Smitten: Sex, Gender, and the Contest for Souls in the Second Great Awakening by Rodney Hessinger (review)

Reviewed by: Smitten: Sex, Gender, and the Contest for Souls in the Second Great Awakening by Rodney Hessinger Elizabeth J. Clapp (bio) Keywords Second Great Awakening, Religion, Religious history, Sex, Gender, Enthusiastic religion Smitten: Sex, Gender, and the Contest for Souls in the Second Great Awakening. By Rodney Hessinger. (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2022. Pp. 212. Cloth, $34.95.) Historians have long recognized the Second Great Awakening as a period of religious innovation, one that was marked by the formation of numerous new religious groups, some of them offering a challenge to established religious practices and social relationships. In Smitten: Sex, Gender, and the Contest for Souls in the Second Great Awakening, Rodney Hessinger seeks to broaden our understanding of the religious debates of the early republic by focusing on the intense rivalry between these religious groups, as they competed amongst themselves and with more established churches in a battle for converts. Extending his geographical focus beyond Whitney Cross's classic The Burned-Over District1 to include northern urban and frontier areas, and building on works that have explored popular Christianity in this period, Hessinger concentrates on how the more radical religious groups competed for and attracted converts. While scholars are not unaware of religious competition during the Second Great Awakening, Hessinger argues that we should take more notice of its rhetorical dimensions (7). By exploring the public perceptions of enthusiastic religion as exposed in the pamphlets and books produced by supporters and critics, we can achieve a greater [End Page 145] understanding of the rivalry between these religious groups. For, he contends, as charismatic preachers fought for converts, "the dynamic of religious rivalry inexorably led toward sexual and gender disruption" (1). While historians have previously explored sexual scandals and exposés that targeted religious groups, Hessinger's work goes beyond this to suggest that sex and gender were at the very center of debates over religion in this period. Hessinger's study focuses on several groups that practiced a form of religious engagement that might best be described as religious enthusiasm. This was, in the minds of many observers, "a form of religion that did not observe the boundaries that had been raised by the Enlightenment. It referred to religious expression that violated ordinary norms of religious decorum" (9). Religious enthusiasm was, thus, more about commitment and behavior than theology or forms of church governance. In this context preachers had to work hard to win converts, relying on a charismatic appeal aimed at the desires of their audiences. The result was a very volatile situation, where an individual in search of a religious home might be confronted by different religious movements offering a variety of practices and beliefs. In aiming for the hearts of their converts, some preachers went further than simply challenging religious decorum, to undermine social norms of behavior and the structure of society. For in their attempts to reorder relations between men and women, some groups questioned monogamous marriage and the accepted forms of sexual conduct. It was their differences over sexual behavior, Hessinger suggests, rather than doctrinal or theological differences, which differentiated these groups both from the mainstream evangelical churches and from each other. As Hessinger argues, nowhere was the competition between these religious groups more evident than in the print culture of the time. By focusing on print sources, the centrality of sex and gender to the debates over religion becomes apparent. For church leaders fought with each other through pamphlets and books, pouring scorn, trading invective, and occasionally making accusations of impropriety against their rivals. The allegations sometimes spilled off the printed page into physical altercations or courtroom dramas, many of them, in turn, defined by clashes over sex and gender. It was in the charges of sexual exploitation and gender disruption that not only were religious rivalries most apparent, but where the acceptable boundaries of religious liberty were fought over and tested. [End Page 146] Ultimately, Hessinger suggests, the spread of religious liberty was undermined by the fears about sex and gender dynamics provoked by these debates. Opponents rejected religious enthusiasm arguing that converts, particularly women, had been smitten by charismatic preachers seducing them with their radical visions, for no...