Alexander Campbell: Adventurer in Freedom a Literary Biography, Vol. 1 (Literary Biography, Volume One) - Hardcover

Wrather, Eva J

9780875653051: Alexander Campbell: Adventurer in Freedom a Literary Biography, Vol. 1 (Literary Biography, Volume One)

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0875653057 ISBN 13: 9780875653051

Publisher: Texas Christian University Press, 2007

Eva Jean Wrather devoted seventy years to writing an 800,000-word biography of Alexander Campbell, founder of the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ), a monumental literary biography described by D. Duane Cummins as a creative and skillful blend of history and superb literary writing skills.

In the early 1990s, Cummins was asked to assist Ms. Wrather in revising her manuscript. Their work together makes up Volume One of Campbell’s biography, (TCU Press, 2005).

Volume Two follows Campbell’s life from 18231830, years filled with the storm of opinions in the pages of his successful magazine,The Christian Baptist, which won mixed hostility and support in Baptist and Presbyterian communities. Wrather records Campbell’s experience as a politician and delegate to the Virginia Constitutional Convention in 1829, where Campbell brushed shoulders with some of America’s most famous politicians and rhetoricians. Wrather believed these years were a crucial chapter in Campbell’s life, confirming his power as a thinker, speaker and writer.

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About the Author:

D. Duane Cummins is interim director of the Disciples of Christ Historical Society, a visiting scholar at Johns Hopkins University, the past president of Bethany College and of the Division of Higher Education of the Christian Church, and a former Darbeth-Whitten Professor of American History at Oklahoma City University.

Review:

This biography will serve Disciples of Christ members. It provides a readable account of Campbell's life and bolsters his religious principles. Scholars will find the lack of footnotes or bibliography frustrating throwbacks to earlier standards of confessional religious biographies. For them, Cummins' preface, which sets the book and the author in context and politely explains the limits of the approach, will be the most redeeming feature. Dr. Philip Mulder, High Point University; Journal of Southern History (for full review)

There is a wealth of material present in this volume, but it is a literary biography. It is accessible to several audiences from popular to scholarly....Wrather demonstrates that there is more to Campbell than the caricature that has often been portrayed in American religious history...Dr. Todd M. Brenneman, Florida State University; Religious Studies Review, Vol. 32, No. 1, 2006, p. 55 (for full review)

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