The paper will begin with an opening discussion of the theory of James C. Scott, moving on to an evaluation of Burton Mack’s attempt to reconstruct a lost community. Then a brief background on the historical record of the Christian Church at Edessa during the first two hundred and fifty years will be given. Both the Gospel of Thomas and the Acts of Thomas will be analyzed in search of their hidden and public transcripts. The two sets of transcripts will then be compared to see the choices each community faced and the path they ended up taking. I will show how the Edessan Christian community not only created a space for itself in opposition to the surrounding culture, but also institutionalized rapidly. This created room for a hidden transcript within their hidden transcript that were protests against the institutionalization. (more…)

It is very easy to import modern ideas and standards of history writing onto Ancient texts. However, to do so, will skew one’s reading of the text in a way that the author did not intend. The following are several concepts to keep in mind when reading ancient texts.¹

1) Lost in Translation Often the only copies of texts that we have today are copies of copies. Furthermore, they are often translations of the original text. The Infancy Gospel of Thomas was probably written in Syriac, but the earliest copy we have is written in Greek. On top of this, sometimes the original texts were translations of the speeches being recorded. An example of this last point are Jesus’ speeches recorded in the Gospels. Jesus spoke Aramaic; the Gospels were written in Greek.² It is important keep this process in mind when the exact order of words is being scrutinized.

2) History was for instruction, not for tracking details Ancient histories were not designed to be modern ones. Their primary focus was not on keeping track of historical minutia, nor was it designed to show a character’s development throughout time. Instead, it was designed to illustrate lessons to be learned by the reader. There was “… great freedom with which many ancient writers adapted their materials to achieve such goals…”³ This frame of mind should be accounted for when when studying ancient texts of all origins.

3) Look - Peter wrote this; hence it must be true Ancient authors had no problem with attributing works to authorities in order to give their work credibility. Christians have not been immune to this phenomenon. As early as the middle part of the first century, Christian leaders were complaining about letters being written in their name that contradicted with their positions.⁴ The problem for “Christian texts” only got worse as the years went on. Robin Fox writes:

In the period c.400-600, “aggressive forgeries” added false letters to the collection of almost every early Christian Letter writer. These fake texts of theology helped to enlist the great authorities of the past on this or that side of a contemporary schism or unorthodoxy.⁵

Imagine someone finding a letter from Paul where he argues quite clearly for each of the five points of Calvinism. The problem was so bad that it was not until the 1500s that people could begin to sort the forgeries from the authentic letters. ⁶

4) Good Forgeries Even when people were not outright co-opting authorities for the sake of their own positions, there is the problem of attribution. It was common in Classical and Hellenistic Greek culture for a student to classify their own positions and work as their teacher’s work. For example, there are more texts attributed to Aristotle that he could have humanly wrote. It is hard to determine in some cases where the teacher’s writing ends and the student’s begins. James H. Charlesworth has delineated the above idea into seven rough categories:⁷

1. Writings not by an author, but containing some of the author’s own thoughts
2. Writings by someone who was influenced by another work whom the work is attributed
3. Writings influenced by someone who was influenced by the earlier works of another author to whom the work is assigned
4. Writings attributed to an individual, but actually deriving from a circle or school surrounding that individual
5. Christian writings attributed by their authors to an Old Testament personality
6. Once anonymous writings that have been incorrectly attributed to another individual
7. Writings that intentionally try to deceive the reader into thinking the author is someone else

Quite naturally, the accuracy, dependability, ect, depends on which category the text being examined falls.

5) Recording Speeches There were not any tape recorders or stenographers around in Antiquity. Because of this, not all of the speeches recorded in ancient texts are verbatim copies of the original works. As a matter of fact, people recording the speeches often either gave abridged or paraphrased versions of the speech in question. Sometimes, the speech was elaborated on for the sake of effective rhetoric. Thucydides, an ancient Greek historian, admitted as much in his History of the Peloponnesian Wars.

