Item Detail
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21895
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0
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0
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English
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Reign of Witches : A Political History of American Miracles, 1780-1840
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Charlottesville, Virginia
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University of Virginia
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Ph.D. diss.
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"The early United States experienced a surfeit of miracles and wonders. Miracle-claims had the power to set divine sanction and republican self-government in competition, especially in the absence of a state church. Thus miracles provided both a reason to believe and presented a political problem. The dissertation opens with a discussion of those groups and their miracles, focusing particularly on the definition of "miracle" and its religious and cultural effects. It then follows the miraculous and political claims of four distinct groups of wonderworkers: Shakers, Cane Ridge revivalists, the followers of the Shawnee Prophet, and Mormons. Each of these groups promoted miracle claims as a justification for hierarchical control of believers in defiance of republican temporal authority. Governments, meanwhile, attempted to defuse such claims by debating the nature of miracles with such groups, or by negotiating compromises--but they were not averse to armed force. This project therefore suggests that miracles and religion were not merely involved in early American politics; they were in themselves political questions, demonstrating the complex interaction between religion and emerging democracy." [Author's abstract]