Self-Help and Popular Religion in Early American Culture: An Interpretive Guide

by Roy M. Anker

Overview

One of two volumes on the relationship between popular religion and the self-help tradition in American culture, this book focuses on early America, from the Protestant Ethic and Puritan New England through Revivialism and American Romanticism. The concept of self-help is a distinctive part of the American character of individualism. This volume provides an introductory interpretive guide to major self-help figures and movements with origins in popular religious movements. The opening chapter recounts the perspectives and conclusions of previous histories of American self-help and includes analyses of several important related works. The following chapters present a historical narrative that traces those junctures where American history and popular religion have reputedly and actually intersected. In surveying the historical and scholarly materials that depict the history of popular religion and self-help, this volume emphasizes the historiographical debates that shape the interpretation of the ideas and figures.

This reference will serve as a valuable research tool for American religion and popular culture scholars. Arranged chronologically, this volume discusses, in three major sections, the Protestant Ethic and Puritan New England; Benjamin Franklin, Cotton Mather, and Individualism; and Revivalism, Religious Experience, and the birth of mental healing. An extensive bibliography is included.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780313311369
Publisher:	Bloomsbury Academic
Publication date:	11/30/1999
Series:	American Popular Culture
Pages:	256
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.75(d)
Lexile:	1570L (what's this?)

About the Author

ROY ANKER teaches English and Film at Calvin College in Grand Rapids, Michigan. In addition to many scholarly and popular essays, he edited and co-wrote Dancing in the Dark: Youth, Popular Culture, and Electronic Media (1991).

Table of Contents

Introduction
Academic Histories of Self-Help
The Protestant Ethic and Puritan New England
Benjamin Franklin, Cotton Mather, and Individualism
Revivalism, Religious Experience, and the Birth of Mental Healing
Bibliography

Editorial Reviews

The first of two volumes in which Anker (English and film, Calvin College, Grand Rapids, Michigan) looks particularly at how popular religion has given rise to the self-help tradition within American culture. He keeps to a narrow track, describing only actual outbreaks of the phenomenon rather than general trends or the genealogy of ideas. The first volume covers the Protestant ethic and Puritan New England; Benjamin Franklin, Cotton Mather, and individualism; and revivalism, religious experience, and the birth of mental healing. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

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