Identifying the Image of God: Radical Christians and Nonviolent Power in the Antebellum United StatesBetween 1820 and 1860, American social reformers invited all people to identify God's image in the victims of war, slavery, and addiction. Identifying the Image of God traces the theme of identification--and its liberal Christian roots--through the literature of social reform, focusing on sentimental novels, temperance tales, and slave narratives, and invites contemporary activists to revive the "politics of identification." |
Contents
| 11 | |
From Sentimentality to Social Reform The Emergence of Radical Christian Liberalism | 46 |
The Gospel the Declaration and the Divine Child Theology and Literature of Ultra Reform | 66 |
Looking for Victims Violence and Theology in Temperance Narratives | 102 |
Through the BloodStained Gate Violence Birth and the Imago Dei in Fugitive Slave Narratives | 127 |
Epics of Ambivalence Nonviolent Power in Harriet Beecher Stowes Antislavery Novels | 157 |
Violent Messiahs Radical Christian Liberals and the Civil War | 174 |
Liberal Irony | 215 |
Notes | 219 |
Bibliography | 257 |
Index | 281 |
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Common terms and phrases
abolition Abolitionism abolitionist activists alcohol ambivalence American angel antebellum antislavery apocalyptic appeal Beecher believed benevolent Bible Catharine Sedgwick Channing character Christ church claimed committed death Declaration demonic divine doctrine Dred drunkards England enslavement evil experience father fiction Frederick Douglass freedom fugitive slave narrative Garrison and Garrison Garrisonian God's gospel heart heaven Henry Clarke Wright Hope Leslie Ibid imago imago dei Indians individual insisted institutions intemperance Jesus John Brown Lewis Tappan liberal theology Lydia Maria Child moral mother movement narrators nation New-England Tale nonresistance nonviolent nonviolent power novel orthodox peace political principles providential Puritan Quaker radical Christian liberalism radical liberal readers religion religious Revolution revolutionary Sedgwick sense Sigourney slaveholders slavery social reform society soul speech spirit story Stowe Stowe's suffering suggested temperance writers theology tion tradition ultimately ultraists Uncle Tom's Cabin Unitarian victims violence vision voice Washingtonian William Lloyd Garrison wrote