Spreading the Word: The Bible Business in Nineteenth-century America

"Peter J. Wosh weaves a richly detailed narrative that places the Society's transformation within the cultural, racial, and religious landscape of its times. In the process, he offers keen insight into the processes of institutionalization, bureaucratization, professionalization, and community-building. Spreading the Word is also the story of people - from patrician New Yorkers who sat on the ABS governing board to shrewd young men-on-the-rise who served as Bible agents, from wealthy Quaker philanthropist Thomas Eddy, who conceived the ABS as part of a larger network of savings banks, penitentiaries, and other urban reforms, to poverty-stricken New Englander Simeon Calhoun, who discovered his mission in life selling Bibles and preaching salvation throughout Turkey and Lebanon. As Wosh journeys through venues as diverse as a clapboard Primitive Baptist meetinghouse in Kentucky and the spectacular five-story Bible House in New York City, he overturns traditional views of benevolence and reform. Drawing on the Society's previously unexplored archives and on other contemporary accounts, Wosh conveys the flavor - and the ironies - of organizational life. He illustrates how the ABS adapted its fund-raising strategies, financial structure, corporate organization, and technological infrastructure to meet rapidly changing national conditions, and he raises important questions about the nature of religion and reform in a market-oriented society."--BOOK JACKET.