"Why," an exasperated Jonathan Edwards asked, "can't we be contented with. . . the canon of Scripture?" Edwards posed this query to the religious enthusiasts of his own generation, but he could have just as appropriately put it to people across the full expanse of early American history.
In the minds of her critics, Anne Hutchinson's heresies threatened to produce "a new Bible." Ethan Allen insisted that a revelation which spoke to every circumstance of life would require "a Bible of monstrous size." When the African-American prophetess Rebecca Jackson embarked on a spiritual journey toward Shakerism, she dreamt of a home in which she could find multiple books of scripture. Orestes Brownson explained to his skeptical contemporaries that the idea drawing him to Catholicism was the prospect of an "ever enlarging volume" of inspiration. Early Americans of every color and creed repeatedly confronted the boundaries of scripture. Some fought to open the canon. Some worked to keep it closed.
Sacred Borders vividly depicts the boundaries of the biblical canon as a battleground on which a diverse group of early Americans contended over their differing versions of divine truth. Puritans, deists, evangelicals, liberals, Shakers, Mormons, Catholics, Seventh-day Adventists, and Transcendentalists defended widely varying positions on how to define the borders of scripture. Carefully exploring the history of these scriptural boundary wars, Holland offers an important new take on the religious cultures of early America.
He presents a colorful cast of characters-including the likes of Franklin and Emerson along with more obscure figures--who confronted the intellectual tensions surrounding the canon question, such as that between cultural authority and democratic freedom, and between timeless truth and historical change. To reconstruct these sacred borders is to gain a new understanding of the mental world in which early Americans went about their lives and created their nation.
Industry Reviews
"A very provocative and erudite, not to mention ambitious, book... The author's command of primary sources, the cognate secondary literature, and the broad stream of intellectual history is impressive... This is an excellent book, one that raises all sorts of issues about authority in late eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century America."--BYU Studies Quarterly
"[An] erudite and intriguing study of debates about canon and continuing revelation." --Mormon Studies Review
"Holland's superb book traces from the seventeenth through the mid-nineteenth century a series of American debates over the authority of the traditional biblical canon. He argues plausibly, in lucid and fresh prose, that this debate was closer to the center of American religious thought than previous historians have recognized and that it attracted the energies both of popular religious thinkers and of the educated clergy. . . This book compels one to look at
the history of religious thought in America in fresh ways."--E. Brooks Holifield, Charles Howard Candler Professor of American Religious History, Emory University
"In this bold and elegantly crafted interpretation of early American religion, Holland shows that the real energy was in the canonical 'borderlands'--the disputed territory in which new revelations competed for acceptance. He demonstrates that the breaching or securing of canonical boundaries factored importantly, if not centrally, in the development of a variety of American religious groups."--Peter J. Thuesen, Professor of Religious Studies and Department
Chair, Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis
"Is the Bible a closed book, or is God still communicating with human beings? David Holland's exploration of this question for Christians in early America illuminates a topic of crucial significance to the self-understanding of many religious believers. Holland artfully demonstrates that from the Puritans to the Transcendentalists, Christians have questioned the canon and its limits, treading across the borderlands of scriptural authority, and struggling with
the paradox of a living deity revealed in a limited sacred text."
--Laurie Maffly-Kipp, Professor and Chair, Department of Religious Studies, The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
"David f. Holland ultimately reframes the American religious story itself in compelling ways, making this book far more than simple doctrinal history...a must read."--Jewel L. Spangler, University of Calgary
"...a significant contribution."--Stephen J. Stein, Emeritus, Indiana University
"The coverage is comprehensive and informative...the threads of his argument come together persuasively in the end."--Journal of Interdisciplinary History
