The New Measures
A Theological History of Democratic Practice

This 2007 book debates about religion and democracy through a cultural history of nineteenth-century revival practice.

Ted A. Smith (Author)

9780521871310, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 30 April 2007

358 pages
22.9 x 15.2 x 2.4 cm, 0.62 kg

Review of the hardback: 'Smith offers a thoughtful reading of the revivalist techniques of the Second Great Awakening and their effects on democratic life.' The Christian Century

The New Measures: A Theological History of Democratic Practice brings thick cultural history to contemporary debates about religion and democracy. Combining histories of performance, space, institutions, and ideas, this 2007 book tells the story of the 'new measures' that circulated in the religious revivals of the 1820s and '30s and traces the role of these practices in the development of democratic culture in the United States. The book borrows resources from Walter Benjamin and Theodor Adorno to remember the new measures from an eschatological point of view. That eschatological perspective holds together close empirical studies and explicitly theological hopes. The book's attention to detail moves it beyond abstraction and caricature to a more materialist political theology. And its eschatological hope resists narratives of progress and decline to understand American democracy as both tangled in contradiction and caught up in redemption.

The Flyer: a preface for theologians, ethicists, historians, and homileticians
The Fugleman: a brief drill in methodology
1. Some measures are plainly necessary
2. You must have something new
3. Sinners bound to change their own hearts
4. Whosoever will
5. The measure of self.

Subject Areas: Religion: general [HRA], History of the Americas [HBJK]