Awkward Rituals: Sensations of Governance in Protestant America

Awkward Rituals is a new account of early American religious history that argues for a new understanding of ritual. It focuses on the ways in which governance in the early republic was characterized by white Protestants reenacting the hierarchical authority of a seemingly rejected king. By emphasizing embodied action rather than discourse or law, Logan makes an original contribution to debates about the relative completeness of the American Revolution. She shows how white Protestants promoted a class-based society while simultaneously trumpeting egalitarianism, and how ritual distinctively captures what does not change through revolution.

Format: Hardback
Length: 184 pages
Publication date: 06 May 2022
Publisher: The University of Chicago Press

In the years between the American Revolution and the Civil War, a lingering persistence of sovereign rituals persisted, remnants of a monarchical past that proved difficult to shed. In her book, Awkward Rituals, Dana Logan directs our attention to these performances, unveiling how governance in the early republic was characterized by white Protestants reenacting the hierarchical authority of a seemingly rejected king. By focusing on embodied action rather than the more prevalent focus on discourse or law, Logan makes an original contribution to debates about the relative completeness of America's Revolution.

Awkward Rituals theorizes an under-examined form of action: rituals that do not feel natural even if they sometimes feel good. This account challenges common notions of ritual as a force that binds society and synthesizes the self. Logan's book ranges from Freemason initiations to evangelical societies to missionaries posing as sailors, demonstrating how white Protestants promoted a class-based society while simultaneously trumpeting egalitarianism. She thus reimagines ritual as a checkbox to check, a chore to complete, an embarrassing display of theatrical verve. In Awkward Rituals, Logan emphasizes how ritual distinctively captures what does not change through revolution.

Weight: 422g
Dimension: 160 x 236 x 19 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9780226818481