I have found it difficult to remember the precise words used in the speeches I have listened to myself and my various informants have experienced the same difficulty; so my method has been, while keeping as closely as possible to the general sense of the words that were actually used, to make the speakers say what, in my opinion, was called for in each situation.

After about 300 B.C.E speakers issued written copies of their speeches to combat this problem.⁸

6) Say it enough, and people will think it is true Remember Hitler’s idea of the “Big Lie?” Same principle at work. If an author had a agenda to push, there was nothing to keep the author to fudge the facts to push their version of history. In a less deliberate manner, if errors crept into the historical record and subsequent authors relied on erroneous accounts of history for their facts, the resulting account will carry or perhaps magnify the original error, intentional or not.

Despite these difficulties, it is still possible to sift through historical manuscripts to uncover the most likely account of history by our modern standards of accuracy. My next post will deal with how to correct for these errors.

1. The above list was taken from Novak. Christianity and the Roman Empire: Background Texts. pp 3-7 [↩]
2. The Canonical ones were all written in Greek. There is a slight chance that the Gospel of Matthew was written in Hebrew, but it is most likely that it was written in Greek like the rest [↩]
3. Novak. Ibid. p.4 [↩]
4. See Second Thessalonians 2:1-5 [↩]
5. Novak. Ibid. p.4 [↩]
6. Fox. Ibid. p. 154. [↩]
7. James Charlesworth. “Pseudo-Epigraphy”. Encyclopedia of Early Christianity. p.765-767 [↩]
8. Novak. Ibid. p.6. [↩]

Nancy F. Cott in The Bonds of Womanhood tries to develop a picture of Puritan femininity in New England at the end of the 18^th and beginning of the 19^th centuries. The Women’s Sphere was the idea that the domestic side of life was meant to be run by women. This was the sole place for women in a functioning society. It is her contention that the development of the “Woman’s Sphere” was a necessary part of “shattering the hierarchy of sex.” (200) This is a contentious claim because the development of the Women’s Sphere is often considered to be a reincarnation of prior formations of sexual hierarchy. While on the surface, this criticism seems to be valid, it neglects to take into account a proper grounding and understanding of the Women’s Sphere. The work is invaluable because of this nuanced look at the development of external and internal views of women during this period. This nuanced stance has lead to its importance in feminine scholarship.

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The origins of the Mormon religion are a topic of great interest. On one hand, Mormonism is an outworking of the democratization thesis in its purest form, hence, the designation as the quintessential American Religion. On the other, many Mormon beliefs are completely different from its immediate predecessors. There have been a number of works that have explained the social origin of Mormonism, but not its unique theological development. (xv) Stepping into this void, John L. Brooke’s The Refiner’s Fire: The Making of Mormon Cosmology, 1644-1844 attempts to account for the development of core Mormon beliefs that substantially differentiate it from mainstream Protestantism. Among these beliefs are the celestial marriage, equality of matter and spirit, and the ultimate goal of godhood amongst believers. For Brooke, these beliefs originated from traditions of alchemy and hermeticism. Brooke locates this trajectory as originating in the traditions of the Radical Reformation. Despite the prime facie connections made by Brooke, there remain questions that significantly question his thesis.

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Jon Krakauer’s book on the Ron and Dan Lafferty’s religious slaying of Brenda and Erica Lafferty is gripping and sensational. In Krakauer’s exploration of why Ron and Dad committed these murders, he examines their fundamentalist background. He not only investigates how Dan and Ron were drawn to Mormon fundamentalism, but also illuminates the links Mormon fundamentalism has with mainstream Mormonism’s past. In doing so, Krakauer raises some interesting questions that he teases the reader with though out the book, but never really deals with seriously. The work is an excellent account of the Lafferty murders, recounting vivid details and well-crafted turns of phrase. Krakauer’s skill at writing for effect cannot be discounted. However, after reading the work, one feels as though they are only getting one version of the events, especially as it when the book describes and analyses Mormon history. It as if his interpretation is driving the book rather than the sources.

