Religious Melancholy and Protestant Experience in America RELIGION IN AMERICA SERIES Harry S. Stout, General Editor A PERFECT BABEL THE SECULARIZATION OF OF CONFUSION THE ACADEMY Dutch Religion and English Culture Edited by George M. Marsden and in the Middle Colonies Bradley J. Longfield Randall Balmer EPISCOPAL WOMEN THE PRESBYTERIAN Gender, Spirituality, and CONTROVERSY Commitment in an American Fundamentalists, Modernists, and Mainline Denomination Moderates Edited by Catherine Prelinger Bradley J. Longfield SUBMITTING TO FREEDOM The Religious Vision of MORMONS AND THE BIBLE William James The Place of the Latter-day Saints in Bennett Ramsey American Religion Philip L. Barlow OLD SHIP OF ZION The Afro-Baptist Ritual in THE RUDE HAND the African Diaspora OF INNOVATION Walter F. Pitts Religion and Social Order in Albany, New York 1652-1836 AMERICAN TRANSCENDENTALISM David G. Hackett AND ASIAN RELIGIONS Arthur Versluis SEASONS OF GRACE Colonial New England's Revival CHURCH PEOPLE IN Tradition in Its British Context THE STRUGGLE Michael J. Crawford The National Council of Churches and the Black Freedom Movement, 1950-1970 THE MUSLIMS OF AMERICA James Findlay Edited by Yvonne Yazbeck Haddad EVANGELICALISM THE PRISM OF PIETY Comparative Studies of Popular Catholick Congregational Clergy at Protestantism in North America, the the Beginning of the Enlightenment British Isles, and Beyond, 1700-1900 John Corrigan Edited by Mark A. Noll, David W. Bebbington and George A. Rawlyk FEMALE PIETY IN PURITAN NEW ENGLAND RELIGIOUS MELANCHOLY The Emergence of Religious AND PROTESTANT EXPERIENCE Humanism IN AMERICA Amanda Porterfield Julius H. Rubin Religious Melancholy and Protestant Experience in America JULIUS H. RUBIN New York Oxford OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS 1994 Oxford University Press Oxford New York Toronto Delhi Bombay Calcutta Madras Karachi Kuala Lumpur Singapore Hong Kong Tokyo Nairobi Dar es Salaam Cape Town Melbourne Auckland Madrid and associated companies in Berlin Ibadan Copyright © 1994 by Julius H. Rubin Published by Oxford University Press, Inc., 200 Madison Avenue, New York, New York 10016 Oxford is a registered trademark of Oxford University Press, Inc. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of Oxford University Press. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Rubin, Julius H. Religious melancholy and Protestant experience in America / ]ulius H. Rubin. p. cm. — (Religion in America series) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-19-508301-6 1. Depression, Mental—Religious aspects-Christianity-History of doctrines. 2. Anorexia nervosa—Religious aspects-Christianity— History of doctrines. 3. Protestant churches—United States- History. 4. Depression, Mental—United States—Epidemiology. 6. United States- Church history. I. Title. II. Series: Religion in America series (Oxford University Press) BT732.4.R83 1994 280'.4'0973-dc20 93-23964 2 4 6 8 9 7 5 31 Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper In Memoriam Lena Rosemoff Rubin 1911-1981 May God's peace be upon her This page intentionally left blank Preface This book is about religious melancholy in American Protestant experience from colonial settlement to the present evangelical awakening. Melancholy here refers to an affect, a distinctive stance toward life, a grieving over the loss of God's love, and an obsession and psychopathology associated with the spiritual itinerary of conversion. The religious melancholiac desired, above all else, to foster, through godly living and the practice of piety, an inward devotional life marked by a warm, personal relationship with God. Yet, those who would know God in moments of rapture and contemplation so frequently found themselves forsaken by God. I first encountered cases of religious melancholy during my doctoral research in sociology. I began reading the medical records and correspondence of mental patients admitted to the Hartford Retreat during the 1820s through the 1840s. This period coincided with a religious revival called the Second Great Awakening in America. Asylum records frequently included letters from referring physicians, ministers, family, and friends that introduced the patient to the asylum staff. Here, captured in the exquisite handwriting of the Retreat's scribners, were the accounts of hundreds of cases of persons who felt forsaken by God, immobilized by spiritual crisis, trapped in a slough of despond— religious melancholia. The modern asylum sequestered