From the Publisher
"Damned Nation is a heavenly book. It is beautifully written, deeply researched, and clearly argued.... Kathryn Gin Lum meticulously examines one of the least noticed yet most pervasive and powerful forces in the culture: the conviction that people who died outside the faith would endure everlasting damnation in hell.... [R]ich with insight and scholarly achievement." —Journal of American History
"This fascinating, original, beautifully written account deals with how ministers formulated threats of Hell and how lay people responded. We read a multitude of introspections by men and women of every race and social station, Christian and non-Christian, sometimes leading them to belief in Hell, sometimes to its rejection. Throughout, the author takes the debate over Hell seriously. Her concluding section applies her analyses to the slavery controversy and the Civil War." —Daniel Walker Howe, Pulitzer-Prize-winning author of What Hath God Wrought: The Transformation of America, 1815-1848
"Damned Nation is damned good and its contributions are legion. We enter American labyrinths where fears of hellfire singed souls and heated political discord in the early republic. We encounter abolitionists who damned the souls of black folk in order to free their bodies. We witness leaders and laity bickering as if rehearsing the conclave of fallen angels that began John Milton's Paradise Lost. And we march into a Civil War where the destruction drove new approaches to damnation. This book signals a new and evocative voice in the realm of American religious history, one that is not afraid to entertain its dark sides." —Edward J. Blum, co-author of The Color of Christ: The Son of God and the Saga of Race in America
"In this brilliant reassessment, Kathryn Gin Lum shows that the idea of hell, far from withering away under the weight of Enlightenment rationalism, was a fixture of the antebellum religious marketplace-a doctrine calculated to win converts both through attraction and aversion. Americans took the notion of eternal hell torments with deadly seriousness, and Gin Lum reveals just how central the doctrine was. An essential and compelling account." —Peter J. Thuesen, author of Predestination: The American Career of a Contentious Doctrine
"A superb book." —American Historical Review
Library Journal
09/15/2014
What role does hell play in the American psyche? That is, does the suggestion of hell and damnation help fuel the contours of American moral integrity? For Lum (religious studies, Stanford Univ.), it most certainly does. Hell serves as both a metaphorical placeholder as well as a literal reality in the author's survey of American religious and political history: "Hell was a polarizing concept that mobilized some to action because they feared it, while mobilizing others to religious innovation against it." Beginning with American morality politics in the 17th century and firebrands such as Jonathan Edwards and covering through the Civil War and its aftermath, Lum is particularly adept at unearthing the rich rhetoric of damnation, such as the contrasting missionary urges to save the dark heathen savages across the sea or the charge to save white American souls. Similarly, Union and Confederate soldiers, both inflamed with evangelical fervor, took up arms against the immortality of their enemy, claiming God's heavenly consolation for their efforts against the "damned other." VERDICT Like American studies pioneer Perry Miller, Lum employs hell as a historical prism, weaving a rich tapestry of the past with rhetoric, music, images, and memoir. This thought-provoking work that illuminates America's distinct moral and religious self-understanding is ideal for anyone concerned with the convergence of morality and culture.—Sandra Collins, Byzantine Catholic Seminary Lib., Pittsburgh
Kirkus Reviews
2014-06-05
Religion scholar Gin Lum (Religious Studies/Stanford Univ.) delves into the writings and memoirs of early Americans deeply concerned with the issues of hell and salvation.The Calvinist doctrine of predestination held so dear by the first wave of immigrants to the New World began to split by the mid-18thcentury. While revivalists like Jonathan Edwards preached hell-and-brimstone sermons—e.g., “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God”—a backlash urged by Universalists and other liberal ministers presented a more benevolent God, with an emphasis on “moral living over a change of heart,” as well as “the ethical example of Christ rather than the traditional Calvinist doctrine that Christ’s death on the cross saved the elect alone.” The Enlightenment notions of rationality and the perfectability of man influenced the latter ministers and the coterie of Deist founding fathers like Thomas Paine, who denounced the doctrine of original sin as “absurd” and “profane.” Gin Lum illuminates the two doctrinal camps by contrasting portraits of the two John Murrays who arrived in America in the mid-1700s: “Salvation” Murray became a popular and dynamic preacher of Universalism’s message that “at the final judgment all humanity would be cleansed of sin,” while “Damnation” Murray preached of the horrors of eternal damnation to enrapt revivalist audiences. The rise of republicanism helped temper the “efficacy of hell for social cohesion,” replaced gradually by an evangelical sense that repentance of sins could avoid punishment in hell. Gin Lum draws on a wealth of conversion memoirs from exemplary Americans like Sarah Osborn and Benjamin Abbott and takes into account the booming print industry churning out fiery sermons and passionate exhortations for mothers to keep children out of sin’s way—or else. The author also looks extensively at the messages of Western missionaries and anti-slavery crusaders in delivering souls from perdition.An elucidating study of why hell continued to matter in early America.