The only real nuanced discussion of Krakauer’s sources comes in the interesting point-counterpoint appendix to the book. Krakauer reprints the entire review of Under the Banner of Heaven by Richard Turley Jr., the managing director of the Family and Church History Department of the LDS church. In a scathing review, Turley makes many of the same observations as I do here. The best part of his review for the reader of the book is the discussion of sources. Turley claims that Krakauer has cherry-picked his sources and does not critically analyze the entirety of Mormon scholarship. Perhaps the most damaging is Turley’s criticism of the heavy uncritical use of Fawn Brodie’s biography of Joseph Smith, especially in regards to the 1832 castration attempt by an Ohio mob. Turley’s overall point is well founded, since all of Krakauer’s sources tend to agree, there is no mention or use of conflicting reports. It is as if Krakauer only used the sources that agreed with him. There is not any discussion of conflicting sources or scholarly working throughout the book. Krakauer does admit to several errors in the work, which he has corrected in the more recent editions of the book. He also defends his selection of sources in his rebuttal, but this is the only real place any dissenting views are considered instead of just the ones that support his clear and simple narrative. The best counter-point Krakauer offers lies in his point of the selectivity of inside Mormon scholarship noting that all LDS accounts of Mormon history have to be “faith promoting” and therefore exclude any real critical analysis of the history of the LDS church. Within this interesting point lies a rich discussion that is barely broached by Krakauer in his rebuttal. An interesting discussion could be had between the writers of critical Mormon works, like Krakauer; and the sympathetic writers of Mormon history, such as Richard Bushman, author of Joseph Smith: Rough Stone Rolling.

Krakauer tries to situate the Lafferty case in terms of the early history of the Mormons. Among the major themes that he links from the early Mormon Church to the fundamentalist Lafferty brothers were the propensity to hear the voice of God, the idea of blood atonement, and most prominently, the ideal of plural wives. Very carefully, the narrative switches back and forth from accounts of Smith, Young, and other early Mormons to the events leading up to murders. This serves to form in the reader’s mind a close attachment – an almost casual one – between the two eras. The reader cannot but help to think that Krakauer wants his readers to think that the Lafferty’s were being true to the foundations of their religion and that there is something inherently wrong with the LDS Church. While he is not explicit in this connection, he also does not try to avail these concerns. This connection is one in a series of connections that Krakauer flirts with, but does not ever really come out and defend or refutes.

The subtitle to the work is as lengthy as it is controversial, “On July 24, 1984 a woman and her infant daughter were murdered by two brothers who believed they were ordered by to kill by God. The roots of their crime lie deep in the history of an American religion practiced by millions.” Here is an example of Krakauer showing his intent to connect the murders not only to Mormon fundamentalism, but also to mainstream Mormonism. It does not stop here, however. In the first few pages of the introduction, he states that his work will raise questions about the nature of religion itself. In doing so, he must connect the murders not only to fundamentalist and mainstream Mormonism, but also to Christianity and religion in general. Over all, he fails in this respect. While he makes a very damning case in terms of the violence and the damage polygamy does to those involved both in the early Mormon Church and in the fundamentalists that have separated themselves from the LDS Church; he is unable to connect the larger threads. This is because he either does not take into account or fails to discuss the purposeful separation of the current incarnation of LDS Church from these doctrines and events. An analogous situation is linking fundamentalist terrorism with all of Islam, or all Christians in the actions of the Crusades. It is an example of contamination by proximity.

The book is most successful when looking it examines the religion, motives, and history of both the Laffertys and the fundamentalist Mormon movement, in its journalism. It is least successful when it tries to link historical themes together in a nuanced manner; in fails as a scholarly work. If Krakauer were to nuance his work and leave out his larger, under discussed implications, a much better book would be had.

George Marsden attempted to give an accurate portrayal of the life, times, and effects of Jonathan Edwards in Jonathan Edwards: A Life. He had identified several misappropriations that other scholars had utilized in their portrayal of Edwards. Marsden thought that many of these mischaracterizations stemmed from am importing of outside ideas onto Edwards and his time. To counter these flawed portraits, Marsden tried to give an account of Edwards through the same lens from which Edwards saw the world. Inter-spliced throughout Edward’s personal story are descriptions and explanations of the Edward’s historical backdrop. This serves to further immerse the reader into Edward’s life and worldview. With this aim in mind, Marsden is remarkably effective.