and concentrated cases of religious melancholia, collecting within one institution Millerites in despair when prophecy failed, disconsolate ministers and missionaries, those convinced they had committed the unpardonable sin (blasphemy against the Holy Spirit), others who felt that they had grieved away the Spirit during protracted meet- ings or New Measure revivalism, and self-accused sinners who attempted to fast unto death. These examples provide only a partial anatomy of religious melancholiacs in nineteenth-century asylums. I have long wanted to investigate and understand the origins and "career" of religious melancholy, a disease and concept that was once commonplace among Americans but by the early twentieth century had become relegated to the status of a delusion associated with an underlying mental disease. This book is research in the spirit of Michel Foucault, to uncover from the multi- layered stratigraphy of our historical archeology of knowledge the spiritual viii Preface sickness once known as religious melancholy. We shall look to Martin Luther, John Calvin, and the seventeenth-century English pietistic Puritans for the doc- trinal origins of religious melancholy, first identified by Robert Burton in 1621. Religious melancholy made the transit to America in the seventeenth centu- ry, and has been revitalized in the four eras of national religious revivals— the great awakenings. Thus, religious melancholy has remained a distinctive aspect of the American conversion experience from Michael Wigglesworth to Billy Graham. This work is a dialogue with many authors who have cleared a path for me to follow, including Max Weber, William James, and contemporary social historians Philip Greven, John Owen King, Stanley Jackson, Charles Lloyd Cohen, Charles Hambrick-Stowe, and Richard Rabinowitz. These authors have enriched and sustained me by investigating questions that traverse disciplin- ary boundaries. Several faculty at Saint Joseph College in West Hartford, Connecticut, have contributed to this work. I am grateful to Barbara Lacey for sharing her study of Hannah Heaton. Judith Perkins assisted by translating a Latin text on religious melancholy. Dennis Barone has shown generosity of spirit in sending me an unending series of articles, reprints, and citations that pertain to my work, including the insight to research the "slight hectic" of William Tennent, Jr. Catherine Posteraro has provided heroic assistance in database searches and interlibrary loan acquisitions. I have benefited from a sabbatical during the spring of 1989, reductions in teaching load, and Saint Joseph College summer mini-grants that have facilitated my research, travel to collections, and writing. I could never have completed this project without the use of numerous research libraries, special collections, and historical society materials. I was fortunate to enjoy privi- leges at Yale University's many libraries, especially the Manuscripts and Archives holdings of Sterling Memorial Library, Beinecke, and the special collections of the Yale Divinity School Library. I wish to acknowledge the Ruth B. P. Burlingame Library of the Institute of Living, Hartford, Connec- ticut; the American Antiquarian Society in Worcester, Massachusetts; the Watkinson Library, Trinity College, Hartford, Connecticut; the Day-Stowe Foundation Library and Archives, Hartford, Connecticut; the Houghton Library, Harvard University; the Bodleian Library, Oxford University; the British Library, London, England; the Connecticut Historical Society Library, Hartford, Connecticut; the New Canaan Historical Society, New Canaan, Connecticut; the Newport Historical Society, Newport, Rhode Island; and the New Haven Colony Historical Society, New Haven, Connecticut. At Oxford University Press, from the beginning, Cynthia A. Read saw promise in my imperfect manuscript and guided the project through the review process. Peter Ohlin provided much appreciated words of support and encour- agement during the manuscript revisions. I owe the greatest debt to the anon- ymous reader whose detailed suggestions helped me produce a better inte- grated and focused essay. Preface ix Writing is an act of faith, the mustering of an "inner assurance" and conviction that we indeed have something of value to contribute to anony- mous publics from across many disciplines. I wish to thank my wife, Loretta, for her unflagging support and for the moments of gentle reassurance. New Haven, Connecticut J. H. R. September 1992