The Kingdom Of Matthias Summary

"The Kingdom of Matthias" by historians Paul E. Johnson and Sean Wilentz examines one of the first scandals in American history. The book takes place in a time when a majority of people sought after a passionate religion. The authors wonderfully organized the book, splitting it into 4 large sections. The first and second sections were written purely to introduce the reader to Elijah Pierson and Robert Matthews, the men who started the Kingdom (or cult); the third and fourth concern the Kingdom (how it functioned, and it 's members) and how it failed. In these chapters, the reader slowly becomes involved with the characters as the authors illustrate a story which many had forgot.

The Market Revolution took place during the early 19th century which made it easier for people to exchange their goods, with not only their neighbors, but with complete strangers from completely different parts of the country. The Market Revolution is an expansion of the market place in America with the construction of new roads, canals, and railroads to connect, otherwise, opposite communities together. The Market Revolution all started with the building of the Erie canal in New York. It made it easier to import goods and it was a faster source of transportation. The Market Revolution opened new opportunities to farmers and poor people.

In school, Joel was an outcast, because he was considered weird. His friends were into war games, which got Joel into reading about WWII, eventually focusing on Nazis and Hitler specifically. Hitler seemed powerful to him, because Joel himself was powerless, and he felt that by becoming a Nazi, he could gain just as much power. He realized that family and school weren 't going to do any good for him, so he looked to other places. He would deeply study Hitler and Nazis, hang out with people with same interests, and was ready to become a real Nazi. But because he thought that this is wrong, he started to look for alternatives. Joel started to get into the Black Power movement and read about Malcolm X, making him consider himself a black nationalist. His father also started to take Joel to a therapist, which got him no help, since the therapist was on the father 's side. Two years later, Joel moved back with his mother, stopped going to school, and put himself to a hospital. The hospital had a negative effect, because of the deadly drugs, resulting Joel in returning home. He wanted to find out why his life is so messed up, so he changed himself completely. From turning vegetarian to traveling, his life got better at a slow pace. He had met his girlfriend in Boston, eventually moving there, found a good job, a place to live in, and got educated. He had lived in different parts of Boston, staying in Jamaica Plain

The Kingdom of Matthias by Paul E. Johnson and Sean Wilentz is a story of the rise and fall of a religious cult established by Robert Matthews (Matthias). Within his kingdom, Matthias and his followers, abided by Matthias, believes of the subjugation of women by men. Even though at the time the cult was in existence the United States was experiencing two great movements that urged the forward progression of women, the Market Revolution and the Second Great Awakening. Two women in particular are mentioned in Johnson and Wilentz’ book that were really suppressed by Matthias and his subjects. One was Isabella van Wagenen, the slave that worked in Mount Zion and even Matthias’ own daughter Isabella Matthews Laisdell. The Kingdom of Matthias

Elisabeth Lesuer was a very faithful, and intelligent woman in the late 19th century early 20th century. Being brought up in the upper-middle class, she was able to be educated privately in languages, arts, and literature. She has also studied much of the Catholic Faith. She meets the love of her life Felix Lesuer in 1886 while he was attending the University of Paris. The two married in 1889. While going to the university, Felix quits Catholicism, but the two had an agreement that Elisabeth can remain faithful, but Felix did not practice in the faith at all. Later in time, though, Felix started giving Elisabeth readings against Christianity weakening her participation in Christianity; One day this backfired on him when handing her Earnest Renan’s History of the Origins of Christianity, the first volume of which, The Life of Jesus, denies Christ’s Divinity. After reading this, Elisabeth does research on this matter, and experiences deep adult conversion, and returns passionately practicing the Faith,which she saw as the truth. Begins writing her spiritual journal in 1899 called Journal et pensées de chaque jour. The journal just showed how committed she was to that faith, even though her social society was against it, and how she would get by being faithful, without making Felix mad, and anyone else against the Faith she knew in her life. Elisabeth’s journal explained why she was so faithful, and how she would study, and pray the Faith in ways that didn’t upset those

But when he returned home, he found that he could not perform surgery or even work in the hospital in his hometown of Monroe, Louisiana because of his color. And so he set out from Louisiana to California in order to make a way for himself and for his family in a new land.