In light of the ease of which one can find an inaccurate view of Edwards, Marsden does a commendable job sorting out the issues. Much care and detail was given in explaining the ins and outs of the religious controversies of New England in the 1700’s. Similar care was given in relating these issues to the larger whole, the movements and currents in public and religious thought of the Western world as it impacted New England. The exposition of the relationship between the Old and New Lights and how they related to Whitefield’s ministry and those that came after him were especially helpful. This helped to further ground Edward’s actions and predispositions in their proper context.

The largest obstacle that this approach encounters is that sometimes the narrative is confusing to the modern reader. This is especially the case if the reader is not a white male protestant. The narrative is written so closely to the point of view of Edwards that the effect is that his sensibilities, such as the equivocating of the Catholic Church with the Antichrist of the book of Revelation. While careful and through examination will exonerate Marsden from this charge, there are times in which the casual reader could be lead to believe that Marsden held these views in line with Edwards.

Another issue that came up in the work was, at times, the apparent undue sympathy that Marsden gave Edwards. His character flaws are minimalized or explained away while those of his adversaries are enlarged or painted in a selfish light. Examples of this are the conflict with the town of Northampton and the conflict over the Stockbridge. The reader is given in depth explanations of how Edwards was operating off the best of intentions and was impaired by personal flaws, such as the inability to communicate or the grafting of his moral perfectionism onto the townspeople of Northampton. The reader is given diary accounts, personal testimony among other sources to strike home this point. No such in depth explanation is offered of the opposing parties’ motivations. Again, the reply to this criticism could be that Marsden was trying to get the reader to see the world from Edward’s perspective, to see how he viewed the matter and how Edward’s attempted to live out his ideals in the swamp of his personal foibles.

These minor criticisms set aside, Jonathan Edwards, A Life accomplishes something much more than a mere biography of Jonathan Edward’s life. It paints an astonishingly detailed portrait the later stages of the Puritan movement. For instance, through descriptions of Edward’s view of millennial history and God’s relation to humanity, gives insights as to how the Puritans viewed the progression of God’s plan in history. It also showed how the Puritan canopy cracked as was Noll posited in America’s God. It illuminates what Noll meant when he gave the advice to “read Edwards” if one wanted to understand pre-Revolutionary War colonial America.

Wonders of America is an interesting look at the development of Jewish culture in America through the eyes of religion. In the work, she examines three phases of American Judaism, the immigrants, their children, and the Post-War Jews. Joselit presents a social history of American Judaism that focuses on how rituals were transformed and imbued with contemporary meanings. The story is of a struggle of identify, a conflict between the pressures of community vs. democratization, ritual vs. consumerism, and tradition vs. American culture. The Jewish culture was in a constant dialectic with itself, the drifting interest of the populace was countered by the cultural custodians, resulting in an amalgamation of the two or more views. Interspaced within the narrative were illustrations that illuminated Jaselit’s examples, drawing the reader into the Jewish world more than they would have otherwise.

There were several problems with the book, most of them issues of clarification. Joselit was not careful enough in distinguishing between the various movements within American Judaism, most notably the Reformed and Orthodox movements. Each movement was mentioned in the examples she gives throughout the work, but there was not clarification as to whether or not some examples were a function of Judaism in general or a fun ction of specific ideologies within one of the movements. This could have been alleviated if the chapters were organized with sections dealing with each of the major movements or perhaps if there were clarifying statements that informed the reader about the differences between the movements. As it is, Joselit practically assumes that there was no real difference between Reformed and Orthodox movements as they related to American culture and that is perhaps a bit hasty of a generalization.

