Smitten: Sex, Gender, and the Contest for Souls in the Second Great Awakening

In Smitten, Rodney Hessinger examines how the Second Great Awakening disrupted gender norms across a breadth of denominations. The displacement and internal migration of Americans created ripe conditions for religious competition in the North. Hessinger argues that during this time of religious ferment, religious seekers could, in turn, play the missionary or the convert. The dynamic of religious rivalry inexorably led toward sexual and gender disruption. Contending within an increasingly democratic religious marketplace, preachers had to court converts in order to flourish. They won followers through charismatic allure and making concessions to the desires of the people. Opening their own hearts to new religious impulses, some religious visionaries offered up radical dispensations—including new visions of how God wanted them to reorder sex and gender relations in society. A wide array of churches, including Methodists, Baptists, Mormons, Shakers, Catholics, and Perfectionists, joined the fray. Religious contention and innovation ultimately produced backlash. Charges of seduction and gender trouble ignited fights within, among, and against churches. Religious opponents insisted that the newly converted were smitten with preachers, rather than choosing churches based on reason and scripture. Such criticisms coalesced into a broader pan-Protestant rejection of religious enthusiasm. Smitten reveals the sexual disruptions and subsequent domestication of religion during the Second Great Awakening.

Table of Contents:
Introduction 1. "Fanaticism can wield such a mighty influence over the female heart": The Evolving Rhetoric of Anti-Mormonism in the Early Republic 2. "A Base and Unmanly Conspiracy": The Hogan Schism and Catholicism in a Gendered Religious Marketplace 3. "The Fruits of Shakerism": The Embodiment of Motherhood in Debates between Shakers and their Rivals 4. Mixing "the poison of lust with the ardor of devotion": Conjuring Fears of the Reverend Rake and the Rise of Anti-Enthusiasm Literature 5. The Sexual Containment of Perfectionism: John Humphrey Noyes and his Critics Conclusion

About the Author :
Rodney Hessinger is Professor of History and Associate Dean of Humanities and Social Sciences at John Carroll University. He is the author of Seduced, Abandoned, and Reborn.

Review :
The author's strategy is to identify contemporary literature defending and condemning the rake ministers and radical sexual practices religion legitimized. He argues that these debates helped shape Americans' understanding of monogamous marriage. Contemporary readers are reminded of the significance of freedom of religion and the press in informing opinion and of the persistence of gender injustice and clerical failures. (Choice) This book will be useful for historians interested in religion and those interested in the history of gender and sexuality. By entangling the two, Hessinger brings an important intervention to the study of the Second Great Awakening that centers the women actors prominent in religious activities throughout various denominations. (Journal of Mormon History) The book builds on and expands beyond the richly developed, if necessarily narrow, subfields dedicated to Protestant revivalists, intentional communities, Mormons, and Catholic history. With its compelling case studies centered on dramatic events (a tar-and-feathering, court cases, and pamphlet wars), Smitten would work well in undergraduate classes as an introduction to the Second Great Awakening and the religious innovations that characterize the era. (American Historical Review)