The "Businessmen's Revival" was a religious revival that unfolded   in the wake of the 1857 market crash among white, middle-class Protestants.   Delving into the religious history of Boston in the 1850s, John Corrigan gives   an imaginative and wide-ranging interpretive study of the revival's   significance. He uses it as a focal point for addressing a spectacular range of   phenomena in American culture: the ecclesiastical and business history of   Boston; gender roles and family life; the history of the theater and public   spectacle; education; boyculture; and, especially, ideas about emotion during   this period.    This vividly written narrative recovers the emotional experiences of individuals   from a wide array of little-used sources including diaries, correspondence,   public records, and other materials. From these sources, Corrigan discovers that   for these Protestants, the expression of emotion was a matter of transactions.   They saw emotion as a commodity, and conceptualized relations between people,   and between individuals and God, as transactions of emotion governed by   contract. Religion became a business relation with God, with prayer as its legal   tender. Entering this relationship, they were conducting the "business of the   heart."  This innovative study shows that the revival--with its commodification   of emotional experience--became an occasion for white Protestants to underscore   differences between themselves and others. The display of emotion was a primary   indicator of membership in the Protestant majority, as much as language, skin   color, or dress style. As Corrigan unravels the significance of these culturally   constructed standards for emotional life, his book makes an important   contribution to recent efforts to explore the links between religion and   emotion, and is an important new chapter in the history of religion.

Business of the Heart: Religion and Emotion in the Nineteenth Century PDF

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