Along these same lines, more clarification between trends of the Jewish cultures and the larger American culture as a whole would have been extremely helpful. There was an excellent opportunity to make this work more relevant to the larger picture and to better situate the culture in connecting and differentiating trends in Jewish culture and American culture. How did the subsumption of consumerism in the home compare between Jewish culture and American culture at the time. If Joselit would have made these connections, a better picture of each would have arisen. Granted, this was a social history, so the focus was from the bottom – up, but widening the scope would have helped the work in several ways.

The last problem with The Wonders of America is methodological in nature. It is not clear what method Joselit used in her study. While sources are mentioned and quoted extensively, there are no footnotes and only referenced words are cited by page number and word phrasing in the “Notes” section at the end of the book. This makes double checking her claims a nightmare. For example, on page 182, she cites a study on eating habits of children within several cultures. However, the only references for that page are listed as “clients,” “‘You learned us,’” “Jews put great emphasis,” “the taking of food,” over-protective attitude,” and “preoccupation with food” all direct quotations. Roughly three times the work is needed to track down her citation in this method than if a simple footnoting system was used.

Despite these criticisms, the book remains an interesting account of how Jewish culture adapted to it new and changing situations once it reached the Americas in large numbers. In this regard, the work is valuable in identifying the dialectic with American culture and the self-contained dialectic that shaped American Judaism.

Richard Bushman has written an excellent biography of Mormonism’s founder in Joseph Smith: Rough Stone Rolling. Its principle strengths are its narrative style, balanced sympathy for a complex character, meticulous research, and its attention to detail. Conversely, the principle problems with the work are related to its strengths, sometimes the work is too sympathetic to the main character and other times there is too much attention paid to detail. The book is arranged into twenty-nine chapters, each covering a phase or topic in Smith’s life. The thirtieth section, the epilogue, is an extension historically of how the Mormon Church reacted to its leader and founder’s death. From a stylistic sense, Bushman is an excellent story teller. He is able, for the most part, to breathe life into the mundane details of Smith’s life. While the book is incredibly well researched, footnoted, and well written, sometimes the level of detail is distracting from the progression of Smith’s life.

Reconstructing a controversial religious figure like Joseph Smith is a daunting task. Anytime a religious figure claims to have received a divine revelation, translated a revealed work that depicts an entire lost civilization, and is involved in several scandals, skepticism is bound to ensue in large quantities. Writers within the community most certainly will be biased towards an inspired view of the accounts whereas writers from outside the community are likely to undercut the significance of these accounts under the banner of reductionist fraud. Because of these concerns, it was refreshing to see the more balanced approach that Bushman takes. Bushman is a Mormon believer himself, so this allows him and “insider’s perspective” of the Mormon tradition and it is assured that Bushman will not attempt to reduce the religious aspects of Joseph Smith’s life to mere culture forces or a desire to defraud or exploit his followers. He states that on the problem of Smith’s inspiration, he will present Smith in good faith that his accounts were genuine. An excellent example of this is Bushman’s treatment of Smith’s First Vision. Bushman does a good job explaining how and why the focus shifts in later accounts of the vision from Smith’s conversion or forgiveness of his sins, to the statement of apostasy of the current church. Other accounts of this that I have read have sought to explain this shift in terms of Smith trying to give credence to his current movement building.

On the other side of the fence, Bushman is no Mormon apologist in this work. He endeavors to show Smith for how he was; Bushman does not shy away from the controversies in Smith’s life. Bushman states early on in his prologue, “For a character as controversial as Smith, pure objectivity is impossible. What I can do is to look frankly at all sides of Joseph Smith, not ducking any of the problems. Covering up flaws makes no sense in any case. Most readers do not believe in, nor are they interested in, perfection. Flawless characters are neither attractive nor useful.” An excellent example of this is on 371 and spilling onto 372, where Bushman places the blame for what happened to the Davies County opponents, saying,

“Joseph must take responsibility for the Mormon raids on their Daviess County enemies. His angry rhetoric stirred the blood of more militant men. After the Daviess raids, Rockwell wrote his father that “the prophet has unsheathed his sword and in the name of Jesus declares that it shall not be sheathed again until he can go into any county or state in safety and in peace.” Words like that licensed Lyman Wight’s desperate plans. Joseph’s approval of Rigdon’s salt sermon with its strong threats against dissenters had justified the Danites’ expulsion of the Whitmers, Cowdery, and Phelps.”

