A Divinity for All Persuasions: Almanacs and Early American Religious Life
T.J. Tomlin
Abstract
A Divinity for All Persuasions investigates the religious significance of early America’s most ubiquitous popular genre. Other than a Bible and perhaps a few schoolbooks, an almanac was the only printed item most people owned before 1820. A calendar surrounded by poetry, medical advice, moral axioms, and amusing anecdotes, the almanac is most often associated with folksy quaintness rather than serious cultural significance. This book uncovers and analyzes the pan-Protestant sensibility distributed through the almanac’s pages between 1730 and 1820. Influenced by readers’ opinions and printers’ ... More
A Divinity for All Persuasions investigates the religious significance of early America’s most ubiquitous popular genre. Other than a Bible and perhaps a few schoolbooks, an almanac was the only printed item most people owned before 1820. A calendar surrounded by poetry, medical advice, moral axioms, and amusing anecdotes, the almanac is most often associated with folksy quaintness rather than serious cultural significance. This book uncovers and analyzes the pan-Protestant sensibility distributed through the almanac’s pages between 1730 and 1820. Influenced by readers’ opinions and printers’ pragmatism, the religious content of popular print supports an innovative interpretation of early American cultural and religious history. In sharp contrast to a historiography centered on intra-Protestant competition, this book demonstrates how most early Americans relied on a handful of Protestant “essentials” (the Bible, the afterlife, and a recognizably moral life) rather than denominational specifics to define and organize their religious lives. A Divinity for All Persuasions reveals popular culture’s influence on American religious life and the overwhelmingly religious nature of early American popular culture.
Keywords:
religion,
history,
popular print,
almanacs,
popular culture
Bibliographic Information
| Print publication date: 2014 |
Print ISBN-13: 9780199373659 |
| Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: September 2014 |
DOI:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199373659.001.0001 |
