Content area
Full Text
The Kingdom of Matthias: A Story of Sex and Salvation in 19th-Century America, By Paul E. Johnson and Sean Wilentz. (New York: Oxford University Press, 1994. xiv, 222 pp. Cloth, $25.00, ISBN 0-19-503827-4. Paper, $11.95, ISBN 0-19-509835-8.)
The Kingdom of Matthias is very different from the kind of historical work for which its authors have been best known. During the late 1970s and early 1980s, Paul E. Johnson and Sean Wilentz published outstanding examples of the new social history, quantitative and analytical, that dominated the profession at the time. This latest work, however-the fascinating tale of Robert Matthews, a ne'er-do-well New York carpenter who, amid the religious enthusiasm of the Second Great Awakening, proclaimed himself the prophet Matthias and led a bizarre community of spiritual seekers-exemplifies the microhistorical narrative approach that has more recently captured historians' attention. In accordance with this newer method, Johnson and Wilentz suggest that the growing pains...