Religion and Society in Frontier California
Title | Religion and Society in Frontier California PDF eBook |
Author | Laurie F. Maffly-Kipp |
Publisher | Yale University Press |
Pages | 262 |
Release | 1994-01-01 |
Genre | Religion |
ISBN | 9780300053777 |
The chaotic and reputedly immoral behaviour of the miners who made up the gold rush to the Californian frontier greatly worried the evangelical protestants from the Northeast. They sent missionaries to spread the word and transplant their beliefs. This book is the story of that enterprise.
Religion and Society in Frontier California
Title | Religion and Society in Frontier California PDF eBook |
Author | Laurie F Maffly-Kipp |
Publisher | |
Pages | 252 |
Release | 2013-10 |
Genre | Religion |
ISBN | 9780300206449 |
The chaotic and reputedly immoral society of the California mining frontier during the gold rush period greatly worried Protestant evangelicals from the Northeast, and they soon sent missionaries westward to transplant their religious institutions, beliefs, and practices in the area. This book tells the story of that enterprise, showing how it developed, why it failed, and what patterns of religious adherence evolved in the West in place of evangelical Protestantism. Laurie Maffly-Kipp begins by analyzing the eastern-based religious ideology that underlay the movement westward and by investigating the motives behind the founding of home mission boards dedicated to the spread of Christianity and civility among new settlers. Drawing on the diaries, letters, and journals of hundreds of California "argonauts," Maffly-Kipp describes those missionaries and their wives sent to California after 1848 and the virtually all-male mining society that resisted the missionaries' notions of moral order and in turn created new religious beliefs and practices. Maffly-Kipp argues that despite its alleged immorality, the California gold rush was actually one of the most morally significant events of the nineteenth century, for it challenged and brought into conflict the cherished values of antebellum American culture: a commitment to spiritual and social progress; a concern with self-discipline, moral character, and proper gender roles; and a thirst for wealth fostered by the spirit of free enterprise.
Frontier Religion in an Era of Transition
Title | Frontier Religion in an Era of Transition PDF eBook |
Author | Michael Eric Engh |
Publisher | |
Pages | 492 |
Release | 1987 |
Genre | California |
ISBN |
The Frontier Spirit in American Christianity
Title | The Frontier Spirit in American Christianity PDF eBook |
Author | Peter George Mode |
Publisher | |
Pages | 218 |
Release | 1923 |
Genre | Christianity |
ISBN |
Thrown Among Strangers
Title | Thrown Among Strangers PDF eBook |
Author | Douglas Monroy |
Publisher | Univ of California Press |
Pages | 356 |
Release | 1990 |
Genre | History |
ISBN | 0520082753 |
Every California schoolchild's first interaction with history begins with the missions and Indians. It is the pastoralist image, of course, and it is a lasting one. Children in elementary school hear how Father Serra and the priests brought civilization to the groveling, lizard- and acorn-eating Indians of such communities as Yang-na, now Los Angeles. So edified by history, many of those children drag their parents to as many missions as they can. Then there is the other side of the missions, one that a mural decorating a savings and loan office in the San Fernando Valley first showed to me as a child. On it a kindly priest holds a large cross over a kneeling Indian. For some reason, though, the padre apparently aims not to bless the Indian but rather to bludgeon him with the emblem of Christianity. This portrait, too, clings to the memory, capturing the critical view of the missionization of California's indigenous inhabitants. I carried the two childhood images with me both when I went to libraries as I researched the missions and when I revisited several missions thirty years after those family trips. In this work I proceed neither to dubunk nor to reconcile these contrary notions of the missions and Indians but to present a new and, I hope, deeper understanding of the complex interaction of the two antithetical cultures.
Frontier Faiths
Title | Frontier Faiths PDF eBook |
Author | Michael E. Engh |
Publisher | |
Pages | 312 |
Release | 1992 |
Genre | History |
ISBN |
Prophets and Paupers
Title | Prophets and Paupers PDF eBook |
Author | Harland Edwin Hogue |
Publisher | |
Pages | 228 |
Release | 1996 |
Genre | California |
ISBN |
Nothing like this vast migration from so many nations and cultures had ever taken place in the history of the world, especially into one small geographical area. And nothing like it has happened since. At the same time the religious world was in the process of sending out missionaries to the ends of the earth. Dr. Hogue shows us that the religious communities at their best left a legacy of integrity and hope in the midst of one of the most disheartening and often crass periods of American Western history.