Introduction
The nineteenth century was a time of great change in American history. The political environment was being redesigned and defined during Andrew Jackson’s presidency. There was exploitation and inhabitation in the west of America and these were facilitated by the revolution in market and transportation. The great religious revolution swept across the nation during the mid-eighteen hundred. Within the 1820s and 1840s, in the Matthias Kingdom, there occurred one of the hundreds of odd religious activities that happened all over the United States. To know fully the causes of Matthias’ odd religious activities the larger religious framework must be known.
Main Body
The authors, therefore, describe Robert Matthias as a man who participated in a religious mission to discover the right religion, while struggling with the amendments all over society. Understanding Robert Matthias and his supporters help to know how influential the religious movements of that period were, as well as how larger transformations in the society were affected. Matthias kingdom was therefore fully system of patriarchal which power was inherited down from father to son (Butler 76).
There was an extensive northern movement in the 1820s and 1840s headed by Charles Finney of evangelical preachers and progressive theologies infusing the middle classes of the society. Finney argued that just an individual’s voluntary activities would certify a person’s salvation or not and that an individual was not fated to a virtuous or life full of sin. Finney developed religion to be more achievable and clearer for both those looking for religion and those who are guided by their religions. Charles evangelized a religion in which women and men shared a huge degree of sameness both in the church and in prayer, as well as their functions domestically, which were designed at changing the patriarchal Calvinist principles. For Finney and all generations and supporters, a better degree of individual responsibility and personal improvement was essential for a person to achieve salvation (Johnson and Wilentz 153).
Finney called for the person’s free utilize of the will to develop an individual, as well as other persons. This can be compared to the movement of national populist and self-confident politicians, for instance, Andrew Jackson and his capability to request to the masses. Much like the society spirit, where great men who are politicians would take their point to the masses, the men in religion were capable to make their point to the common people, in a try to amend the aged traditional social order. In the previous case the edged ruling elites, and in the second the conservative Calvinist theologies. It reflects the demand between the frameworks of capitalist for a strong confident aspiration to be victorious and develops the life of a person. All these ideas are in line with the amendments to a cross-religious America. The life Matthias acts as a major example of forces that drive resistance to every progressive social and religious amendment that was happening in the society (Gorenfeld and Lynn 56).
Robert Matthias came from a purely conservative Scottish Calvinist people. He was completely pleased when he was capable to refer to himself as a reputable independent national, positioned on top of his neighbors, and delighted at how his being was tending. The Scots mostly kept to themselves and adhered to their inflexible Calvinists, nursing religious grudges not known to other people in the world. His family was stern believers and went to the Anti-Burgher secession church in their village. As Anti-Burghers they study their Bibles accurately and frequently debate their understanding of the scripture. They imitated primitive Christians, requested stern Sabbath observation, and imposed individual codes of virtuous temperance ever.
Robert Matthew believed within match spirits and personally organized him and Ann Folger to be married. In his kingdom, women were conquered by men and were to remain at home, cook, wash, and do sexual favours for their husbands who were the house patriarchal heads. Robert Matthias’ ideas with regard to the way of life were thus in contrast to the way of life being spread by the Christian priests. Robert Matthias believed that women and children were stolen from their fathers by Christians (Johnson and Wilentz 45-7).
Matthias was a true spirit, that is, he was being governed by male or God spirit. His mount Zion community, where Elijah Pierson was among his supporters, permitted Matthias to start his fight to evangelical activities of people like Finney and Kirk, a modern evangelist of Finney’s, who Matthias alleged attained their goal by fighting women from the subordination of their god to men and by informing them that they possess special powers. Therefore, this religious cult appears to be a reaction that is direct to the progressive amendments that were happening both in the society and the latest revivalist Presbyterian religions, Methodists and Baptists religions (Johnson and Wilentz 176).
The order of patriarchal, or Matthias kingdom, was to be a self-reliant community. No market would be there, no purchasing or selling, no money, no system of wages with its dangerous control of a single father over another no oppression of economy of any type. This appears to be a great reaction to the disappointments Matthias experienced at the hands of the latest system of the market that he had attached himself to. Robert Matthias would not even permit his meat to be roasted simply because the means of roasting was believed to be a middle-class approach to cooking, which was made possible by the revolution of the market.
According to Butler (2003), what appears obvious is that religious passion was indeed not out placed in the society of America within the 1820s and 1840s. The social landscape permitted and may be demanded people to successfully declare themselves in their objectives, whether it is politics, religion, or business. All of the revivals in religions and the missions appear to be associated with Cowardine’s idea that psychologically and geographically evacuated men and women corporately desire for a shelter in which to live or because having developed such a community, they wanted to maintain, revive, and purify it.
Both the increasingly complicated markets of the nation and the revolution in transportation unavoidably eroded local social relationships. Relationships between parents and their offspring, and wife and their husbands were different. This would not have been promising or demanded had the society failed to amend to the point where individuals were attached into the revolution of the market and transportation, where labour wage started to take over the subsistence of the farm, and where an individual could move too far outside the cities in search for a job. For Finney’s renewal, were the psychologically evacuated women and men who received his democratic approach, He abandoned the procedures and darkness of the educated ministry, and he’s talking was dramatic, conversational, and practical. Had the nation not experienced its populist movement, the revivalist’s success might not have been seen. Both Matthias and Pierson appear to be two displaced persons who glanced to religion to fill the spaces that society could not solve (Gorenfeld and Lynn 89).
Conclusion
Matthias’ legacy exists today with different groups, mostly the Mormons. According to a writer from Evangelical magazine, all activities whether, political, honest, or religious, is touched by the time’s colour. This is significant not only to society but also to contemporary society. Generally, movements in religions appear to be either common reactions or side-effects to trends in society.
Works Cited
Butler, G. Mary. TSojourner Truth: From Slave to Activist for Freedom. New York: The Rosen Publishing Group, 2003.
Gorenfeld, John and Lynn W. Barry. Bad Moon Rising: How Reverend Moon Created the Washington Times, Seduced the Religious Right, and Built an American Kingdom. PoliPointPress, 2008.
Johnson, E. Paul and Wilentz, Sean. The Kingdom of Matthias: A Story of Sex and Salvation in 19th-Century America. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995.