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The Burned-Over District Reconsidered: A Portent of Evolving Religious Pluralism in the United States

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  04 January 2016

Linda K. Pritchard*
Affiliation:
University of Texas at San Antonio

Extract

The hell’s-fire revivalism of western New York, christened the Burned-Over District by nineteenth-century contemporaries, was a colorful and important chapter in the Second Great Awakening. The main characters—Joseph Smith, the Fox sisters, Charles Finney, and the like—led a religious rejuvenation that presumably reorganized spiritual life in the Finger Lakes vicinity between 1820 and 1850.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © Social Science History Association 1984 

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Footnotes

fn00

Author’s Note: An earlier version of this article was presented at the Conference on New York State History, State University of New York College at New Paultz, June 12-13,1981. I would like to extend my warmest thanks to Thomas J. McCormick, Nora Faires, and Janice Reiff for their perceptive suggestions.

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