Heart Religion in the British Enlightenment

This is a major study of the daily life and spirituality of early Methodist men and women. Phyllis Mack challenges traditional, negative depictions of early Methodism through an analysis of a vast array of primary sources - prayers, pamphlets, hymns, diaries, recipes, private letters, accounts of dreams, and rules for housekeeping. She examines how ordinary men and women understood the seismic shift from the religious culture of the seventeenth century to the so-called 'disenchantment of the world' that developed out of the Enlightenment. She places particular emphasis on the experience of women, arguing that both their spirituality and their contributions to the movement were different from men's. This revisionist account sheds light on how ordinary people understood their experience of religious conversion, marriage, worship, sexuality, friendship, and the supernatural, and what motivated them to travel the world as missionaries.

• Challenges traditional depictions of early evangelicalism through its focus on the writings and experiences of women
• Sheds light on what it was like to live, think, and feel as an early Methodist through a study of contemporary letters, diaries, notebooks and conversion narratives
• Will appeal to academics in religious history, social and cultural history, gender history and religious studies as well as to Methodist ministers, missionaries and lay members