Here Bushman establishes that he is indeed no Mormon apologist, even though he gives Smith the benefit of the doubt in the book.

Perhaps the greatest weakness of the book, besides the fundamental assumption, is the reliance on Smith’s mother’s journals for Smith’s early life. It is easy to imagine the forced relationship between Smith and his father that Smith’s mother could have created between them in retrospect. However, I don’t know of what source Bushman should have used in its stead.

Bushman situates Smith within a larger period of tremendous religious creativity. Going along with Hatch’s thesis, Bushman sees Smith developing Mormonism through the lenses of anti-clerical and anti-authoritarian sentiment, the empowerment of each person to interpret the Scriptures, and a since of divine purpose and mission drove Smith to be industrious. Hatch himself had used the Mormons as an example that demonstrated his thesis. Whereas Hatch looked at the early Mormon Church’s leaders as a whole, Bushman only examines Smith and his contributions to the movement. While the scope is slightly different, the two works reinforce each other. For example, Hatch speaks in depth about the popular appeal of Smith’s message and how Smith’s roots aided in the construction of that message. Bushman gives, not only an in depth exploration of Smith’s early life, but also a step by step account of how his message attracted laity from other denominations.

The resulting effect of Bushman’s work is a careful and respectful representation of the life and times of Joseph Smith and as an extension, the beginnings of the Mormon Church. While a bit tedious to digest at 666 pages, including notes, the work is effective at stringing along the reader, maintaining interest while developing a coherent narrative. Because of the highly controversial nature of Bushman’s subject, this is quite an accomplishment. Because of the highly suggestive nature of Smith’s life, one has to take him as a real prophet, a delusional soul, or the dastardliest of conmen. Bushman says, “Let see what he looks like if we take him at his word.” Because one cannot prove without a doubt that Smith was lying and conning the whole time, I can accept this hypothetical for the basis of the book. Granting the hypothetical, it makes for an excellent biography.

In the book, A Shopkeeper’s Millennium, Paul Johnson attempts to show how, in Rochester, New York, Finney’s religious revivals helped to develop the free labor market. (1) In doing so, Johnson takes a careful measurement of the economic, social, political and religious life in Rochester and sees how these issues were intertwined and changed over time, with the hope of discovering how these forces influenced one another. Johnson traced the shifting moods through a variety of methods, utilizing detailed statistical analysis to uncover trends.

Before Finney arrived in Rochester, the town had undergone a tremendous social upheaval. From 1820 to 1830, the town’s economic structure had transitioned from Medieval, guild based economy, to a more capitalistic one, with divisions of labor and a separation of the producers from the owners. With this economic shift came class struggle, most notably in the form of the abuse of alcohol and the unrest that comes with it. When Finney came to Rochester, he attacked the religious authorities and the Calvinistic determinism that came with them. In Finney, the shopkeepers found a solution to the problem – autonomy. No longer were they innately depraved persons who needed to be lorded over by the regenerate. With effort, they could be relied and expected to be the solid, dependable citizens and workers that the city needed. It is Johnson’s contention it was not Finney’s religious platform alone that attracted so many of the middle class but it was Finney’s platform as a way to garner the control that they had lost that was the real factor behind the success of the revivals. It is because of this claim that the work is reductionist in scope, despite Johnson’s claim that the revival was not a capitalistic plot. (2)

Johnson’s presentation differs substantially from Hatch’s depiction of the role and aims of Christianity in the formation of America and its national values. Johnson indicates that Christianity and its revivals helped to shape the economic landscape, providing the moral framework and economic power that enabled the wealthy elites of the upper class to maintain control over the lives of their workers. Hatch, on the other hand, maintains that the new forms of Christianity that exploded onto the stage during the post-Revolutionary were all forms of social protest, not social control.(3) Far from playing into the hands of the powerful, Hatch describes Finney as calling for a Copernican revolution in Christianity and “railed at ecclesiastical bureaucracy.”(4) I think that Johnson would agree with this, but he would add that the effect of Finney and his attack on religious authority helped the churchgoing businessmen to give men moral and religious autonomy – an autonomy that the worker could be held responsible for.

