The Conversion Experience in America: A Sourcebook on Religious Conversion Autobiography

(Hardback)

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Description

From the early narratives of such colonial writers as Jonathon Edwards to the more recent conversion experiences of Jim Bakker, Jerry Falwell, and Pat Robertson, America is rich in both conversions and autobiographies. This volume provides a sourcebook for the study of American religious conversion narratives. It includes entries providing biographical, bibliographic, and critical commentary on 30 significant writers of conversion narratives. The subjects include writers of early colonial America, such as Mary Rowlandson and John Woolman, 19th-century women writers, such as Carry Nation and Ann Eliza Young, and writers from the 20th century social gospel movement, such as John Cogley and Dorothy Day. Chapters on subjects such as Jim Bakker give insight into the rise of televangelism. Finally, chapters on such writers as Frederick Douglass, Eldridge Cleaver, and Piri Thomas cover the conversion experiences of those who lived outside mainstream American culture. The chapters are arranged alphabetically. Each one is divided into sections providing a short biography, discussing the narrative, covering criticism of the narrative, and a bibliography. The work concludes with a bibliographic essay and a full subject index.

Reviews

.,."a fascinating insight into North American socio-religous history, and a timely reminder of the cultural context in which North American Christians are commissioned to proclaim and embody the gospel. The strength of the volume is its historiographical integrity. Holte gives his subjects full and free expression, thereby allowing them to testify to a wide range of transforming experiences."-Missology
...a fascinating insight into North American socio-religous history, and a timely reminder of the cultural context in which North American Christians are commissioned to proclaim and embody the gospel. The strength of the volume is its historiographical integrity. Holte gives his subjects full and free expression, thereby allowing them to testify to a wide range of transforming experiences.-Missology
a concise, eloquently written, and scholarly volume. Recommended for college, university, and community libraries.-ARBA
Holte has contributed a helpful resource that should suggest and facilitate any number of research assignments for teachers and their students in classes of American history and literature. Libraries would do well to add this book.-Fides Et Historia
Holte's book does offer and introduction to the 'kaleidoscope' of religious experience in America. Quite thorough bibliographies appear after each essay. Furthermore the volume is a helpful reference work to religious autobiography that deserves a place in libraries committed to providing resources on the American religious experience.-Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society
It is also a different sourcebook in that not all of the conversion experiences related are of the standard religious kind (e.g., among the listings is Peter Jenkins, A Walk Across America, as one would expect given the title of the book. Therefore, this well-written work should probably be aimed toward the library market, particularly college libraries, as well as the smaller libraries of departments of religious studies.-Syzygy
John Wesley referred to his own conversion as the experience of "the heart strangely warmed." Evangelical American Protestantism is replete with accounts of similar experiences. Holte would broaden the term "conversion" so as to focus also on American men and women whose searches for self-definition resulted in religious-like transformations that contributed to religious and cultural history. He surveys 30 diverse individuals in brief, critical essays, each accompanied by helpful bibliographies. Included are such converts as Jonathan Edwards, Frederick Douglass, Charles Grandison Finney, Thomas Merton, Dorothy Day, and Aimee Semple McPherson. Most valuable are the accounts of lesser-known figures: Ann Eliza Young, (one of Brigham Young's wives), Piri Thomas, Mary Francis Cusack, and the Sioux holy man Black Elk. Materials on some of these persons are very difficult to come by. Holte provides good summaries.-Choice
..."a fascinating insight into North American socio-religous history, and a timely reminder of the cultural context in which North American Christians are commissioned to proclaim and embody the gospel. The strength of the volume is its historiographical integrity. Holte gives his subjects full and free expression, thereby allowing them to testify to a wide range of transforming experiences."-Missology
"a concise, eloquently written, and scholarly volume. Recommended for college, university, and community libraries."-ARBA
"Holte has contributed a helpful resource that should suggest and facilitate any number of research assignments for teachers and their students in classes of American history and literature. Libraries would do well to add this book."-Fides Et Historia
"Holte's book does offer and introduction to the 'kaleidoscope' of religious experience in America. Quite thorough bibliographies appear after each essay. Furthermore the volume is a helpful reference work to religious autobiography that deserves a place in libraries committed to providing resources on the American religious experience."-Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society
"It is also a different sourcebook in that not all of the conversion experiences related are of the standard religious kind (e.g., among the listings is Peter Jenkins, A Walk Across America, as one would expect given the title of the book. Therefore, this well-written work should probably be aimed toward the library market, particularly college libraries, as well as the smaller libraries of departments of religious studies."-Syzygy
"John Wesley referred to his own conversion as the experience of "the heart strangely warmed." Evangelical American Protestantism is replete with accounts of similar experiences. Holte would broaden the term "conversion" so as to focus also on American men and women whose searches for self-definition resulted in religious-like transformations that contributed to religious and cultural history. He surveys 30 diverse individuals in brief, critical essays, each accompanied by helpful bibliographies. Included are such converts as Jonathan Edwards, Frederick Douglass, Charles Grandison Finney, Thomas Merton, Dorothy Day, and Aimee Semple McPherson. Most valuable are the accounts of lesser-known figures: Ann Eliza Young, (one of Brigham Young's wives), Piri Thomas, Mary Francis Cusack, and the Sioux holy man Black Elk. Materials on some of these persons are very difficult to come by. Holte provides good summaries."-Choice

Author Bio

JAMES CRAIG HOLTE is Associate Professor of English at East Carolina University. His most recent book is The Ethnic I: A Sourcebook for the Study of Ethnic American Autobiography (Greenwood Press, 1988).