The Kingdom of Matthias: A Story of Sex and Salvation in 19th-Century America

The Kindom of Matthias provides the reader with an interesting look into the past. Centered on a small religious community in upstate New York, the book tracks the way societal changes influenced individuals religious experience. Written in accessible style this book is a must read for those interested in 19th century American history, or the history of Spirituality.

News! News! Ave is born of Eva! Well, fellow post-Judeochristians, the good news is that religious frenzy has come and gone in American history before, and it eventually burns out. The "burnt-over district" of New York State got its nickname from the fury of its religious frenzy in the 1820s-1840s, during what historians have called the Second Great Awakening. With any luck, the lesson learned from that episode can be applied to the current weirdness, when a religious fanatic in Kansas can shoot a doctor to death in the nave of his own church, all in the name of Life. The lesson is: stand fast and don't let the bigots ignore their own sins. The writers of this amusing little tale of 'sex and salvation' are two of America's finest academic historians. Sean Wilentz is the author of "Chants Democratic" and other books of social history of the early 19th C, as well as of "The Age of Reagan." Paul E. Johnson is also a social historian and the author of "A Shopkeeper's Millennium", concerning the enormous societal changes in America from the era of guilds and local trade to the dawning of modern enterprise. Those two books are classics that I recommend very strongly. "The Kingdom of Matthias" is a bagatelle by comparison; I'm quite sure Wilentz and Johnson had a lot of fun researching and writing it. It reads like a jolly novella. In the 1830s, Robert Matthews of upstate New York was able to persuade a number of people of his divine inspiration. He was, he announced, the reborn Matthias, the Spirit of Truth, the Prophet of the God of the Jews. One of his devotees was a wealthy merchant Elijah Pierson, for whose murder Matthews would be tried in 1835. The Prophet's co-defendant in that case was a gaunt, tall woman of color named Isabella Baumfree, better known to later generations as Sojourner Truth. Ms. Baumfree had an ambiguous place in the cult of the Kingdom of Matthias, as the servant of the Prophet. Neither defendant was convicted, but the trial put paid to Matthews's recruiting efforts in New York. The authors are less convinced of anyone's innocence. Everything known about Matthews suggests the typical sociopathic profile of a 19th Century Jim Jones. There was, by the way, the usual juicy hanky-panky of free-love and consort-swapping in and around the Kingdom of Matthias. And there were comic opera efforts by the outraged agents of conventional religiosity to shave the Prophet's beard! As a spokesman for the Afghan Taliban declared, when asked why his cohorts all went bearded: "All prophets wear beards!" Matthews, at one point, traveled west to meet Joseph Smith, the prophet of another, more successful new revelation, also a scion of the "burnt-over district." The report is that the two prophets spoke privately at some length, and then denounced each other as impostors. One has to wonder why Smith's cult thrived so mightily while Matthews's crashed in scandal, when there was nearly nothing to separate them in their initial phases. Are we read

This is one of those very rare books--a work by first-rate scholars that is simultaneously a real page-turner. Once you start it, the story that unravels is so compelling that it is hard to put it down. By coincidence I read this about a week before the news of the Heaven's Gate cult hit the news. It is definitely an essential work to read if you want to understand more about the bizarre history of cults in America