Religion Collection
X is the library's major classification for books on
religion. The collection covers the whole range of American religious
experience, representing all religious denominations and sects, Christian
and non-Christian. Among the many subjects classified within X are
works on Adventists, Baptists, Congregationalists, deists,
Episcopalians, Jews, Mennonites, spiritualists, and transcendentalists.
The collection is approximately 6,500 volumes strong. It
consists primarily of books, and does not include, for example, the
fifteen to twenty thousand individual sermons housed in the Pamphlets
collections.
Four broad categories of religious material are cataloged
under this classification. In the first category are American
editions on theology, devotional literature, doctrinal works, and
religious controversy for the period 1821-76. The Society collects
comprehensively in this area. The second category includes
non-American editions of religious works with strong relevance to
American religious history. Particularly notable in this
category are the seventeenth-century English editions of works by
ministers and theologians like Ames, Shepard, and Davenport. Although
the Society no longer actively collects such editions, this part
of the collection is useful to the student of colonial religion. Many
of our copies were originally owned by prominent American
ministers. The third group of religious materials in the Society's
collection are the imprints of the American mission presses, except those
from Hawaii, which are shelved in the Hawaiian
collection. Missionaries of the American Board of Commissioners for
Foreign Missions as well as those of specific denominations
established presses to spread the printed Gospel and other religious
and educational tracts in
the languages of the world's people. Notable examples of this
genre in the collection are The Gospel According to John printed in
Thai by the ABCFM Press at Bangkok in 1849, the first Peguan edition of
The Life of Our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ printed by the
American Baptist Mission Press at Maulmain, Burma, in 1837,
and An Alphabetic Dictionary of the Chinese Language in the
Foochow Dialect by Robert Samuel Maclay, printed at Foochow by the
Methodist Episcopal Mission Press in 1870. Finally, the collection
includes secondary works of any publication date that treat the history
of religious ideas, denominations, and movements in America
through 1876.
Several other collections contain materials useful to the
student of American religious history. The Mather Library, the Mather
Collection, the Reserve Collection, and the Dated Books
Collection each include significant works of theology and religion. Works
treating the history of religion in particular states and cities,
including histories and manuals of individual churches, and official
publications of Bible societies, Sunday School unions, or other religious
organizations, are to be found in the Local History and Institutions
collections. Devotional works for children, catechisms, and many of the
publications of the Sunday school and religious tract societies are
included in the American Children's Books and Tracts collections.
- Richard C. Fyffe, former Senior Cataloger in the
American Children's Books Project, and Doris O'Keefe, Senior
Cataloger.
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Protestants and Pictures
The Gospel According to John. Translated
for the
Am. Bible Society by J. Caswell & Hemenway. Published in Bangkok in
1849.
A page from The Gospel
According to John (Bangkok,
1849).
For current information on the cataloging status of this and
other AAS collections, choose "Collection Access" below.
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