The Word in the World: Evangelical Writing, Publishing, and Reading in America, 1789-1880 (review)

This work contributes to a recent stream of interest in studies about the history of the book, examining the interaction between religion and print in American culture. Along with such works as Peter Wosh's Spreading the Word (Ithaca, 1994), Paul Gutjahr's An American Bible (Stanford, 1999), and David Paul Nord's Faith in Reading (New York, 2004), Brown studies the complex and often competing relationships between religion, publishing, material culture, commerce, and value formation in nineteenth-century America. In distinction from these works, however, this book's scope of genres is ambitiously broad. As such, its singular accomplishment is its insight into how a multiplicity of publishing forums worked in concert to produce a national community of religious readers. Thoroughly interdisciplinary in nature, this work draws upon, and contributes to, a wide variety of fields, including American studies and religious history, the history of the book, social history, anthropology, and literary theory.

Evangelical Protestantism was certainly the largest and most dynamic American religious movement in the nineteenth century. It was motivated by what Brown terms dual, and often paradoxical, desires, purity and presence. That is, evangelicals placed a high value on sanctification, which more often than not implied some degree of separation from culture (purity). At the same time, they also sought to have a redemptive or transformative effect on society, which necessitated immersion in the culture (presence). Fulfilling these goals of segregation and integration was by no means a simple task. Nonetheless, evangelicals saw the newly emerging world of inexpensive mass publishing as an ideal means to accomplish both ends simultaneously.

The study is divided into two parts. The first treats the institutional, commercial, and material structures created to transmit the values of evangelical religion to what Brown terms the textual community. She examines who published (denominations, religious societies, and commercial publishers), what they published (creating an "evangelical canon" of approved works), and how they reinforced the reading habits of their audience (by publishing advice on what and how to read, as well as evidence of reader response).

The second part of the work examines the practical uses to which this publishing universe was put. In particular, Brown explores the ways in which evangelicals deployed two primary forms of publishing, the religious periodical and the hymnal, to reinforce beliefs and engender piety and devotion. The relative accessibility of these forms of print allowed otherwise marginalized segments of society (laypersons, women, and African Americans) to join in the literate world of American religion. The result was a national community of readers who, as they shared timely access to the same information, could participate in a common religious discourse that addressed anxieties about purity and presence.

The most impressive feature of Brown's methodology is the wide range of historical resources and literary formats that she has investigated: sermons, doctrinal and historical works, diaries, biography, fiction, anthologies, periodicals, and, most provocatively, hymnals—as published by denominations, tract societies, and commercial publishers. The methodological and interpretive challenges were surely daunting. These sources and genres are almost too vast to comprehend, and they contain large lacunae with regard to specific data on the writing and reading habits of the period. Nonetheless, Brown provides a virtual taxonomy of religious publishing in nineteenth-century America, revealing its significance for comprehending the social history and material culture of the era. In particular, she demonstrates the importance of denominational publications for any contemporary inquiry into the intersection of religion and culture in American life.