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Spiritual Home explores congregational life inside British and
American Reformed churches between 1830 and 1915. At a time when scholars
have become interested in the day-to-day experience of local congregations,
this book reaches back into the nineteenth century, a critically formative
period in Anglo-American religious life, to examine the historical
roots of congregational life.
Taking the perspective of the laity, Cashdollar ranges widely from
worship and music to fund-raising and administration, from pastoral
care to social work, from prayer meetings to strawberry festivals,
from the sanctuary to the kitchen. Firmly rooted in broader currents
of gender, class, notions of middle-class respectability, increasing
expectations for personal privacy, and patterns of professionalization,
he finds that there was a gradual shift in emphasis during these
years from piety to fellowship.
Based on records, publications, and memorabilia from about 150
congregations representing eight denominations, A Spiritual Home gives us a comprehensive, composite portrait of religious life in
Victorian Britain and America. |
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| Charles
D. Cashdollar is a Professor of History at Indiana University
of Pennsylvania. His previous book, The Transformation of Theology,
1830-1890: Positivism and Protestant Thought in Britain and America,
was published by Princeton University Press in 1989. His articles
have been published in Church History, Harvard Theological Review,
Journal of Presbyterian History, Journal of the History of Ideas, and Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography. |
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