Economic (Marxist?) history of a social movement.

The revivals of 1831-37 in New York's "burned-over district" are famous. In this pioneering study, however, Paul E. Johnson dug into the records of one city to find out who the converts in the revivals were, and elucidate the social changes that those people were undergoing, to try to find what were the circumstances they felt they needed a religious response to. He found that that early converts were overwhelmingly proprietors of manufacturing concerns who had recently transitioned from living and working with their employees to a great social separation. These were people who had always considered themselves the moral arbiters of society, but had realized that they did not have any control over the lower classes without direct contact, and considered social control to be a religious problem. The revival provided a new way of conceptualizing social relations in religious terms, and was successful for the proprietors, largely because it spread to a significant minority of workers, and because employers could and did choose to hire only fellow evangelicals.

Johnson writes from a Marxist perspective, but almost entirely avoids jargon and theory, producing a clear and lucidly-argued work. It is limited in its scope, taking the transformation of domestic life in the 1830s for granted and instead focusing on economic and political changes in Rochester -- about which it is informative and interesting. One thing I missed was the extremely limited role of women in the book; they certainly played a huge role in the conceptual changes that were going on in the minds of the middle classes, but that is only discussed on a page or two. This study made me want to read much more about its time period.