Cosmos Crumbling: American Reform and the Religious Imagination

By Robert H. Abzug

Book Overview

In the forty years before the Civil War, America was awash in political and social reform movements. Abolitionists stormed against the cruelties of slavery. Temperance zealots hounded producers and consumers of strong drink. Sabbatarians fought to make Sunday an officially recognized sacred day. Woman's rights activists proclaimed the case for sexual equality. This colorful text brilliantly reassesses the religious roots of these antebellum reform movements through a series of penetrating profiles of key men and women who sought to remake their worlds in sacred terms. Arguing that we cannot understand American reform movements unless we understand the sacred significance reformers bestowed on the worldly arenas of politics, society, and the economy, Abzug presents these men and women in their own words, placing their cherished ideals and their often heated squabbles within the context of their millennial and sometimes apocalyptic sense of America's role in the cosmic drama. Tracing the lasting impact of what began as a peculiarly Protestant, largely New England, style of social action on the uniquely American traditions of activism that flourish today, Cosmos Crumbling is invaluable for helping students of American and religious history understand the myriad ways in which the quest for enlightenment and salvation continues to shape American politics.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0195045688
• ISBN13: 9780195045680
• Release Date: September 1994
• Publisher: Oxford University Press
• Length: 304 Pages
• Weight: 1.05 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.6" x 6.3" x 9.3"

Customer Reviews

Excellent.

Robert Abzug's fresh approach to antebellum reform illuminates some of its underlying causes. Abzug explores the antebellum religious imagination, positing that the reformers set about "sacralizing the world"--radically joining Heaven and Earth. In antebellum America, the language of religion, politics and science all reinforced each other. Abzug argues that Lyman Beecher confronted the crisis in New England identity by transferring its spiritual identity as a spiritual Israel to all of America. This sense of mission then drove the evangelical program of reform. Likewise, William Lloyd Garrison re-imagined the basis of American society by advocating a radical egalitarianism--blacks were entitled to all rights of citizenship. Abzug argues that all reforms sprung from the wellspring of religious imagination. Reformers were rethinking church and society. Inspired by their visions, they set out to remake America. Abzug is convincing. My one main criticism is that Abzug did not set American reform in its larger context. Many American reformers were indebted to their European counterparts. What of the European religious imagination? How was it different from the American? Nonetheless, this shortcoming is small given Abzug's deep insight into American reform. I highly recommend this work to students of antebellum reform or American religion.