Analyzing the Harmful Effects of Christianity on Epileptics in the Virginia State Colony In The Virginia State Colony for Epileptics and Feebleminded, Molly McBrown delivers a haunting account of three disabled women who are living in the Virginia State Colony. In the collection of poems, McBrown makes frequent use of religious motifs, including speaking in tongues, churches, altars, and praying. Although each character in the collection provides their own religious meaning and symbolism to the work, this analysis will focus on “The Convulsions Choir,” which is a poem narrated by Edith Miller, an epileptic woman living in the colony. “The Convulsions Choir” clearly communicates the mental torment and suffering of the feebleminded due to the exclusionary, hypocritical, and …show more content…
These are all behaviors that you might see in a typical Pentecostal service in a church. Since partial seizures are more common in adults than children, it is reasonable to conclude that Edith has some partial seizures and likely experienced uncontrolled speech or gibberish. In contrast, speaking in tongues is defined as speaking an unknown language during worship and is described as a spiritual gift in Corinthians 1:12 (“A Searchable Online Bible”). However, Edith knows that her seizures will never be considered a spiritual gift, and they will instead damn her to hell. Although Edith is doubtful that she will find salvation, she still wonders if she could reach God if her sisters all prayed and spoke in tongues together. Notably, she asks to be healed, perhaps hoping for the same miracle that Jesus gave the epileptic boy in the New Testament. The irony of Edith’s plea is that the colony staff who held her in the Virginia State Colony actually prevented her from being
Bradstreet focuses on the joy of her grandchild in heaven instead of her own pain. In dealing with this common reality of colonial life, Taylor and Bradstreet respond with similar outpourings reflective of their faith.
In the film “The Holy Ghost People,” right away we get individual accounts of what the “Holy Spirit” is to certain individuals. One woman says the Holy Ghost guides her and keeps her going. The people are very intense about their beliefs, which comes from the religion Pentecostalism, which has a hyper focus on personal experience with God and baptism with the Holy Spirit. We see them in their church, we hear the sermon, and see the ritualistic dances and the way the prayer overcomes them, and causes seizure like motions. We see and hear the prayers for the healing of one woman’s eyesight, and another woman’s back pain. One man, seemingly the pastor, says that “if God is not doing what they ask, people aren’t believing hard enough.” Later we get an account from a woman of how she was nursed back to health as a little girl brought her nutrients, and she believes it was
In the 1700’s the Puritans left England for the fear of being persecuted. They moved to America for religious freedom. The Puritans lived from God’s laws. They did not depend as much on material things, and they had a simpler and conservative life. More than a hundred years later, the Puritan’s belief toward their church started to fade away. Some Puritans were not able to recognize their religion any longer, they felt that their congregations had grown too self-satisfied. They left their congregations, and their devotion to God gradually faded away. To rekindle the fervor that the early Puritans had, Jonathan Edwards and other Puritan ministers led a religious revival through New England. Edwards preached intense sermons that awakened his congregation to an awareness of their sins. With Edwards’ sermon, “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God” he persuades the Puritans to convert back to Puritanism, by utilizing rhetorical strategies such as, imagery, loaded diction, and a threatening and fearful tone.
First of all, in this era, individuals did not understand the human anatomy or scientific aspects of life. However, these individuals solely relied on spiritual beliefs, such as God. This is evident in David Hall’s essay Worlds of Wonder in the Northern Colonies, conveys that their way of life was extremely religious. According to Hall, he illustrates that “wonders” are due to supernatural and by God’s will. This is vital information because these individuals were not knowledgeable to make valid accusations.
The novel The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver depicts religion in an aberrant way. Nathan Price is a character from the novel who is married to Orleanna Price and is the father of Leah, Adah, Rachel, and Ruth May. Nathan Price is a preacher from Georgia in the United States and decides upon himself to take his family to the Congo on a mission. Thus leaving the family with no option to stay or go, already revealing the tension between the family and presenting their character relations. In Barbara Kingsolver’s novel The Poisonwood Bible she uses characterization, character motives, and the theme of repetition to convey her interpretation of religion.
