A Sense of the Heart: Christian Religious Experience in the United States

Description

Whether like Paul’s experience on the road to Damascus or Wesley’s “strangely warmed heart,” the desire to meet or be met by God is as old as humanity. But America has been the fertile seed bed for what William James famously called “varieties of religious experience.” These experiences cover a wide spectrum from classic mysticism to revivalist conversion to a contemporary pursuit of spirituality. A Sense of the Heart traces the nature of religious experience from the colonial era to the present, defining its nature while describing common and distinct approaches in the work of various writers and practitioners. A Sense of the Heart offers a historical review of representative types of religious experience, the nature of such experiences and its impact on the American religious and cultural context as evident in awakenings, controversies, denominations, and new religious communities. of THE OF THE HEART Contents Preface A Sense of the Heart: Introducing Religious Experience Analyzing Religions Experiences: Multiple Approaches Religious “Feeling”: Schleiermacher, On Religion “Religious Change”: William James and Conversion Christian Religious Experience: Transcendence and Immanence External and Internal Signs: Religious Experience and Church Traditions The Heart Prepared: Religious Experience in Early America Colonial Catholicism Sola Fide: Protestant Responses Calvinists and Arminians Calvinists, Arminians, and the Believers’ Church: A Baptist Case The Heart Prepared: Searching for Signs of Election/Salvation Preparing the Heart: John Cotton’s Response Sanctification as Theology and Heresy: The Ann Hutchinson Case Arminianism: The Growing Threat When Conversion and Nurture Collide: The Halfway Covenant Religious Experience in 17th-Century America: Multiple Voices Colonial Awakenings: A Surprising Work An “Awakening” Becomes “Great” The Awakening at Northampton Enthusiasm: The Controversy Religious Affections: The Response of Jonathan Edwards The Chauncy/Edwards Debates Revivals and Religious Experience: Other Voices The New Divinity Movement: Continuing the Awakening The Great Awakening: Many Senses of the Heart New Measures: Nineteenth- Century Revivalism New Awakenings: Religious Experience and Democratic Idealism Revivals at Yale Religious Experience on the American Frontier Frontier Awakenings: Camp Meeting Enthusiasm Religious Affections: The Frontier Peter Cartwright and the Methodists Religious Experience, Theological Division “Accepting the Testimony”: Stone-Campbell Responses A Burned-Over District Charles Grandison Finney: Revivals, Conversions, and New Measures The New Lebanon Conference, 1827 John Williamson Nevin Critiques The Anxious Bench Normative Conversion: Nineteenth-Century Processes Horace Bushnell and Christian Nurture Extending Religious Experience: Direct Evangelization A Third Great Awakening? Converting the City Religious Experience/Conversion as Transaction Dwight Lyman Moody: More “New Measures” R. A. Torrey: The “Sinner’s Prayer” Billy Sunday: “A Contemporary Bunkshooter”? Revivalism: An Evangelical Norm Over-Souls and Spirits: Transcendentalism and Spiritualism The Transcendentalist Club Emerson and Edwards Margaret Fuller: A Nineteenth-Century Woman Spiritualism: Experiencing the Beyond Mesmerism Emanuel Swedenborg: Beyond Death Andrew Jackson Davis: The Poughkeepsie Seer Popular Spiritualism: The Fox Sisters and Beyond Alternative Spiritualities: Transcendentalism and Spiritualism At the Marriage Supper of the Lamb: Communitarians and Religious Experience The United Society of Believers in Christ’s Second Appearing (Shakers) The Oneida Community: “The Marriage Supper of the Lamb” The Mormons: The Kingdom in the West Communitarians: A New Experiential Norm The Yoke of Jesus: African- American Religious Experience African Religion- African-American Christianity: The Influences Evangelizing the Africans Conversion Experiences: God Struck Me Dead Hush Arbors: The Secret Prayer Gatherings The Preachers Preachers and “the Call” “The Religious Feeling of the Slave” African-American Religious Experience: Beyond Slavery Womanist Spirituality: “A Lived Experience of Faith” Religious Experience and Civil Rights: A Ceaseless Calling African-American Spirituality: Within and Beyond a Community Experiencing the Full Gospel: The Holiness and Pentecostal Movements Seeking Sanctification The Way of Holiness Phoebe Palmer and “Altar Theology” Hannah Whit all Smith: The Christian’s Secret Representative Holiness Movements Pentecostals: Spirit Baptism, Healing, and Glossolalia Early Pentecostal Experiences: Charles Fox Parham Defining Sanctification and “Unknown Tongues” Healing and the Holy Spirit Pentecostalism in the American South: Revivals (and Race) “Confirming the Word:” The Pentecostal Serpent-Handlers Sister Aimee: The Feminine and the Spirit * 91 Faith Healing and Its Accompanying Evangelists Pentecostals and the “Prosperity Gospel”: Religious Experience as Entitlement Pentecostalism in the United States: From the Margins to the Middle A Sacramental Tradition Catholics and Conversion Colonial Catholicism Catholic Devotions as Religious Experience Devotion to the Holy Spirit Parish Mission Movement Twentieth-Century Catholicism: Liturgy, Spirituality, and Identity The Catholic (Literary) Revival Catholic Religious Experience: Spirituality and Sacrament The Christ of Many Experiences: Some Latter-Day Voices Christ’s Premillennial Return: An Imperative for Conversion American Fundamentalism and Religious Experience The Centrality of “Experience”: A Christocentric Liberal Approach American Evangelicals: Varieties of Religious Conversion “Intimate Consciousness:” Mysticism in Twentieth-Century America “The Totality of the World”: Defining Spirituality “Believers but not Belongers”: Religious Experience and the Future Notes 11, 12. Index