The Associationists: Forging a Christian Socialism in Antebellum America
In the early 1840s a wave of enthusiasm for the socialist theory of Charles Fourier swept through American reform circles. Excited utopians in New York, Boston, and elsewhere in the North divided their efforts between publicizing their version of Fourierism, called “Association,” and building model...
Main Author: | |
---|---|
Format: | Electronic Article |
Language: | English |
Check availability: | HBZ Gateway |
Journals Online & Print: | |
Interlibrary Loan: | Interlibrary Loan for the Fachinformationsdienste (Specialized Information Services in Germany) |
Published: |
1983
|
In: |
Church history
Year: 1983, Volume: 52, Issue: 1, Pages: 36-49 |
Online Access: |
Volltext (JSTOR) Volltext (lizenzpflichtig) Volltext (lizenzpflichtig) |
Parallel Edition: | Non-electronic
|
Summary: | In the early 1840s a wave of enthusiasm for the socialist theory of Charles Fourier swept through American reform circles. Excited utopians in New York, Boston, and elsewhere in the North divided their efforts between publicizing their version of Fourierism, called “Association,” and building model communities or “phalanxes” to illustrate it. While the history and sociology of their nearly three dozen short-lived communal experiments continue to attract scholarly attention, the Associationists' writings have been relatively neglected. Yet the expositions and arguments that won thousands of converts to Fourierism represent an innovation in American religious thought too important to be forgotten: the first extensive attempt to harness the powerful ideas and symbols of Christianity to the emerging worldview of secular socialism. |
---|---|
ISSN: | 1755-2613 |
Contains: | Enthalten in: Church history
|
Persistent identifiers: | DOI: 10.2307/3167067 |