| Book Review | The Journal of American History, 91.1

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| Book Review | The Journal of American History, 91.1 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

Identifying the Image of God: Radical Christians and Nonviolent Power in the Antebellum United States. By Dan McKanan. (New York: Oxford University Press, 2002. x, 294 pp. $52.00, ISBN 0-19-514532-1.)
Dan McKanan critiques what he terms the radical Christian liberal wing of antebellum reform from an avowedly insider perspective. In the introduction he states that one of his goals is to help revive the radical Christian liberal tradition. The result is a work that combines some intriguing insights with frustrating inconsistencies.	1
McKanan asserts that radical Christian liberals distinguished themselves by their willingness to see the image of God, or imago dei, in their fellow humans, whether Indians, drinkers, slaves, or other social outcasts. Because they saw the image of God in their fellow humans, the most consistent of these radicals adopted a stance of nonresistance to any form of coercion. Yet these reformers faced the reality of sinful human institutions and the question of violent resistance to oppression. McKanan traces the evolution of their ideas through sentimental literature, which he defines as literature that causes the reader to identify with the oppressed characters. Although he is vague on the composition of his subjects, his category of radical Christian liberals includes the Garrisonians, many Unitarians, Hicksite Quakers, and other reformers outside of Calvinist orthodoxy.	. . .

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