Heart Religion in the British Enlightenment

This is a major study of the daily life and spirituality of early Methodist men and women. Phyllis Mack challenges traditional, negative depictions of early Methodism through an analysis of a vast array of primary sources – prayers, pamphlets, hymns, diaries, recipes, private letters, accounts of dreams, and rules for housekeeping. She examines how ordinary men and women understood the seismic shift from the religious culture of the seventeenth century to the so-called ‘disenchantment of the world’ that developed out of the Enlightenment. She places particular emphasis on the experience of women, arguing that both their spirituality and their contributions to the movement were different from men’s. This revisionist account sheds light on how ordinary people understood their experience of religious conversion, marriage, worship, sexuality, friendship, and the supernatural, and what motivated them to travel the world as missionaries.

Author Biography

Phyllis Mack is Professor of History and Women’s Studies at Rutgers University, New Jersey. Her previous publications include Calvinist Preaching and Iconoclasm in the Netherlands, 1544-1569 (1978) and Visionary Women: Ecstatic Prophecy in 17th Century England (1992).