Journeymen for Jesus: Evangelical Artisians Confront Capitalism in Jacksonian Baltimore [Hardcover]

William R. Sutton (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0271017724 | ISBN-13: 978-0271017723 | Publication Date: August 1, 1998

When industrialization swept through American society in the nineteenth century, it brought with it turmoil for skilled artisans. Changes in technology and work offered unprecedented opportunity for some, but the deskilling of craft and the rise of factory work meant dislocation for others. Journeymen for Jesus explores how the artisan community in one city, Baltimore, responded to these life-changing developments during the years of the early republic. Baltimore in the Jacksonian years (1820s and 1830s) was America's third largest city. Its unions rivaled those of New York and Philadelphia in organization and militancy, and it was also a stronghold of evangelical Methodism. These circumstances created a powerful mix at a time when workers were confronting the negative effects of industrialism. Many of them found within Methodism and its populist spirituality an empowering force that inspired their refusal to accept dependency and second-class citizenship. Historians often portray evangelical Protestantism as either a top-down means of social control or as a bottom-up process that created passive workers. Sutton, however, reveals a populist evangelicalism that undergirded the producer tradition dominant among those supportive of trade union goals. Producers were not socialists or social democrats, but they were anticapitalist and reform-minded. In populist evangelicalism they discovered a potent language and ethic for their discontent. Journeymen for Jesus presents a rich and unromanticized portrait of artisan culture in early America. In the process, it adds to our understanding of the class tensions present in Jacksonian America.

Editorial Reviews

Review

A welcome addition to a new wave of scholarship on religion and antebellum social history that argues for the relevance of evangelical Protestantism in popular movements. . . . Sutton has done a remarkable job of combing records to discover a strand of thought and a group of men historians otherwise would know little about. His findings speak to a broad scholarly audience, and his work makes a significant contribution to several fields of historical study. --Bruce Baird, H-Net Book Reviews

About the Author

William R. Sutton is a Teaching Associate at the University High School of the University of Illinois.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 351 pages
• Publisher: Pennsylvania State University Press (August 1, 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0271017724
• ISBN-13: 978-0271017723
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6.2 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #5,021,945 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A History of Ordinary Americans at its Finest, January 15, 2004

By 

"dinlochavo" (Sydney Australia) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Journeymen for Jesus: Evangelical Artisans Confront Capitalism in Jacksonian Baltimore (Paperback)

Having borrowed this book twice from the library I have just now decided to buy a copy to keep in my bookshelf. This is an excellent book, and one which owes a good deal to E. P. Thompson's ground-breaking "Making of the English Working Class" in its method of historical analysis. In other words instead of relying on boring statistics and trends to explain the history of the common people it focuses on the people themselves and the actions that they took. This makes it interesting for the reader who is thus able to identify and empathise with the historical figures that Sutton describes. This is history as it should be written, a human story, about ordinary people and their lives, and how they reacted to events that seemed beyond their control.

The book itself examines how craft workers in Baltimore faced the challenges posed by industrial capitalism. How they saw their livelihoods being undermined by its cheap goods and the actions they took in response. In a sense it describes how the true Republic was lost. It also looks at the role that their religion played in that struggle. This is indeed a "peoples' history".

Writing history in this way, Sutton joins other excellent American historians like Ronald Schultz, Sean Wilentz, Bruce Laurie, and the late Christopher Lasch. All of these are well worth reading if you want to know how the common people lived before the crass materialism of modern capitalism stamped itself on American history. This history reconnects one to an older and more just and moral American Republic now sadly lost to corporate greed and warmongering. The American people are indeed well served by historians of this calibre.

7 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A CULT CLASSIC!!!, February 21, 2005

By 

Davy Varance Martinsek (Southeast Urbana, IL) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Journeymen for Jesus: Evangelical Artisans Confront Capitalism in Jacksonian Baltimore (Paperback)

Dr. Sutton effectively brings Jacksonian Baltimore to life in this morality tale that has become a cult classic. Dr.Sutton is indeed the greatest history writer ever in addition to being the rawest history teacher in the world. Journeymen for Jesus changed the way I thought about Jacksonian Baltimore and for that I am forever indebted to the master, Dr.Sutton.

3 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars This book is wonderful!, December 7, 2000

By 

Suzanne L. Ciolli (Champaign, IL United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Journeymen for Jesus: Evangelical Artisans Confront Capitalism in Jacksonian Baltimore (Paperback)

This is the most informative and well-written book I've ever read. I was captivated by it from beginning to end and I think that William Sutton is the greatest history writer of all time. Buy this book! It's a classic!