Sarah Osborn's World The Rise of Evangelical Christianity in Early America Catherine A. Brekus

In 1743, sitting quietly with pen in hand, Sarah Osborn pondered how to tell the story of her life, how to make sense of both her spiritual awakening and the sudden destitution of her family. Remarkably, the memoir Sarah created that year survives today, as do some 1500 additional pages she composed over the following three decades. "Sarah Osborn's World" is the first book to mine Sarah's prolific personal and spiritual record. Catherine Brekus recovers the largely forgotten story of Sarah's life as one of the most charismatic female religious leaders of her time, while also connecting Sarah's captivating story to the roots of the evangelical movement in eighteenth-century America. A schoolteacher in Rhode Island, a wife and mother, Sarah led a remarkable revival in the 1760s that brought hundreds of people, including many slaves, to her house each week. Her extensive written record - encompassing issues ranging from the desire to be "born again" to a suspicion of capitalism - provides a unique vantage point from which to view the emergence of evangelicalism. Brekus sets Sarah's experience solidly in the context of her revivalist era and expands our understanding of the birth of the evangelical movement - a movement that transformed Protestantism in the decades following the American Revolution.

Catherine Brekus teaches American religious history at the University of Chicago. She is author or editor of several books on the history of women and religion, including Strangers and Pilgrims: Female Preaching in America, and is editing a volume of Sarah Osborn's diaries forthcoming from Yale University Press.

"Fascinating . . . remarkable . . . an eloquently written, extraordinarily deep contextual portrayal of life in the 18th century."--Jonathan M. Yeager, "Books & Culture" --Jonathan M. Yeager "Books & Culture "