Radical Sects of Revolutionary New England

by Stephen A. Marini

During the late eighteenth century, radical religious sects in the backwoods of New England created a mass movement in dissent, which broke the grip of a monolithic religious culture and helped lay the foundation for a new style of diversity in religion - and ultimately in politics.

In this comparative study of the Shakers, Universalists, and Freewill Baptists, Stephen Marini analyzes beliefs, leadership, social structures, and rituals in order to decipher their appeal and explain the larger effects. These three sects arose during the American Revolution in response to a complex crisis of religious revival, frontier migration, and political changes. By 1815 they represented one-fourth of rural New England's churches.

Their rejection of basic Calvinist beliefs and practices - such as predestination and original sin - presented the first large-scale popular challenge to the dominant religious norms in New England. As America's earliest indigenous religions they created alternative theologies, polities, and liturgies which expressed a new emphasis on free will, equality, and community.

Utilizing the concepts and techniques of social history, anthropology, and sociology, Marini's work traces the development of these new religious cultures as an integral element of Revolutionary New England.

Genres: Religion, American History

213 pages, Hardcover

First published February 18, 1982

Reviews

[John]

Handy book to keep around for people interested in late 18th early 19th century religion in America. Marini mainly concentrates on the Shakers, Universalists, and Freewill Baptists, and the growth of those groups in the newly settled parts of northern New England during and after the revolutionary years. One of the ways this is all interesting is that the massive New England hill country revival of the 1770s and 1780s does not really fit with the whole idea of a 1st Great Awakening and a 2nd Great Awakening that are clearly identifiable and which you can apply dates to. This seems to fit a little better with the idea that there was a continuity of revival for a hundred years or so starting in the early 1700s. I tend to lean toward that interpretation over the isolated "Great Awakening" idea.