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Holy Fairs: Scotland and the Making of American Revivalism
Winner of the Frank S. and Elizabeth D. Brewer Prize of the American Society of Church History, Holy Fairs traces the roots of American camp-meeting revivalism to the communion festivals of early modern Scotland. This new paperback edition of Leigh Eric S
312 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1990
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Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
October 27, 2015
People interested in trans-atlantic religion or in how religious ceremonies can be transformed upon transplantation to a new context need to read this book. I also recommend it for Presbyterians, who will likely come away with a broader and perhaps somewhat different appreciation for how their religious tradition influenced America.
July 17, 2018
14 “Many of the patterns of Catholic spirituality, however, were not easily or simply displaced by Protestant forms. This conflict between the legacies of Catholic devotion and the innovations of Protestant worship is important for understanding the later emergence of the sacramental occasions.”
20 Attacked the Catholic religious seasons. “By the end of the seventeenth century this attack had turned on the Presbyterians, for they had virtually transformed summer and early fall into one long sacramental season in which the communions were openly hailed as the high days of the year.”
32 “By the mid-1630s communion occasions had become an important means by which the most zealous Presbyterians were forwarding their cause.”
34 “The debates of the 1640s, centered on Westminster, revealed the extent to which the Scottish Presbyterians were devoted to a certain way of celebrating the eucharist. The rituals of the Lord’s Supper, once unified in the Latin Mass, had become a way of defining one religious community over against another.”
41 “Hallowed by retelling and enlargement, the story of the Covenanters—their conventicles, sufferings, and clandestine communions—became a noble, at times almost sacral part of the Presbyterian past. The communion seasons, high points in the militant struggle and long endurance of the Covenanters, had become wrapped up in that hallowed history. Participation in them had become part of what it meant to be a Scottish Presbyterian. The Covenanters had added the glorious history of Presbyterian sacrifice to the sacred history of Christ’s suffering and death.”
53 How the seasons were like the assembly of Israel’s tribes.
65 “While religious ecstasy, such as visions and fainting away, had been fairly common in the evangelical Presbyterian tradition, the sacramental occasions of the Great Revival, at least in several instances, markedly exceeded the former communions in the range and prevalence of ecstatic behavior.”
“At minimum the Old World festival was facilitating the emergence of this American form of renewal, the camp meeting. Old World influences on American revivalism were profound, and of all places such influences were particularly notable on the frontier.”
87 “The sacramental occasion could involve or evoke various thresholds that potentially spanned from birth through youth and adulthood to death. Scottish Presbyterianism, having shorn Christianity of its medieval sacramentalism, tended to condense in the communion season a number of traditional Christian rituals of passage.”
160-1 “Dramatic eucharistic experience, more than being built upon anxiety, | was founded ultimately upon Christ’s presence in the sacrament.”
166 “The sacramental occasion always held the power to marry souls—male and female—to the Bridegroom, but it would appear that women responded to Christ’s nuptial offers more often, more comfortably, and more fully than did men.
“Sacramental piety, as it shifted from recollecting the suffering Christ to awaiting the mystical marriage to the Bridegroom, began to look more forward than backward.”
171 “Enlightened rationalism would also threaten traditional Reformed views of the eucharist; Christ’s real spiritual presence in the sacrament, for example, would be increasingly challenged as memorialistic doctrines of even more skeptical ones gained ascendancy.”
200 “To the reformers of the hoy fair, this privatization of religion was essential for safeguarding public order. The indulgence of crowds, within a religious context as well as others, had come to be seen as fraught with social risk, especially as the changing economic order made control of an increasingly distinct working class even more difficult.”
216 “Evangelical ritualism, as evidenced in the sacramental occasion, extended particularly to notions of spectacle, of seeing the Christian faith enacted.” Despite the emphasis on preaching, or perhaps because of it.
20 Attacked the Catholic religious seasons. “By the end of the seventeenth century this attack had turned on the Presbyterians, for they had virtually transformed summer and early fall into one long sacramental season in which the communions were openly hailed as the high days of the year.”
