Urban religion and the Second Great Awakening : church and society in early national Baltimore /

Focused primarily upon the churches of early national Baltimore, this study is a degree less successful than Paul Johnson's A Shopkeeper's Millennium (CH, Jul '79) in connecting revivalism to the larger structures, trends, and ambience of a specific urban setting. Yet in every other particular it is a superior, fascinating contribution. Based upon an impressively thorough search of published and unpublished sources, it makes excellent and lucid use of statistical procedures and displays a basic literacy in the relevant ecclesiastical and theological traditions. Bilhartz challenges current theses that organized religion in postrevolutionary America was in a state of decadence and that Charles Finney was the prime catalyst of the new age of mass revivalism. Overall, this is the most illuminating published study to date of the state of the churches before, during, and after the second awakening in an American city. Methodological and statistical appendixes; tables; notes; select bibliography; index. For graduate, undergraduate, and community college libraries.-T.D. Bozeman, University of Iowa