The American Revolution

Undoubtedly, American religious (mainly Protestant) practice deviated from its European models by liberalizing in various ways that can be attributed to American civic virtue. McDannell cites the privately owned nondenominational Laurel Hill Cemetery in Philadelphia, which was not controlled by sectarian clergy, as well as the more general trend toward privately owned graveyards whose headstones articulated civic and domestic rather than specifically religious values (p. 107).

The federal system of government that emerged in 1789 owed something in substance and form to the Great Awakening of the middle of the 18th century, which was distinguished by the evangelical passion of religious revivalism. Deviations from established-church praxis from colony to colony facilitated cross-colonial solidarity, fostering in turn nascent nationalism and rebellion (Becker, 1915). Something of the same dynamic occurred during the period of the Second Great Awake

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ndees could be sent into indecorous ecstasy, itself yielding unregulated sex (Moore, 1994). One response from the elites, who envied the evangelicals' ability to hold an audience, was the Lyceum, which was marketed as a secular and religiously nonsectarian venue for lectures on "practical information." Yet (nonevangelical) ministers were the most popular draws. Moore says that the Lyceum was a way "to secure [elites'] cultural hegemony and [] find an attractive package for religion other than revivalism" (p. 57). Religious opposition to and cooptation of theatre was replicated in regard to literary and leisure pursuits. Enlargement and secularization of literacy made some religious leaders fear that they "could not control people's reading habits and turn them toward spiritually rewarding material" and therefore fearful of the fate of the "virtuous republic" (Moore, p. 17). Thus many ministers produced tracts that went largely unread, supplanted by sensationalist morality novels such as those of Mason Locke Weems, who crafted didactic tales with "edifying" themes packaged in lurid sex-and-violence stories like the eponymous Onania and Hymen's Recruiting Sergeant. Some ministers such as Henry Ward Beecher, who wrote Norwood, even
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Approximate Word count = 2129
Approximate Pages = 9 (250 words per page)

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