The Era of Reform, 1830-1860

On Earth as it is in heaven: A study of nineteenth‐century religious communal experiments in the United States

“…The scholarship has moved away from focusing on the leadership and toward the study of social dynamics between community members, as well as the lived experiences of these individuals analyzed through the lens of class, race, and gender. The research on communal experiments has also become incorporated into broader histories of material culture, capitalism, religion, and political protest in the United States (Commager, ). The subfield of Religious Studies focused on New Religious Movements (NRMs) has evolved alongside communal studies scholarship, as these scholars often pursue similar research topics including charismatic leadership, devotees, and religious groups popularly labelled “cults” (Ashcraft, ) .…”

The cult of curability and the doctrine of perfectibility: social context of the nineteenth-century American asylum movement

“…Commanger 1960, with Cole 1966, Smith 1957. So many plans to reconstruct society and its institutions kept popping up that Emerson remarked that there was not a 'reading man' without some scheme for a new utopia in his 'waistcoat pocket' (Bailey 1961: 346;cf.…”

“…As noted, many reform movements that kept popping up in that era of burgeoning reform movements had little or no lasting effects and endured for only a short time (Bailey 1961: 240-355, Baldwin 1952cf. with Commanger 1960, Parrington 1930, Tyler 1944). The insane asylum movement was one of the many reform movements in the matrix of evangelical, pietistic Protestant organizations that were attempting to perfect the individual and society in anticipation of the millennium which was believed to be imminent (cf.…”

“…Moreover, the passionate debates over problems of the reconstruction of the South, the effects of industrialization, urbanization, and the influx of millions of immigrants, occupied the minds of most concerned Americans, and afforded fertile new fields for reformers to conquer. Furthermore, although Dorothea Dix and some of her associates resumed their work after the war, it was in a cultural, economic, intellectual, political and social climate that differed from the corresponding climate of the 1830s and 1840s (Bailey 1961, Baldwin 1952, Commanger 1960, Curti 1935, Hofstadter 1960, Luchins 1988, 1989, McMaster 1883-1927, Oberholtzer 1917-37, Parrington 1927, 1930, C. E. Rosenberg 1962. No new Dorothea Dix arose in the asylum movement, perhaps because the focus now was on social reconstruction.…”