Kingdom of Matthias As a United States American culture there are many possibilities for a cult like Matthias to occur again, this is contributed by not only a market-oriented American culture but also by tendencies that are present in every society. We have rights and freedoms given to us by our United States Constitution, including the freedom of speech and the freedom of religion. These freedoms mean that anyone has the right to speak publicly about their religious beliefs, and we as citizens also have the right to believe what is being said and even follow it if we choose to do so. This is how many different branches of religions come about; some of these religions include Mormons and

As many religious leaders before and after him, Edwards's source of inspiration and guidance is the Bible. His understanding of this cornerstone of New England society enables him to reinforce a persuasive dissertation with biblical quotes and passages; however, not all the quotes cited by

Robert Penn Warren, in his novel All The King’s Men, examines the modern man’s quest to live a simple existence—a life, void of sin, in which man endeavors to discover truth. Jack Burden, the novel’s protagonist and narrator, is thrust onto the political scene when his managing editor instructs him to travel up to Mason City to “see who the hell that fellow Stark is who thinks he is Jesus Christ” (51). The comparison between Willie Stark, the governor of Louisiana, and Jesus Christ emerges as an important association because, even though Jack knows of Willie’s corruption and sin, he reveres Willie as a father figure; Jack’s search for the truth, the identity of his father, is one of the main crises in the

Robert Matthews was orphaned at a young age and later lost his children. These painful losses no doubt encouraged him to seek freedom and control over his own life. His attitude towards others was one of

Later on, Professor Lambert mentioned a revival in Freehold, New Jersey that occurred at a similar time as the Northampton revival. Once again, the revival was never referenced by newspapers during the revival; however, this awakening became well-known among evangelicals in 1736, when Jonathan Edwards heard about it from a man named William Tennent. Although these two revivals were never mentioned during the actual event, Lambert ironically noted, “ By 1739, however, Northampton and Freehold had become linked in the minds of evangelicals as sites in a great and general awakening, in large measure because the Faithful Narrative, first to memorialize the event, had quickly emerged as a model for revival accounts elsewhere.” Jonathan Edwards’s ingenious Faithful Narrative on the Northampton awakening became a template for other evangelicals to copy for their individual town’s revival.

With labor shortages apparent, people began to starve due to a lack of farming because people had abandoned their farms and villages. The *Serfs at the time were the main laborers, and due to the inevitable plague they were no longer tied to their masters of land. Due to the economic strain at the time, Serfs who survived were able to demand higher wages and better working conditions from their new landlords (Utah State University). Therefore, worker’s wages had skyrocketed. It was known that “a reaper was not to be hired for less than eightpence [a day, 50-75% up], plus his meals,” (The Economist). This eventually led to the end of Serfdom and the start of workers rights in Europe. This in turn socially changed the way people felt about the different socioeconomic classes due to the Peasant's Revolt (Utah State University). The need for better working conditions and situations for Serfs forever changed Europe.

This period of time was very divisive because many people were influenced by the revivals, while the others were still committed to the traditional form of religion. This divided the people into two different religious groups; The New Lights, who were “saved” by the grace of God, and the Old Lights, those who kept faithful to the traditional religions. The New Lights preached that it was dangerous to live life and not become “saved.” The Old Lights were very opposed to this way of worship and condemned the teachings of the New Lights. The Old Lights in the New England colonies fought back by giving the taxes from the New Lights to their former churches, not allowing New Lights ministers to perform marriage ceremonies, and not allowing New Lights to partake in the legislature. A New Light preacher by the name of Elisha Paine, who was put in prison for preaching illegally continued to preach from his prison cell. Many people would gather to listen to him. Many people in Connecticut sympathized with Paine and his followers, which led to the New Lights winning control over Connecticut’s assembly.

By rejecting the “predictable eighteenth-century style of chapter-and-verse preaching,” Willard and Wells, as feminist orators, opened a wider space for the “feminization of American religion” (56-58), which broadened and changed views on the nature of race and gender in the social order. Prothero locates this feminization of religion in the context of a feminized Jesus, arguing that women “made him [Jesus] over in the light of Victorian ideals of the feminine” (59). This not only demonstrated the strength in those feminine characteristics, but also stressed the radical nature of Jesus’ rhetoric, which feminist orators like Willard and Wells believed advocated equality. Moreover, although the social gospel movement emerged in the early twentieth century as an institutionalized form of Christian socialism, it can be argued that its radical social Christian roots

On one hand we have the editors cleaning the writers book, making suggestions, looking at every tedious detail of the words, and keeping in check with the authors for deadlines and progress. Now on the other hand, we have the serfs who work the land day and night, taking care of it to try to make it prosper. Both the pay of the serf and the editor can vary. For instance, the pay of the editor is determined by how well the book sells, how much effort is put into the book, and if the book is being taken care of write. The amount of work you put in can drastically change your pay; if you put no work into the work, all of the work you put in is wrong, or if the book’s sales are a bust, you could end up being fired. However, if you put a great amount of work into the book, the book shows the work you have put into it, and it sales are fine and profitable, you can earn more. As for the serfs, their pay is determined by the amount of crops that have produced, how well the land is being taken care of, and if the serf could actually prove themselves useful to the king. If the serfs were not useful to the king, they could not make the crops prosper, or could not pay the taxes, they could be killed on the king’s order. Although, if the king did not kill the serf after one of the earlier mentioned acts, the problem of starvation would make itself