Features
- Cover Type: Hard Cover with 504 pages
- Published by: University Press of Kentucky December 23, 2005
- Written in: English
- ISBN 10 Number: 0813123704
- ISBN 13 Number: 978-0813123707
-
Book Dimensions:
9.3 x 6.5 x 1.9 inches
- Weighs: 2.1 pounds
From Publishers Weekly
John Smith, born on the frontier in 1784 to devout parents, flirted with Deism and skepticism as a young man, but experienced a profound evangelical conversion after his father died. Taken with the teachings of Alexander Campbell, Smith devoted himself to preaching Campbell's restorationist gospel. This biography is wide-ranging, taking us into Smith's family life and his tangles in church politics. Sparks spells out in detail-sometimes too much detail-the fine denominational differences that distinguished Christian families from one another in the 19th century. Sparks's prose is fluid and vigorous: the descriptions of the rural landscape are especially vivid ("the scrawny yellowlove apples" were "simple and poor yard decorations"). But Sparks's tendency toward digression quickly grows annoying. The reader could do without the frequent ruminations about Kierkegaard, and the supposition that had A.E. Housman lived in Appalachia, he might have preferred spicewood trees to English Worcestershire trees. Sparks, a Baptist minister, overreaches in his attempts to prove his historian's bona fides; chapters open with unnecessary reflections on historical method. Still, for those interested in Smith's life and times, this study will be welcome.
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Product Review
"This bookfeatures an extensive look at Baptist history during the 1820s and 1830s as well as detailed analysis of the sectarian doctrinal bickering that fed the general religious ferment of the era There is much in this book that is useful and interesting." --
Register of the Kentucky Historical Society"For students of the religious history of the Midwest or the antebellum frontier in general, or for those interested in the sociology of religion, I highly recommend this book." --
Indiana Magazine of History
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