In the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, Catholicism was often presented in the U.S. not only as a threat to Protestantism but also as an enemy of democracy. Focusing on literary and cultural representations of Catholics as a political force, Elizabeth Fenton argues that the U.S. perception of religious freedom grew partly, and paradoxically, out of a sometimes virulent but often genteel anti-Catholicism. Depictions of Catholicism's imagined intolerance and cruelty allowed writers time and again to depict their nation as tolerant and free. As Religious Liberties shows, anti-Catholic sentiment particularly shaped U.S. conceptions of pluralism and its relationship to issues as diverse as religious privacy, territorial expansion, female citizenship, political representation, chattel slavery, and governmental partisanship. Drawing on a wide range of materials--from the Federalist Papers to antebellum biographies of Toussaint Louverture; from nativist treatises to Margaret Fuller's journalism; from convent exposés to novels by Catharine Sedgwick, Augusta J. Evans, Nathanial Hawthorne, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Herman Melville, and Mark Twain--Fenton's study excavates the influence of anti-Catholic sentiment on both the liberal tradition and early U.S. culture more generally. In concert, these texts suggest how the prejudice against Catholicism facilitated an alignment of U.S. nationalism with Protestantism, thus ensuring the mutual dependence, rather than the putative "separation" of church and state.
Were indigenous Americans descendants of the lost tribes of Israel? From the moment Europeans realized Columbus had landed in a place unknown to them in 1492, they began speculating about how the Americas and their inhabitants fit into the Bible. For many, the most compelling explanation was the Hebraic Indian theory, which proposed that indigenous Americans were the descendants of the ten lost tribes of Israel. For its proponents, the theory neatly explained why this giant land and its inhabitants were not mentioned in the Biblical record. In Old Canaan in a New World, Elizabeth Fenton shows that though the Hebraic Indian theory may seem far-fetched today, it had a great deal of currency and significant influence over a very long period of American history. Indeed, at different times the idea that indigenous Americans were descended from the lost tribes of Israel was taken up to support political and religious positions on diverse issues including Christian millennialism, national expansion, trade policies, Jewish rights, sovereignty in the Americas, and scientific exploration. Through analysis of a wide collection of writings—from religious texts to novels—Fenton sheds light on a rarely explored but important part of religious discourse in early America. As the Hebraic Indian theory evolved over the course of two centuries, it revealed how religious belief and national interest intersected in early American history.
Early U.S. literary & cultural productions often presented Catholicism as a threat not only to Protestantism but also to democracy. Religious Liberties shows that U.S. understandings of religious freedom & pluralism emerged, paradoxically, out of a virulent anti-Catholicism
Shortly before her fortieth birthday, Molly, receives a letter from a daughter she had given up for adoption when she was a teenager. At a point in her life where Molly needs to find answers about her own identity, she sets out across the country to meet her estranged daughter on Ridgeport Island, a small island in Maine. A future beyond any of Molly's expectations waits for her discovery if only she can unlock the door she had closed on her past. The daughter, Electra, offers Molly that key, and a local bachelor helps her to use it, opening her heart to the possibilities.
Take a multidimensional journey along three timelines of reality. All three realities intersect at a catalyst event when an official emergency broadcast message is sent by text to alert the people of Hawaii of the imminent threat of an inbound nuclear missile. There is some overlap of the story within the three realities, but this overlap is presented to provide more than one perspective on the characters to explain how, in every moment, infinite possibility is available to the soul and soul family that seeks union with God and sovereignty of spirit. The story begins just before the weapon strikes down in Honolulu. Davis, a middle-aged survivalist, begrudgingly allows Lotus, a teenager who lives next door to him, to share his tiny concrete bunker with him and his black cat, Merlin. Davis and Lotus make unlikely roommates—one believing that the world is ending, while the other espouses the dawning of a new era of peace. They tolerate each other curiously while the house cat, Merlin, brings magic into the bunker. Merlin is the conduit linking Davis’s and Lotus’s family together through psychic connection and the ability to trilocate into three timelines. This uplifting story of hope for humanity asks us to rise above the muck of broken families and nuclear threat to cocreate an era of peace.
Mary Elizabeth Braddon (1835-1915) was a British Victorian era popular novelist. She was an extremely prolific writer, producing some 75 novels with very inventive plots. The most famous one is her first novel, Lady Audley's Secret (1862), which won her recognition and fortune as well. The novel has been in print ever since, and has been dramatised and filmed several times. She also founded Belgravia Magazine (1866), which presented readers with serialized sensation novels, poems, travel narratives, and biographies, as well as essays on fashion, history, science. The magazine was accompanied by lavish illustrations and offered readers a source of literature at an affordable cost. She also edited Temple Bar Magazine. Her legacy is tied to the Sensation Fiction of the 1860s. Her other works include: The Octoroon (1861), The Black Band (1861), Aurora Floyd (1863), Eleanor's Victory (1863), Henry Dunbar: A Novel (1864), The Doctor's Wife (1864), Birds of Prey (1867), Charlotte's Inheritance (1868), Fenton's Quest (1871), Milly Darrell and Other Tales (1873), The Golden Calf (1883), Phantom Fortune (1883) and London Pride (1896).
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