Religion and Spirituality

doi:10.1017/9781009071550.005

3 - Religion and Spirituality

from Part I - Histories

Published online by Cambridge University Press: 21 July 2022

Carl H. Sederholm

Edited by

Stephen Shapiro and

Mark Storey

Show author details

Stephen Shapiro: Affiliation:
University of Warwick
Mark Storey: Affiliation:
University of Warwick

Book contents

Get access

Summary

This chapter explores the intersection between American horror and religion and how our understanding can benefit from an approach that recognizes how both subjects wrestle with what happens when human experience goes sideways, how people attempt to understand things beyond their experience, and how they address questions pertaining to why they are here and where they think they are going. While both clearly confront such key questions of human existence, religion frequently addresses them within expectations tied to core doctrines, beliefs, and practices, while horror more often reaches beyond those limits. And yet there are moments in which both kinds of texts overlap in that they share an interest in the kinds of overwhelming questions people ask in times of concern or crisis. This chapter explores several of those moments in a survey that ranges from American Puritan literature to Spiritualism, and then to the rise of modern Pentecostalism.

Keywords

Nathaniel Hawthorne Nat Turner Jonathan Edwards Michael Wigglesworth Edgar Allan Poe Jack London religion Pentecostalism Spiritualism The Exorcist

Type: Chapter
Information: The Cambridge Companion to American Horror , pp. 45 - 59

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781009071550.005 [Opens in a new window]

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Print publication year: 2022

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Works Cited

Ahlstrom, Sydney E. A Religious History of the American People. 1972. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2004.Google Scholar

Bercovitch, Sacvan. The American Jeremiad. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1978.Google Scholar

Blatty, William Peter. The Exorcist. New York: Harper, 1971.Google Scholar

Botting, Fred. “Poe, Voice and the Origin of Horror Fiction.” In Sound Effects: The Object Voice in Fiction, ed. Sacido-Romero, Jorge and Mieszkowski, Sylvia. Leiden: Brill, 2015. 73–100.CrossRef Google Scholar

Colacurcio, Michael J. The Province of Piety: Moral History in Hawthorne’s Early Tales. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1995.Google Scholar

Conkin, Paul K. American Originals: Homemade Varieties of Christianity. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1997.Google Scholar

Cowan, Douglas E. America’s Dark Theologian: The Religious Imagination of Stephen King. New York: New York University Press, 2018.Google Scholar

Crow, Charles L. American Gothic. Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 2009.Google Scholar

Edwards, Jonathan. “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God.” In A Jonathan Edwards Reader, ed. Smith, John E., Stout, Harry S., and Minkema, Kenneth P.. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1995. 89–105.Google Scholar

Eliot, T. S. “Burnt Norton.” In T. S. Eliot: The Complete Poems and Plays, 1909–1950. New York: Harcourt, 1952. 117–22.Google Scholar

Ford, David F. Theology: A Very Short Introduction. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999.Google Scholar

Greenberg, Kenneth S. The Confessions of Nat Turner and Related Documents. New York: Bedford, 1996.Google Scholar

Hawthorne, Nathaniel. “The Ambitious Guest.” In Selected Tales and Sketches. New York: Penguin, 1987. 162–71.Google Scholar

Hawthorne, Nathaniel. “Earth’s Holocaust.” In Selected Tales and Sketches. New York: Penguin, 1987. 336–57.Google Scholar

Hawthorne, Nathaniel. “Young Goodman Brown.” In Selected Tales and Sketches. New York: Penguin, 1987. 133–48.Google Scholar

Jakobsen, Janet R. “Religion.” In Keywords for American Cultural Studies, 2nd ed., ed. Burgett, Bruce and Handler, Glenn. New York: New York University Press, 2014. 215–17.Google Scholar

Johnson, Curtis D. Redeemer Nation: Evangelicals and the Road to Civil War. Chicago: Ivan R. Dee, 1993.Google Scholar

King, Stephen. The Colorado Kid. New York: Hard Case Crime, 2005.Google Scholar

King, Stephen. “Introduction.” In The Shining. New York: Pocket, 1977. xv–xvii.Google Scholar

Morgan, Edmund. Visible Saints: The History of a Puritan Idea. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1963.Google Scholar

Lloyd-Smith, Allan. “Nineteenth-Century American Gothic.” In A Companion to the Gothic, ed. Punter, David. Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2000. 109–21.Google Scholar

London, Jack. “Planchette.” In The Complete Short Stories of Jack London, ed. Labor, Earle, Leitz, Robert C, and Shepard, Milo. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1993. 1035–72.Google Scholar

Miller, Perry. Jonathan Edwards. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2005.Google Scholar

Noll, Mark A. America’s God: From Jonathan Edwards to Abraham Lincoln. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002.Google Scholar

Orsi, Robert A. “Introduction.” In The Cambridge Companion to Religious Studies, ed. Orsi, Robert A. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012. 1–13.Google Scholar

Poe, Edgar Allan. “The Black Cat.” In The Selected Writings of Edgar Allan Poe, ed. Thompson, G. R. New York: W. W. Norton, 2004. 348–55.Google Scholar

Poe, Edgar Allan. “Facts in the Case of M. Valdemar.” In The Selected Writings of Edgar Allan Poe, ed. Thompson, G. R.. New York: W. W. Norton, 2004. 407–14.Google Scholar

Poe, Edgar Allan. “The Tell-Tale Heart.” In The Selected Writings of Edgar Allan Poe, ed. Thompson, G. R. New York: W. W. Norton, 2004. 316–21.Google Scholar

Ringel, Faye. “Early American Gothic (Puritan and New Republic).” In The Cambridge Companion to American Gothic, ed. Weinstock, Jeffrey Andrew. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017. 15–30.Google Scholar

Shapiro, Stephen, and Barnard, Philip. Pentecostal Modernism: Lovecraft, Los Angeles, and World-Systems Culture. New York: Bloomsbury, 2017.Google Scholar

Thacker, Eugene. In the Dust of This Planet: Horror of Philosophy, vol. 1. Winchester: Zero Books, 2011.Google Scholar

Ward, Graham. “Deconstructive Theology.” In The Cambridge Companion to Postmodern Theology, ed. Vanhoozer, Kevin J. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003. 76–91.Google Scholar

Watson, Charles N. “Jack London: Up from Spiritualism.” In The Haunted Dusk: American Supernatural Fiction, 1820–1920, ed. Kerr, Howard, Crowley, John W, and Crow, Charles L. Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1983. 193–207.Google Scholar

Wigglesworth, Michael. “The Day of Doom.” In America Poetry of the Seventeenth Century, ed. Meserole, Harrison T.. University Park: Penn State University Press, 1985. 55–113.Google Scholar

Winthrop, Jonathan. “A Model of Christian Charity.” In The American Puritans: Their Prose and Poetry, ed. Miller, Perry. New York: Columbia University Press, 1956. 78–84.Google Scholar