Ebook: Protestant Communalism in the Trans-Atlantic World, 1650–1850
Author: Philip Lockley (eds.)
- Tags: European History, Imperialism and Colonialism, History of the Americas
- Series: Christianities in the Trans-Atlantic World 1500-1800
- Year: 2016
- Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan UK
- Edition: 1
- Language: English
- pdf
This book explores the trans-Atlantic history of Protestant traditions of communalism – communities of shared property.
The sixteenth-century Reformation may have destroyed monasticism in northern Europe, but Protestant Christianity has not always denied common property. Between 1650 and 1850, a range of Protestant groups adopted communal goods, frequently after crossing the Atlantic to North America: the Ephrata community, the Shakers, the Harmony Society, the Community of True Inspiration, and others. Early Mormonism also developed with a communal dimension, challenging its surrounding Protestant culture of individualism and the free market. In a series of focussed and survey studies, this book recovers the trans-Atlantic networks and narratives, ideas and influences, which shaped Protestant communalism across two centuries of early modernity.