Religious Melancholy and Protestant Experience in America

by Rubin, Julius H.

• ISBN13: 9780195083019
• ISBN10: 0195083016
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 1994-01-06
• Publisher: Oxford University Press

Summary

This original examination of the spiritual narratives of conversion in the history of American Protestant evangelical religion reveals an interesting paradox. Fervent believers who devoted themselves completely to the challenges of making a Christian life, who longed to know God's rapturous love, all too often languished in despair, feeling forsaken by God. Ironically, those most devoted to fostering the soul's maturation neglected the well-being of the psyche. Drawing upon many sources, including unpublished diaries and case studies of patients treated in nineteenth-century asylums, Julius Rubin's fascinating study thoroughly explores religious melancholy--as a distinctive stance toward life, a grieving over the loss of God's love, and an obsession and psychopathology associated with the spiritual itinerary of conversion. The varieties of this spiritual sickness include sinners who would fast unto death ("evangelical anorexia nervosa"), religious suicides, and those obsessed with unpardonable sin. From colonial Puritans like Michael Wigglesworth to contemporary evangelicals like Billy Graham, among those who directed the course of evangelical religion and of their followers, Rubin shows that religious melancholy has shaped the experience of self and identity for those who sought rebirth as children of God.

Author Biography

Julius H. Rubin is Associate Professor of Sociology at SaintJoseph College, West Hartford, Connecticut.

Table of Contents

The Protestant Ethic and the Melancholy Spirit	p. 3
Melancholia's Heirs: Max Weber and William James	p. 12
Martin Luther's Anfechtung	p. 21
John Calvin's Anxiety and Solicitude	p. 25
The Pattern Established--Evangelical Pietism	p. 29
Evangelical Pietism in America	p. 42
The New England Way	p. 42
Cotton Mather	p. 51
Evangelical Nurture	p. 59
Tears of Repentance	p. 66
The Pattern Completed--Religious Awakenings and Revivals	p. 69
The Evangelical Grieving of Mary Fish	p. 78
Evangelical Anorexia Nervosa	p. 82
Hannah Allen's Travail	p. 87
The Near-Death Experience of William Tennent, Jr.	p. 90
David Brainerd's Devotional Piety	p. 94
Samuel Hopkins and the New Divinity Movement	p. 103
Susanna Anthony	p. 110
The Exemplary Piety of Sarah Osborn	p. 114
Mary Moody Emerson	p. 118
Conclusion	p. 123
What Hath God Wrought? Religious Melancholy in the Second Great Awakening	p. 125
The Evangelical Morphology of Conversion	p. 125
The Suicide of Benjamin Noyes	p. 133
Sinners Who Would Fast unto Death	p. 156
Religion and Insanity	p. 158
Sinners Who Would Fast unto Death	p. 164
Unpardonable Sin and Religious Melancholy	p. 169
Melancholia Attonita	p. 176
Starving Perfectionists	p. 188
Conclusion	p. 192
The Passing Away of Religious Melancholy?	p. 197
The Billy Graham Crusades: Fundamentalism as a Popular Devotional Religious Movement	p. 207
The Melancholy Apologetics of Edward J. Carnell	p. 214
Religious Melancholy and Contemporary Christian Biography	p. 221
The Future of Religious Melancholy	p. 237
Pastoral Care	p. 241
Revivalists As Mediatorial Elites	p. 245
Notes	p. 249
Bibliography	p. 279
Index	p. 299
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