New World Revelations

New revelations and alternative bibles proliferated in nineteenth-century America, opening up spiritual worlds on a grand scale. The Book of Mormon is the best-known example, but it was only part of a much richer story of US scriptural production and engagement, which includes writings from a diverse array of American religious movements, the translation and reception of Asian religious texts, and literary works imbued with sacred meaning.

This collection of essays explores that broader story, bringing together comparative and theoretically informed analyses of newly created or “discovered” scriptures. In addition to examining revelations canonized by well-known Protestant denominations, contributions expand the conversation to consider scriptural writings ranging from Emily Dickinson’s prophetic poetry and the apocryphal testimonies of German Inspirationists to Kiikaapoi syncretic scripture-making, the Holy Koran of the Moorish Science Temple of America, and Christian engagements with Sanskrit and Shinto sacred texts. Bringing these diverse nineteenth-century American revelations into conversation across disciplinary boundaries, the volume invites readers to complicate the very assumptions that undergird the terms “scripture” and “scripturalization” in the field. 

By bridging fields too often studied separately, this collection offers a fresh framework for understanding scripture, revelation, and religious innovation in the United States. It will interest scholars and students of American religion, religious history, literature, and new religious movements.

“The creation of the United States also birthed myriad new religious texts/scriptures, some of them well-known, some of them comparatively obscure, and some that were not texts at all but physical objects. The wonderful concept of this book is to consider together in one anthology nineteenth-century scriptural production of all sorts. The result is a masterly volume that should delight readers.”—Paul Harvey, author of Southern Religion in the World: Three Stories

Jan Stievermann is Professor of the History of Christianity in the United States at Heidelberg University. He is the author of Prophecy, Piety, and the Problem of Historicity: Interpreting the Hebrew Scriptures in Cotton Mather’s “Biblia Americana.”

E. H. Messamore is Postdoctoral Researcher at the Heidelberg Center for American Studies. He is the coeditor of Reworking the Sacred Through Music and Poetry: The De/Sacralization of Texts.

History

           History of Religion

           U.S.

Literary Studies

           History of the Book

Religious Studies & Religion

           History of Religion