Bringing together an extraordinary richness of evidence—from letters, diaries, and other intimate family writing of the 17th and 18th centuries—Philip Greven, the distinguished scholar of colonial history explores the strikingly distinctive ways in which Protestant children were reared, and the Protestant temperament shaped, in America. Through this cache of remarkable and remarkably immediate and moving material – the family papers of some of America’s most famous theologians, political figures, lawyers, and ministers as well as those of lesser-known contemporaries (farmers, merchants, housewives) who embodied Protestant life and wrote about it most expressively—Philip Greven traces the hidden continuities of religious experience, of attitudes toward God, children, the will, the body, sexuality, achievement, pleasure, virtue, and selfhood among the three Protestant groups of the time. He examines, in turn, the three strains that persisted regardless of denomination. First, the “evangelicals” (their dictum for raising children: “Break their wills that you may save their souls”), ruled by a hostility to the self, a feeling that selfhood is the source of sin, too dangerous to be sought or desired (Jonathan Edwards wrote: “I have been before God and have given myself, all that I am, and have, to God; so that I am not, in any respect, my own . . . I have given myself clear away”). And we hear the products of this upbringing, in their twenties and thirties, speaking of themselves in the harshest tones (“My affections carnal, corrupt, and disordered”), distrusting themselves in the most profound ways (a woman faced with the choice of a husband wrote: “I dare not decide myself and dread nothing more than to be left to the Bent of my own heart”). In counterpoint, we see the “moderates,” poised between duty and personal desire, preoccupied but not obsessed with morality, more interested in self-control than self-suppression (an eminent Unitarian, the Reverend Theodore Parker of Boston, wrote: “The will needs regulation, not destroying. I should as soon think of breaking the legs of a horse in training him, as a child’s will”). And, finally, we see the “genteel” in polite society, taking their state of grace for granted, more interested in self-assertion than self-control, completely at ease with ambition and worldliness—music, dancing, games, convivial drinking, hunting, and sports all an integral part of the children’s lives as they grow into maturity; the boys groomed for social responsibility, the girls encouraged to be “steady, studious, docile, with a mild and winning presence, a sweet, obliging temper . . . ” The Protestant Temperament uncovers the personal experience and the psychological and social effects of religion and piety in the American of the 17th and 18th centuries, the feelings as well as the beliefs of religious people. Fascinating and groundbreaking in its revelations and its radical reassessment of the role of religion in early American life, Philip Greven’s book is a major intellectual event, an important and illuminating interpretation of the American Protestant experience.

In this penetrating and provocative assessment of the current state of religion and its effects on society at large, Philip J. Lee criticizes conservatives and liberals alike as he traces gnostic motifs to the very roots of American Protestantism. With references to an extraordinary spectrum of writings from sources as diverse as John Calvin, Martin Buber, Tom Wolfe, Margaret Atwood, and Emily Dickinson, he probes the effects of gnostic thinking on a wide range of issues. Calling for the restoration of a dialectical faith and practice, the book points to positive ways of restoring health to endangered Protestant churches.

The Protestant Orphan Society, founded in Dublin in 1828, managed a carefully-regulated boarding-out and apprenticeship scheme. This book examines its origins, its forward-thinking policies, and particularly its investment in children’s health, the part women played in the charity, opposition to its work and the development of local Protestant Orphan Societies. It argues that by the 1860s the parent body in Dublin had become one of the most well-respected nineteenth-century Protestant charities and an authority in the field of boarding out. The author uses individual case histories to explore the ways in which the charity shaped the orphans’ lives and assisted widows, including the sister of Sean O’Casey, the renowned playwright, and identifies the prominent figures who supported its work such as Douglas Hyde, the first President of Ireland. This book makes valuable contributions to the history of child welfare, foster care, the family and the study of Irish Protestantism.

Weaving personal narrative with a synthesis of feminist mothering theory and psychoanalytic theories of narcissism, Isaac D. Balbus describes his effort to share in the care of his daughter during her first four years.

This thought-provoking study examines an apparent paradox in the history of American Protestant evangelical religion. Fervent believers who devoted themselves completely to the challenges of making a Christian life, who longed to know God's rapturous love, all too often languished in despair, feeling forsaken by God. Indeed, some individuals became obsessed by guilt, terror of damnation, and the idea that they had committed an unpardonable sin. Ironically, those most devoted to fostering the soul's maturation seemingly neglected the well-being of the psyche. Drawing upon many sources, including unpublished diaries, spiritual narratives, and case studies of patients treated in nineteenth-century asylums, Julius Rubin thoroughly explores religious melancholy - as a distinctive stance toward life, a grieving over the loss of God's love, and an obsession and psycho pathology associated with the spiritual itinerary of conversion. The varieties of this spiritual sickness include sinners who would fast unto death ("evangelical anorexia nervosa"), religious suicides, and those obsessed with unpardonable sin. From colonial Puritans like Michael Wigglesworth to contemporary evangelicals like Billy Graham, Rubin shows that religious melancholy has shaped the experience of self and identity for those who sought rebirth as children of God. Religious Melancholy and Protestant Experience in America offers a fresh and revealing look at a widely recognized phenomenon. It will be of interest to scholars and students of religious studies, American history, psychology, and sociology of religion.