{"product_id":"cosmos-crumbling-american-reform-and-the-religious-imagination-9780195037524","title":"Cosmos Crumbling: American Reform and the Religious Imagination","description":"\u003cp\u003eIn the forty years before the Civil War  America was awash in political and social reform movements. Abolitionists stormed against the cruelties of slavery. Temperance zealots hounded producers and consumers of strong drink. Sabbatarians fought to make Sunday an officially recognized sacred day. Womans rights activists proclaimed the case for sexual equality. Others offered programs of physiological and spiritual self-reform: phrenology  vegetarianism  the water-cure  spiritualism  and miscellaneous others. \"Even the insect world was to be defended \" Emerson mused  \"and a society for the protection of ground-worms  slugs  and mosquitoes was to be incorporated without delay.\" Cosmos Crumbling brilliantly reassesses the religious roots of these antebellum reform movements through a series of penetrating profiles of key men and women who sought to remake their worlds in sacred terms. Filled with vivid anecdotes and penetrating analysis  the book presents a genealogy of reform cosmology that begins with the American Revolution and ends with \"the woman question \" the issue that drove a wedge between traditional evangelical reformers and the more radical reformers who questioned the very foundations of the conventional Christian cosmos. Here is the story of Declaration of Independence signer Benjamin Rush  and his lifelong odyssey to bring together his unorthodox Christian ideals and his revolutionary republicanism. Other portraits highlight the guiding role of religion in the careers of the tireless abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison  the evangelical minister Lyman Beecher  his daughter  influential educational reformer Catharine Beecher  and of Angelina and Sarah Grimk  and Lydia Maria Child  fearless women who made enormous strides in reimagining the spiritual and moral power of women and their place in society. There is also an intriguing chapter on leaders of the body reforms  including phrenologist Orson Squire Fowler  who began his career reading the heads of his fellow students at Amherst College for small change  and William Andrus Alcott  who advocated a bland vegetarian diet  cold water bathing  and a profusion of daily rituals to guide his followers through their every waking moment. Arguing that we cannot understand American reform movements unless we understand the sacred significance reformers bestowed on the worldly arenas of politics  society  and the economy  Abzug presents these men and women in their own words  placing their cherished ideals and their often heated squabbles within the context of their millennial and sometimes apocalyptic sense of Americas role in the cosmic drama. Tracing the lasting impact of what began as a peculiarly Protestant  largely New England  style of social action on the uniquely American traditions of activism that flourish today  Cosmos Crumbling is a signal contribution to our understanding of the myriad ways in which the quest for enlightenment and salvation continues to shape American politics.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"My Store","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":45652276183093,"sku":"ByrdShop_0195037529","price":145.78,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0627\/8139\/0901\/files\/9780195037524.jpg?v=1781850532","url":"https:\/\/atxbooks.com\/products\/cosmos-crumbling-american-reform-and-the-religious-imagination-9780195037524","provider":"ATX Books","version":"1.0","type":"link"}