In the late 1600’s, literature is dissimilar from today’s, such as focusing on being sent into the fiery pits of hell only because one hasn’t converted to Puritanism. There are also different types of writing to display the righteousness and positives of being a converted and loyal to the Puritan culture. Anne Bradstreet and Jonathan Edwards are two popular Puritan authors who project different messages and portray a varying energy through a slim number of their pieces. The poems, “To My Dear and Loving Husband” or “Upon the Burning of Our House” by Anne Bradstreet or “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God” by Jonathan Edwards are fit examples of the Puritan age and what Puritans belive to be religiously
In both The Martyrdom of Saints Perpetua and Felicity and Appeal to the Christian Women of the South, the women in the stories are using scripture to explain and justify the claims they make about their faith and the faith of others. They do this by sharing stories about their life and events in their lives to show how the spirit has been moved into them. Both texts describe how these women see themselves as readers of the Bible, what religious authority each is claiming, and what new social reality each woman is arguing that is in keeping of God’s will for human beings.
Jean DeMarr, Mary. “The Poisonwood Bible (1998)”. Barbara Kingsolver A Critical Companion. Ed. Kathleen Gregory Klein. Connecticut Greenwood Press, 1999. 117-144. Print.
Washington, Mary Helen. Foreword. Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston. 1990 ed.
Writer and member of the 1920’s literary movement, Langston Hughes, in his autobiographical essay, Salvation, elucidates the loss of innocence and faith due to the pressure of accepting a concept that he has yet to acknowledge. Hughes’ purpose is to describe his childhood experience of the burden to be saved by Jesus, resulting in his loss of faith. He adopts a solemn, yet disappointing tone to convey his childhood event and argues the unqualified religious pressure.
In summarization, Edwards has shown in history that he is very convincing to others about his opinions and ideas. Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God is one of the best examples of this, because all the literary devices he uses, and all of the means of persuasion, are very easily detected by the audience, and make it very easy for the audience to become afraid, and take Edwards’s side in order to feel safe. Edwards’s use of loaded language, vivid imagery, and sentence style all contribute to conveying the ideas of fear in the audience. These ideas of fear persuade the audience to become better Puritans, or to convert altogether.
The story begins with the protagonist, Tia, and her best friend, Marcelle, hanging out after Sunday School as usual, watching and gossiping about the other girls. However, this Sunday was different as Tia is struggling with the message from her class. The readings from that morning showed how conservative Tia’s life was at this point. In addition to these traditional readings, many of the girls in Tia’s class were beginning to speak in tongues; however, Tia is unable to master this skill. “You could only truly speak in tongues when all the worldly matters were emptied from your mind, or else there was no room for God.” Tia is constantly trying to achieve this connection, but is
Religion was the foundation of the early Colonial American Puritan writings. Many of the early settlements were comprised of men and women who fled Europe in the face of persecution to come to a new land and worship according to their own will. Their beliefs were stalwartly rooted in the fact that God should be involved with all facets of their lives and constantly worshiped. These Puritans writings focused on their religious foundations related to their exodus from Europe and religions role in their life on the new continent. Their literature helped to proselytize the message of God and focused on hard work and strict adherence to religious principles, thus avoiding eternal damnation. These main themes are evident in the writings of Jonathan Edwards, Cotton Mathers, and John Winthrop. This paper will explore the writings of these three men and how their religious views shaped their literary works, styles, and their historical and political views.
The Puritan life, although simple, demanded diligence both mentally and spiritually which put stress on even the most faithful of followers. Although the common practice entailed brushing religious struggles under the rug, few writers bravely wrote of their religious doubts and endeavors to become better Puritans. Author Anne Bradstreet shows in her work “Here Follows Some Verse upon the Burning of Our House, July 10th, 1666” that religious struggles are often met by Puritans and it takes brave souls to admit their difficult time with their religion. This poem shows a woman dealing with a religious crisis and how even though she struggles her faith still holds strong in the end. Bradstreet’s poem displays a crisis of faith in her content and reflects her struggle with the Puritan beliefs, however, the form and structure of the poem reflect her internal religious solidarity.
Questions about God, knowledge, freedom, and immortality are asked not only by philosophers, but by all individuals. Answers to these questions are extraordinarily contradictory because different beliefs and opinions are held by everyone. A major philosophical issue is that of personal identity and immortality. Most commonly, philosophers attempt to discover what makes someone the same person they were ten or 20 years ago. Some argue that memory is the key to personal identity: however, others object.