A Divinity for All Persuasions

The almanac was early America's most affordable and widespread form of print. At its core, it was a calendar and an astrologically-based medical handbook punctuated by poetry, moral axioms, and amusing anecdotes. A Divinity for All Persuasions investigates the religious significance of early America's most ubiquitous popular genre. Other than a Bible and perhaps a few sermons and schoolbooks, an almanac was the only printed item most people owned before 1820 and almanac-makers becameastute arbiters of popular opinion. Catering to consumer demand by drawing on the religious works of their day, early American almanac-makers placed a distilled Protestant vernacular at the center of their publications. By disseminating a recognizable collection of Protestant concepts regarding God's existence, divine revelation, the human condition, and the afterlife, almanacs played an unparalleled role in reinforcing British North America's shared religious culture." Employing a wealthof archival material, T.J. Tomlin analyzes the pan-Protestant sensibility distributed through the almanacs' pages between 1730 and 1820. Influenced by readers' opinions and printers' pragmatism, the religious content of popular print supports a fresh interpretation of early American cultural and religious history. In sharp contrast to a historiography centered on intra-Protestant competition, Tomlin shows that most early Americans relied on a handful of Protestant "essentials" (the Bible, the afterlife, and a recognizably moral life) rather than denominational specifics to define and organize their religious lives. A Divinity for All Persuasions uncovers the prevailing religious sensibility at the center of early America's most popular form of print."