The most important point of divergence in the two studies is the scope and classes that Hatch and Johnson studied. Hatch looked at the religious leaders across a broad spectrum of beliefs and localities, whereas Johnson looked at the entire social order of one town over time. With Hatch, one is able to see the wider developments in society. With Johnson, one is able to see how economics, class, and gender are able to shape and influence the spread of Christianity. Hatch did not include these factors in his study. Hatch gives a functioning description of how the democratization of Christianity allowed it to regionally spread in new forms. Johnson on the other hand, focuses his historical lens with a much smaller scope, but a higher resolution. This detail allows one to see how economic, political, and class structures helped create the space for Finney’s revivals to flourish. It is implied that since this was the case for the town of Rochester, the most evangelized and economically powerful cites in the republic, that it is a mold for how religion worked in general in the United States. To apply a specific case, one that is analyzed in such detail, to the religious experience of the United States as a whole is an overgeneralization. Varying social, political, and religious factors make this a impossibility. One cannot apply this situation to the homogenous American setting because it has never existed.

One is better served limiting Johnson’s approach from the primary reason that the revivals were a success to one of the contributing factors behind the success. Then one can then incorporate elements from Hatch’s thesis into one’s analysis of the success of the religious revivals. In doing so, one can have a more complete picture, one that incorporates more segments of society, resulting in a more accurate picture of the development of American Christianity.

Footnotes:

1. Johnson. A Shopkeeper’s Millennium. pages 138-140.
2. Ibid. page 141.
3. Hatch. Democratization of Christianity. page 225.
4. Hatch. ibid. page 199.

  

The Madonna of 115^th Street was not at all what I was expecting. When I first heard about the book during the first class period, I expected a long and detailed analysis of the rituals that took place during the festa, perhaps accompanied with small excursions into the Italian Harlem’s culture. What I got was quite the opposite; long and detailed analysis of the Italian Harlem’s culture and the domus, with many small excursions into the festa. Despite this distance from my expectations, I feel that I am more intimately acquainted with the setting and practice of the Madonna of 155^th Street.

I also appreciated his explanation of terms in the introduction of the book, especially his discussion of power and the meaning of “popular religion.” Sometimes there is a feeling that popular religion is the opposite of established religion; merely a rebellion against the establishment consisting of rejected practices. Here, a much more agreeable definition was used, where the emphasis was on a synthesis of the established religion and the religious values of the people at large. More importantly, it was a dialectic between the people and the culture, a way to protest and resolve tensions. Orsi drew this out in his analysis of the domus and the festa.

I am sure that several fellow students will ask why any of this really matters, or how this wonderful exposition of the domus and the Madonna of the Italian Harlem, which does not really exist anymore, is nothing but a historical curiosity. Orsi wrestled with this several times throughout his introduction(s) and his work. He deems it necessary to connect to work to the larger whole of American history, least it be striped of meaning. How particularistic is this work? Is it representational American Christianity? Can one apply notions of the domus to and religiosity to members of the Disciples of Christ? Not really. Can one narrow the application to other Catholics? Orsi goes to great length to show the differences between Catholic groups, across class lines, such as the established clergy and the laity; and ethnic/economic lines, such as the established Irish Catholics and the poorer Italian Catholics. In light of this, is the work reduced to merely a study of a particular group in a particular place in (a) particular time(s)? I do not think it is, and I think that Orsi pointed this out in several places. He described the linkage of these immigrants and their story of the conflicts within their society is instructive in viewing the history of immigrant groups. One can see parallels between the internal and external views of immigrants of the early 1900’s and today, despite differences in geographic origin. Looking at the book through a broader historical context, one not only obtains a better view of the people studied, but an addition is made to the understanding of the development of the United States. As such, there is a “so what” in this story.