Rare Book Monthly
Book Catalogue Reviews - August - 2007 Issue
American Itinerant Ministers and their Odd Works from Garrett Scott, Bookseller
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Item 146 is a more serious piece: A Sermon on the Death of Jeremiah Everts, delivered by Leonard Woods on July 31, 1831. Everts was a significant religious leader and political thinker, but he is most noted for his opposition to Andrew Jackson's policy of removal of the Cherokees from their ancestral homeland in Georgia. His was a strong voice in opposition to one of the uglier incidents in American history. $40.
James Hall Brookes asks the age-old question, May Christians Dance? Sure, as long as they don't mind having sons with "the mincing tread of a brainless fop," or daughters with "the brazen effrontery of a pert miss, who is trained by a foreign dancing master not to blush." Or, as we might point out, all that disco dancing turned John Travolta into a Scientologist. Item 16. $125.
For those interested in a debate over baptism, there is A Debate Between Rev. A. Campbell and Rev. L Rice, on the Action, Subject, Design and Administrator of Christian Baptism... This was a series of debates between the founder of the Disciples of Christ and a Presbyterian held at Lexington, Kentucky, in late 1843. The moderator was none other than the Great Compromiser himself, Henry Clay, who would make his most serious (though still unsuccessful) run for the presidency the following year. It is not clear whether he got these two clergymen to reach a compromise, but probably not. Item 20. $200.
For a view of the future from 1892, there is The Church Republic: A Romance of Methodism. By Brother Jonathan. D.D. (pseudonym for Zerelda Pierce). Pierce foresaw Methodism spreading all over the world, but this was not a united Methodist Church. This one was strictly segregated racially. "Crass elements and perfected, the rough and the polished, the charcoal and the diamond do not assimilate into one likeness, even in the presence of the Mercy-seat. The one is made repellent to the other." Pierce was probably too dense to realize who the crass person was. Item 100. $75.
Garrett Scott, Bookseller, may be found online at www.GSBbooks.com, telephone 734-741-8605.
