The Kingdom Of Matthias By Paul E. Johnson And Sean Wilentz

Nathan Hatch compares the Second Great Awakening to the Jacksonian era. He states that the men trying to persuade other people to join their religion was like tyrants trying to get people to follow them. That just like the beginning stages of the revolution, this was a time of power struggle for religious leaders. Hatch writes ‘These movements

Matthias was seen as a very powerful man to the people who were members of his Kingdom. He felt it was his job to bind up the broken hearted and gather the faithful people. His job was to bring “the Holy Word of the one true Lord, the Word of God and the Father” (87). His mission was the establish the reign of Truth and redeem the world from devils, prophesying women, and beaten men. Elijah Pierson

The Second Great Awakening laid the foundations of the development of present-day religious beliefs and establishments, moral views, and democratic ideals in the United States. Beginning back in late eighteenth century and lasting until the middle of the nineteenth century,1 this Protestant awakening sought to reach out the un-churched and bring people to a much more personal and vivid experience of Christianity. Starting on the Southern frontier and soon spreading to the Northeast, the Second Great Awakening has also been associated as a response against the growing liberalism in religion - skepticism, deism, and rational Christianity.2 Although the movement is well-known to be

The Second Great Awakening was a religious revival that gave new religious applications of old Enlightenment ideals of democracy and

The Kingdom of Matthias by Paul E. Johnson and Sean Wilentz is a story of the rise and fall of a religious cult established by Robert Matthews (Matthias). Within his kingdom, Matthias and his followers, abided by Matthias, believes of the subjugation of women by men. Even though at the time the cult was in existence the United States was experiencing two great movements that urged the forward progression of women, the Market Revolution and the Second Great Awakening. Two women in particular are mentioned in Johnson and Wilentz’ book that were really suppressed by Matthias and his subjects. One was Isabella van Wagenen, the slave that worked in Mount Zion and even Matthias’ own daughter Isabella Matthews Laisdell. The Kingdom of Matthias

The second great awakening was the emergence of new religious branches. There were three main branches that influences the Unites States as it grew and was still trying to rid of the English ways. these three branches were named Baptist, Methodist, and Presbyterian. All three of these branches grew quickly in popularity. The most popular however was the Presbyterian church. All of these shares the same core belief but held different values and reasons for existence. The presbyterian church is part of what I feel helped push the western expiation to continue further. This is due to the one message they wanted to convey to others, " Salvation is available not just to a select few, as the Calvinist Puritans have claimed, but to anyone who repents and embraces Christ". Other religious view were adopted in this time that caused the population to see the world in a new light and gain more spiritual growth.

The Kingdom of Matthias by Paul E. Johnson & Sean Wilentz is based on the story of Robert Matthews in the early 1800’s. Which sets place during the second great awakening when evangelicalism was very common in the northeastern part of the U.S. Many Americans through this period were experiencing with various religions, which Matthews tried to benefit from by starting his own religion. Due to constant personal hardships, the market revolution, influences of his new religion, and Americans reaction with different views is what ultimately led not just to the creation of Robert Matthews “kingdom” but also to its collapse.

"The Kingdom of Matthias" by historians Paul E. Johnson and Sean Wilentz examines one of the first scandals in American history. The book takes place in a time when a majority of people sought after a passionate religion. The authors wonderfully organized the book, splitting it into 4 large sections. The first and second sections were written purely to introduce the reader to Elijah Pierson and Robert Matthews, the men who started the Kingdom (or cult); the third and fourth concern the Kingdom (how it functioned, and it 's members) and how it failed. In these chapters, the reader slowly becomes involved with the characters as the authors illustrate a story which many had forgot.

Sojourner Truth is remembered as an ex-slave who changed her name from Isabella and gave her famous Ain’t I a Woman speech regarding abolition and women’s rights. But before her speech, Truth actively participated in a religious cult and faced a murder charge. Authors Paul E. Johnson and Sean Wilentz provide a descriptive account of the religious cult in their book The Kingdom of Matthias: A Story of Sex and Salvation in 19th-century America. Their book follows the life of Robert Matthews and the events of his life leading up to the creation of his new religion in New York in the 1830s. Robert Matthews started to refer to himself as the prophet Matthias and recruited wealthy families to join his religion where they lived in isolation. American society in the 1830s encountered rapid change with the emergence of the market revolution and the Second Great Awakening. Impacts from the market revolution, the second great awakening, and personal factors led Matthias to create and influenced his own religion which other Americans eventually denounced.

The Kingdom of Matthias is an interesting historical perspective on accounts taking place during a turbulent era in American history. Authors Paul E. Johnson and Sean Wilentz both professors of history brilliantly recapture the forgotten story of Matthias through carefully researching the events and people associated with the Kingdom of Matthias, as shown by the copious amount of footnotes used. Ultimately what Johnson and Wilentz are interested in is discovering what connection Matthews has to the larger history of America. However, unfortunately authors Johnson and Wilentz do not provide a clear argument or a reason as to why this book is important. Rather they establish key points and emphasize on these historical events creating a dazzling

The novel The Kingdom of Matthias, A Story of Sex and Salvation in 19th-Century America, written by Paul E. Johnson and Sean Wilentz. This book is filled with many controversial themes that relate to the culture during the Jackson Era, such as religion, economy, and gender roles. The book depicts women as inferior towards men, and keeps men at the top of the hierarchy. The main character Robert Matthews (Matthias) was born in a small farming village in 1788. Matthias grew up in a very strict religious based society. Men held all authority in their community as well as the church. Women in this patriarchy society had one job and that was to take care of the household. Including; cooking and preparing meals, nurturing and raising

“The Kingdom of Matthias” begins with the story of Elijah Pierson; he was raised in a Calvinist church, and later moved to New York. He was a very religious man, who got very swept into the perfectionist movement. After he moved to New York, he found himself being a total outcast compared to the others there in the city. The

The critics of the followers of the “Kingdom of Matthias” reflect a variety of ideologies that characterized the societal changes of the 19th century Northern region of the United States. The Kingdom of Matthias was a spiritual cult founded and primarily administered by Robert Mathews, an American religious figure and former businessman whose spiritual activities inspired his followers to refer to him as Matthias the Prophet. The Kingdom of Matthias received a great deal of publicity and national media attention in the US during its time, and has thereafter become an issue of historical consideration whose analysis reflects interesting characteristics of the changing American society of the 19th century. The critics of the Kingdom of Matthias

The book, “Kingdom of Matthias,” largely relates to many themes of religion that we have discussed in lecture and also read about in “Voices of Freedom.” As we know, religion was a serious topic in the 1800’s. In the book, a man called himself a prophet and told his followers that he spoke directly to Jesus. Many people were very impressionable at this time and followed him willingly. We have discussed religious freedom and learned that bills were passed to allow more religious freedom, so that religions that were not Christianity would not be persecuted, therefore leaders like Matthias were able to arise and take advantage of people who were searching for a religion to follow. Another reoccurring theme throughout the book happens to be that

Generally, Matthias and Elijah Pierson grew up in a customary society that had a some values and that undermined the female figures so the two men had grown up to become distinctly male chauvinists. They believed that men had great power and authority over a woman and that the woman was always subject to a man and was hence always expected to submit to her fully. Matthias even went to the degree of considering constrained submission from his wife, Margaret, by beating and irritating her to impart fear into her. As he was building his kingdom, the Kingdom of Matthias, he gave ladies no consideration and just saw them as objects of work and sex, instead of typical human being. (Johnson and Wilentz,