Description
Book SynopsisA revealing look at the changing role of churches in the decades after the American Revolution. Most Americans today would not think of their local church as a site for arbitration and would probably be hesitant to bring their property disputes, moral failings, or personal squabbles to their kin and neighbors for judgment. But from the Revolutionary Era through the mid-nineteenth century, many Protestants imbued local churches with immense authority. Through their ritual practice of discipline, churches insisted that brethren refrain from suing each other before infidels at local courts and claimed jurisdiction over a range of disputes: not only moral issues such as swearing, drunkenness, and adultery but also matters more typically considered to be under the purview of common law and courts of equity, including disputes over trespass, land, probate, slave warranty, and theft. In Law in American Meetinghouses, Jeffrey Thomas Perry explores the ways that ordinary AmericansBlack and w
Table of ContentsA Note on Sources
Introduction
Chapter 1. "The Want of Discipline": Baptist Churches and Local Law in Frontier Kentucky
Chapter 2. Churches' "Perplexing Difficulties": Race, Gender, and Household Relations
Chapter 3. A "Habitation of Justice?": The Market Revolution and the Search for Dispassionate Arbitration
Chapter 4. "The Putrid Carnage of Contention": Religious Insurgency and Church Authority
Chapter 5. "A Great Curse to the Neighborhood": Church Property Disputes and State Authority
Conclusion
Acknowledgments
Appendix
Notes
Index
