Doomsayers: Anglo-American Prophecy in the Age of Revolution

Early American Studies

by Susan Juster

The age of revolution, in which kings were dethroned, radical ideals of human equality embraced, and new constitutions written, was also the age of prophecy. Neither an archaic remnant nor a novel practice, prophecy in the eighteenth century was rooted both in the primitive worldview of the Old Testament and in the vibrant intellectual environment of the philosophers and their political allies, the republicans. In Anglo-American Prophecy in the Age of Revolution , Susan Juster examines the culture of prophecy in Great Britain and the United States from 1765 to 1815 side by side with the intellectual and political transformations that gave the period its historical distinction as the era of enlightened rationalism and democratic revolution.

Although sometimes viewed as madmen or fools, prophets of the 1790s and early 1800s were very much products of a liberal commercial society, even while they registered their disapproval of the values and practices of that society and fought a determined campaign to return Protestant Anglo-America to its biblical moorings. They enjoyed greater visibility than their counterparts of earlier eras, thanks to the creation of a vigorous new public sphere of coffeehouses, newspapers, corresponding societies, voluntary associations, and penny pamphlets. Prophecy was no longer just the art of applying biblical passages to contemporary events; it was now the business of selling both terror and reassurance to eager buyers. Tracking the careers of several hundred men and women in Britain and North America, most of ordinary background, who preached a message of primitive justice that jarred against the cosmopolitan sensibilities of their audiences, Doomsayers explores how prophetic claims were formulated, challenged, tested, advanced, and abandoned. The stories of these doomsayers, whose colorful careers entertained and annoyed readers across the political spectrum, challenge the notion that religious faith and the Enlightenment represented fundamentally alien ways of living in and with the world.

From the debates over religious enthusiasm staged by churchmen and the literati to the earnest offerings of ordinary men and women to speak to and for God, Doomsayers shows that the contest between prophets and their critics for the allegiance of the Anglo-American reading public was part of a broader recalibration of the norms and values of civic discourse in the age of revolution.

Genres: Religion, History

288 pages, Paperback

First published June 1, 2003

Reviews

[Dan Gorman · Rating 2 out of 5]

Fine sketches of radical prophets in the American Revolution and early republican periods, but Juster's theoretical framework is messy. She writes that eighteenth-century prophets mixed science and religion, but she also writes that the prophets opposed reason. Juster suggests that such blending of science and religion stopped in the 1800s; this is simply false, given the history of Spiritualism in the 1800s–1900s. She argues that eighteenth-century prophets rejected capitalism, but her depictions of religious thinkers of the 1700s, fighting for followers, greatly resembles free-market competition. Finally, she downplays the importance of the Old Testament to nineteenth-century prophets, even those Joseph Smith, Barton Stone, and Alexander Campbell — all leaders of new religions in the 1800s — explicitly couched their faiths as restoring ancient Biblical principles (Smith being the most concerned with the Old Testament). This book is a disappointment.

[Bill]

This is a fascinating book on the 18th and 19th century prophets of doom, and how this particular "fringe" religious figures attempted to construct a world of legitimate mystic and apocalyptic Christianity. So far I have found Juster's book to be great in utilizing sources and individuals for whom I had not been familiar, and her use of social history and insights are extraordinarily sound. My only problem so far -- and it is a bit of a quibble -- at some times I think she draws a little too near her protagonists, and while her goal is to remain neutral in value judgements on their -- "soundness" -- for a lack of better term -- it feels like in her prose she leaks through a sense of favoritism, and in a few cases, almost an apologetic on these fringe religionists. This does not detract from her main insights in teh text,a nd is only an impression so far -- I will be curious if by teh time I finish that my objection holds true or not in the context of the larger work.