Rally the Scattered Believers Northern New England}}}s Religious Geography [Hardcover]

Northern New England, a rugged landscape dotted with transient settlements, posed challenges to the traditional town church in the wake of the American Revolution. Using the methods of spatial geography, Shelby M. Balik examines how migrants adapted their understanding of religious community and spiritual space to survive in the harsh physical surroundings of the region. The notions of boundaries, place, and identity they developed became the basis for spreading New England's deeply rooted spiritual culture, even as it opened the way to a new evangelical age.

[A] deeply researched and meticulously sourced book. . . [R]eading Rally the Scattered Believers helped me to consider anew the centrality of placeand the differing ways that religious organizations organize spacein understanding religious history.9/22/14Baliks exhaustively researched book represents the most comprehensive and important study of northern New Englands religious history published to date. It is also a significant contribution to a small body of scholarship on the spatial study of religion. . . . In sum, this is a major work of extraordinary scholarship.Winner, 2014 Phi Alpha Theta First Book AwardUsing church and town records, the personal writings and correspondence of laity and clergy, books, pamphlets, and religious periodicals, Balik has written an engaging, ground-level religious history with larger implications.Shelby Baliks deeply researched 'Rally the Scattered Believers: Northern New Englands Religious Geography' offers a finely grained picture of that era of burgeoning development.. . . Baliks book delivers one of the best histories of precisely what the 'Second Great Awakening' amounted to in northern New England. Dec 2015Rally the Scattered Believers is an important new interpretation of how religious change shaped American cultural identity in the early republic.In this beautifully written and richly researched work, Shelby Balik shows how the travels of early nineteenthl3Å