Perfectionist Politics
Abolitionism and the Religious Tensions of American Democracy

Paper $19.95s    |   0-8156-2924-9    |   2001

Winner of the 2000 Smith/Wynkoop Book Award
The story of an important but overlooked antebellum reform movement: ecclesiastical abolitionism.

Reviews
"Strong masterfully establishes a clear and specific tie between the revivalism of upstate New York’s ‘burned-over district’ and the abolitionist Liberty Party."
— Religious Studies Review

"The struggle among the most radical religions to purge their churches and society of sin, especially slavery, and their uncompromising efforts to force morality into political discourse are nowhere better told than in historian Strong’s informed exegesis of perfectionist ideas and personalities and his careful mapping of the schisms and political awakenings across western New York. . . . Strong reminds us that ethical issues were part of American politics long before the Civil Rights crusades and the Moral Majority."
— Library Journal

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Author
Douglas M. Strong is professor of the history of Christianity at Wesley Theological Seminary in Washington, D. C. He is the author of They Walked in Spirit: Personal Faith and Social Action in America.

6 x 9, 208 pages, 12 illustrations, index