32 “By the mid-1630s communion occasions had become an important means by which the most zealous Presbyterians were forwarding their cause.”
34 “The debates of the 1640s, centered on Westminster, revealed the extent to which the Scottish Presbyterians were devoted to a certain way of celebrating the eucharist. The rituals of the Lord’s Supper, once unified in the Latin Mass, had become a way of defining one religious community over against another.”
41 “Hallowed by retelling and enlargement, the story of the Covenanters—their conventicles, sufferings, and clandestine communions—became a noble, at times almost sacral part of the Presbyterian past. The communion seasons, high points in the militant struggle and long endurance of the Covenanters, had become wrapped up in that hallowed history. Participation in them had become part of what it meant to be a Scottish Presbyterian. The Covenanters had added the glorious history of Presbyterian sacrifice to the sacred history of Christ’s suffering and death.”
53 How the seasons were like the assembly of Israel’s tribes.
65 “While religious ecstasy, such as visions and fainting away, had been fairly common in the evangelical Presbyterian tradition, the sacramental occasions of the Great Revival, at least in several instances, markedly exceeded the former communions in the range and prevalence of ecstatic behavior.”
“At minimum the Old World festival was facilitating the emergence of this American form of renewal, the camp meeting. Old World influences on American revivalism were profound, and of all places such influences were particularly notable on the frontier.”
87 “The sacramental occasion could involve or evoke various thresholds that potentially spanned from birth through youth and adulthood to death. Scottish Presbyterianism, having shorn Christianity of its medieval sacramentalism, tended to condense in the communion season a number of traditional Christian rituals of passage.”
160-1 “Dramatic eucharistic experience, more than being built upon anxiety, | was founded ultimately upon Christ’s presence in the sacrament.”
166 “The sacramental occasion always held the power to marry souls—male and female—to the Bridegroom, but it would appear that women responded to Christ’s nuptial offers more often, more comfortably, and more fully than did men.
“Sacramental piety, as it shifted from recollecting the suffering Christ to awaiting the mystical marriage to the Bridegroom, began to look more forward than backward.”
171 “Enlightened rationalism would also threaten traditional Reformed views of the eucharist; Christ’s real spiritual presence in the sacrament, for example, would be increasingly challenged as memorialistic doctrines of even more skeptical ones gained ascendancy.”
200 “To the reformers of the hoy fair, this privatization of religion was essential for safeguarding public order. The indulgence of crowds, within a religious context as well as others, had come to be seen as fraught with social risk, especially as the changing economic order made control of an increasingly distinct working class even more difficult.”
216 “Evangelical ritualism, as evidenced in the sacramental occasion, extended particularly to notions of spectacle, of seeing the Christian faith enacted.” Despite the emphasis on preaching, or perhaps because of it.
September 23, 2011
This is a must-read for Presbyterians, for Protestants of American evangelical heritage, and for enthusiasts of American religious history.
Schmidt does a wonderful job of showing how revivalism and sacramentalism were of a piece with each other in early modern Scotland and how the Lord's Supper and rituals surrounding it -- some of them distinctively Reformed -- held a central place in the piety of early Protestantism.
As a historian, he engages the sources and figures he's writing about with such generosity, too -- I found it tremendously refreshing. A wonderful work.
Schmidt does a wonderful job of showing how revivalism and sacramentalism were of a piece with each other in early modern Scotland and how the Lord's Supper and rituals surrounding it -- some of them distinctively Reformed -- held a central place in the piety of early Protestantism.
As a historian, he engages the sources and figures he's writing about with such generosity, too -- I found it tremendously refreshing. A wonderful work.
October 12, 2011
Leigh Eric Schmidt is a careful, sympathetic, and insightful historian. While only the most dedicated readers will plow through the wealth of primary witness accounts, the journey is worth it. I believe the book came from Schmidt's doctoral dissertation, and it still has that feel. The bibliography is impressive, and I am ransacking it for my own dissertation!
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January 25, 2008One of the books that showed me the way I wanted to do history.
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews