Secure The Kingdom Of Matthias: A Story Of Sex And Salvation In 19th-Century America Scripted By Paul E. Johnson Displayed In Mobi

The Second Great Awakenings religious revival of evangelicalism, Robert Matthews the selfappointed prophet Matthias was one of many to create and spread his own ultimately doomed religion, a patriarchal Kingdom of Truth in which Matthias sat at the head as the Father and redeemer.
Matthias and his Kingdom were one of many religions developed and spread during the earlys, and many of Matthias teachings were similar to those of other prophets and seers more successful in popularizing their messages.
Yet Matthias and his group remained on the margins of society, Johnson and Wilentz want to explain not only the religion itself, but the reasons for its failure while other similar ones succeeded,

The authors acknowledge that their main three sources are all biased for various reasons and were considered with this in mind, Accordingly, the sources, two books written about Matthias and the Kingdom and one pamphlet by Matthias wife about his years before the Kingdom, must be weighted against one enough to derive something as close to the truth about the events.
Other primary sources used are newspaper reports, personal narratives/memory, church records, indictment papers from Matthias trial, and lectures, A lot of the background and contextual details are taken from various books, some of which Johnson and Wilentz wrote, and journal articles,

The rich and narrative style of the story helps it flow in a way that is interesting but informative, The two were able to create a story that read easy, that is fun to read and very enjoyable, The book is a snapshot of one religious group during the earlys that, though being the stuff of pure entertainment, has been all but forgotten, While the book is very isolated in its focus, it expands upon the world at the time by placing Matthias and his Kingdom in the context of their time period.
Not only does the book show how the world around Matthias shaped his Kingdom, but how the Kingdom was part of the larger evolving world that it existed within, Though there were many other religions around this time in development, the bizarreness of the story of Matthias illuminates best the failures of religious revival as the others exemplify success, which allows for a more complete idea of the varied nature ofth century American religion and society.


However, the heavy use of sources that are admittedly very shaky and biased places a lot of the events into question, While no doubt everything written is based on fact and reality, and though the authors state that they have derived truth from contradicting and biased evidence to the best of their ability, there remains a matter of what is fact and exaggeration.
The authors can never know what truth really is, they can only guess at it, Additionally, the book went off on tangents about people and rivalries that had no significance to the story, For example, the explanations of Matthias brothers, and the story of the Stone and Folgers argument, They were fun to read, but ultimately had nothing to do with the story of Matthias and The Kingdom, Little disappointing. I never really got a sense as to why anyone would follow this man, who appears to be nothing more than a street corner Jesus, Nothing that scandalous happens and the authors fail to turn a string of events into a what should feel like a story, The authors of "The Kingdom of Matthias" deserve a lot of credit for this book, Channeling the absurdity of their subject matter through the narrative style of a novel, they make their story compelling and suspenseful in a way that is rare for a work of nonfiction.
Anyone who is remotely interested in U, S. history should enjoy reading this, as it blends the best qualities of entertainment and history in a way that is bound to leave you satisfied, A breezy yet wellresearched they used microform! narrative of the selfproclaimed Prophet Robert Mathews Matthias, one of the sensational religious gurus who appeared on the American scene in theth century.
It is an amazing tale of how he and the similarly unhinged businessman Elijah Pierson met each other and formed a small cult, with Matthias acting as the patriarchal Father and Spirit of Truth and living in opulence off of Pierson's early business dealings.
The cult became notorious, helping launch the "penny press," and rumours abounded about sexual impropriety among its members these rumours being wellfounded, I feel

almost as silly as Matthias for saying this but the/is partially due to the relatively peaceful end of the cult being freshly acquainted with the Waco siege, I expected the Kingdom of Matthias to come to an equally violent end but besides one death, most everything is settled smoothly in court.
Would've been/if more lurid, . . sigh What a wild, fun read,

The amount of religious innovation and crankery happening in Upstate New York in thess is totally unreal, This book starts with an exchange with the leader of the Mormons and has the revivals of Charles Finney as a backdrop, But it goes into wild detail about a small cult, It turned out that it attracted a bunch of attention and had weird intersection points with a number of other leading figures of the day, Interesting argument about the market revolution and religious fervor, The importance of the penny press was also an important thread, I wish I had been paying more attention to Isabella, but I'm not so interested that I'll back track and reread any of it, the writing not the best, the content so awesome. had to read half of it for class but decided to finish for shits and giggles, so worth it. The rhetorical move that Johnson and Wilentz make in The Kingdom of Matthias is really quite brilliant, They open with the popular tale of Matthias meeting the Mormon prophetJoseph Smith, Matthias is made to seem very odd and strange, The reader or at least I did opens him/herself to the notion that this book is going to be about some eccentric madman passing himself off as a man of God.
To some extent it is, but if that is all that was garnered from the text, it would be a mistake,

Matthias might be that eccentric charlatan, but the authors excellently display how the Second Great Awakening made someone like Matthias seem relatively normal, The first chapter is devoted to Elijah Pierson, a scion of a prominent Puritan stocknot some quack, In the second chapter, we are told about Robert Matthews, a resident of Coila, New York, and staunch Scots Calvinists, Johnson and Wilentz note that Matthews' mother was one of the staunchest Calvinists in the pious community,

There are still more examples of converts that initially came from "solid" and "upright" backgrounds such as these two, Yet they were drawn to Matthias in an age of religious wonder and excitement, I finished the book realizing that Matthias was not completely different from Joseph Smith after all despite my impression from the initial pages, not terrible, but not read by choice, enjoyed the last two chapters, I read this for my history class and lets just say it was interesting, . .
I wasn't even familiar with Matthias the prophet until I read this but this history was so twisted and dark, But I enjoyed learning about this cult that arose and fell during the second great awakening, Separatist societies were CRAZY.

This is really good historical work on one of the quirkiest little moments in American history that I've ever known, I read this as a freshman in college and wanted to revisit it on the other side of my own training, The first time around I was so very confused, This time it makes a lot more sense what Matthias's oppressive, disturbed patriarchy was trying to accomplish,

I would not recommend this book for undergraduate readers, I would include it in a reading list forth century separatist societies or more broadlyth century religious history, I don't recommend it for popular audiences, “the ann that isabella observed was no longer the chaste and humble housewife of her Christian days, She was now a sexually charged temptress who targeted matthias with a particularly feminine chaos”,

feel free to ignore the footnotes this is a novel, Interesting narrative history that further proves the folly of men In The Kingdom of Matthias The Second Great Awakening is addressed in full through the lively narrative of the rise and fall of the religious radical Matthias.
In this process of portraying and then analyzing Robert Matthews and his bizarre cultfollowing, Johnson and Wilentz are providing the reader with an enlarged view of both the role of “new” religion and gender roles in earlyth century America.
Based primarily on the numerous journalistic stories, personal testimonies, and legal records concerning Matthews and his small but fierce following, Kingdom of Matthias takes the reader through the emergence of Methodism, Baptism, Presbyterianism, and Mormonism as alternatives to both traditional EuroAmerican Christian denominations and the emerging moral perils lurking in the urban or rural reaches of the American Republic.


Yet while the austere environmentor kingdomcreated by Robert Matthews in upstate New York may seem on the surface like a desperate attempt to escape the traditional vices of a cityprostitution, gambling, and alcoholit is then ironic that Matthiass kingdom breeds a far more dangerous social vice that is mostly absent from the environment the cult escaped: polygamy.
The sexual escapades at “The Temple” most notable those between Anne Folger and Robert Matthews seem to bring the entire “Matthias” movement into a fraudulent light and leave the reader questioning the motives of Matthias and religious cult zealots in general.
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Maybe a second reading of this book would change the way I felt, It had a few pitfalls that really seemed to throw me off though, This is the story of an evangelical group duping the America's second great religious awakening and while there are some fascinating characters, I'm not sure there's enough here to warrant an entire book.
Much of the book is giving background to characters, some important while others are seemingly added just for filler almost never actually being a part of the narrative, I also felt like this could have used a really good editor Johnson and Wilentz have done an amazing job as historians, finding as much information as they can, but they felt the need to include all of it.
It is really interesting to see another religious group around a period that is so important in my life, but I'm not sure how much I took away from it.
Fabulous example of microhistory. It tells the story of Robert Matthews and his rollicking journey through the era of the Second Great Awakening, culminating in his selfproclaimed Kingdom of Matthias ins New York.
It reads like the most incredible novel youve ever read, Genius. the story this book tells is incredible, a renegade prophet in the earlys and the scandals that surround him, notably, for my purposes, theres a ten page description of a dude trying to raise someone from the dead, Johnson and Wilentz are great writers, so its pleasurable to read, Some narrative moves and differences in my critical perspective account for the nonrating, Well worth a read. Manages to mix in several "characters" of antebellum religious history into one wellresearched social/cultural/religious history, Contextualizes without going too far, brings the characters to life through primary sources, and demonstrates the social impact of religious life in America preCivil War, Sean Wilentz and Paul Johnson offer an engaging, easy to read account of the little known religious leader Matthias and his followers, In detailing his life, his followers and the social changes taking place around them, Wilentz and Johnson argue that Matthias and his followers were not a fringe group but rather representative of the time and place.
Skillfully written, The Kingdom of Matthias covers the rise of Evangelicalism and the Finneyites, the transition to a market based economy, political culture and class, While the authors cover many themes in a relatively short book, they fail to offer a meaningful discussion of race, This omission becomes glaringly obvious and problematic as the book progresses and it becomes plain that the authors are leaning heavily of Sojourner Truth's narrative, Truth herself is largely irrelevant to the story of Matthias in the authors' telling, While the Kingdom of Matthias is a fast, interesting read, the authors' larger claim that this religious group is representative of the larger culture is only somewhat convincing, A unique story the kind of which makes a great TigerKing or Wild Wild Country documentary on Netflix these days, The real story of a wild man in the early to mid's who crossed paths with Joseph Smith and went from streetcorner preaching to eventually living it up with a small cult of his own thanks to the naivety and gullibility of one overly spiritual rich man.
The atmosphere of the story gives you an understanding of the religious fervor of the day the wonder of the unknown that captivated US Americans as they first began to move out across "the frontier".
The hijinks that this man, who called himself Matthias, got up to made the paper all across the region and made for a rich bed of research that the author draws upon.
The author also draws upon journal entries from some of the individuals involved, It's amazing to know the kind of stories for which we still to this day have pretty good evidence, A understanding will be gained concerning the fascinating religious movements that were cropping up at the same time movements such as Mormonism which really must be understood a frontier religion.
Did you know John Whesley and the early Methodists were HIGHLY charismatic They spoke in tongues and shit, Yeah! Cool stuff! Fascinating stuff, Love this book. Informative and written to keep the reader engaged,

The most interesting parts was the descriptions of the broader religious currents occurring at the time and the impact they had on the rest of US history, For this alone, the book is worth reading,

The individual profiles of the few main characters are a bit too long to be useful, and the story loses a lot of steam towards the end, The epilogue however is needed to tie up some loose ends, so it will leave you feeling like the book altogether made sense and was worth it,

Also, it reads pretty fast, My son was assigned this book for a college course and asked me to read it as well so that we could discuss it, The story was interesting and bizarre on its own, but the inclusion of a famous figure in American History made it especially surprising, The authors don't mention the historical figure until the epilogue, I guess that was for shock value I am not sure why they chose not to highlight this person throughout the book, In my opinion, this was a big mistake, While the epilogue did serve to shock me, the book would have been significantly more enjoyable if they had drawn attention to the person as soon as they introduced them.
Having to remember back to all their parts in the story to get a better understanding of who they were back then was not an easy task because they were a side character in the book.
Thus, my attention wasn't really on their character and it was too hard to recall everything later, I ended up feeling frustrated and wishing they had just been clear from the start, I

If they do a next edition, I hope they revise and make it a more direct narrative, .