Protestants and Pictures: Religion, Visual Culture, and the Age of American Mass Production

by David Morgan

Overview

In this lavishly illustrated book, David Morgan surveys the visual culture that shaped American Protestantism in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries--a vast record of images in illustrated bibles, Christian almanacs, children's literature, popular religious books, charts, broadsides, Sunday school cards, illuminated devotional items, tracts, chromos, and engravings. His purpose is to explain the rise of these images, their appearance and subject matter, how they were understood by believers, the uses to which they were put, and what their relation was to technological innovations, commerce, and the cultural politics of Protestantism. His overarching argument is that the role of images in American Protestantism greatly expanded and developed during this period.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780190284770
Publisher:	Oxford University Press
Publication date:	08/26/1999
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
File size:	50 MB
Note:	This product may take a few minutes to download.

About the Author

Valparaiso University

Table of Contents

Introduction1. Media, Millennium, NationhoodPart I: The Millennial Mission of the American Republic2. Evangelical Images and the American Tract Society3. The Visual Rhetoric of Northern EvangelicalismPart II: Adventism and Images of the End4. Millerism and the Schematic Imagination5. The Commerce of Images and Adventist PietyPart III: Visual Pedagogy6. Pictures and Children7. Talking PicturesPart IV: The Rise of the Devotional Image in American Protestantism8. The Devotional Likeness of Christ9. Religious Art and the Formation of CharacterConclusionNotesBibliographyIndex

Editorial Reviews

"A groundbreaking book [with] tremendous ramifications.... For this reviewer, Protestants and Pictures raises the staggering possibility that nineteenth-century American conservative Protestants, compared to their more liberal brethren of the early twentieth century and their more ‘sophisticated' evangelical-Reformed great-grandchildren at the end of the twentieth century, demonstrated the more sophisticated use of visual imagery. We'll be busy for a long time sorting out the implications of that."—Books & Culture

"It demonstrates both the desirability of looking beyond current borders of art history and the kinds and amounts of information awaiting scholars ready to reaffirm the art of disfavored groups."—College Art Association Reviews

From the Publisher