Summary Of The Kingdom Of Matthias

Religion is something that heavily influenced the roots of American society. Freedom of religion is one of the many reasons why our founding fathers left their home to come to America. “The Kingdom of Matthias” by Paul E. Johnson and Sean Wilentz, takes place in early 19th century America, a time of rapid religious evolution. The book follows the lives of two men, Elijah Pierson and Robert Matthews, who are both self-proclaimed prophets.
The book begins with the story of Elijah Pierson who was raised into a strict Calvinist church upbringing, but was quickly and easily influenced to change his religious beliefs upon his arrival to New York to be a merchant. Pierson married a missionary woman named Sarah and together they established organizations …show more content…
Like Pierson, Matthews was an adamant believer. At work Matthews would attempt to preach to his co-workers, but was ultimately rejected and mocked for his beliefs. His style of preaching was harsh and he believed that women were inferior to men. He believed that women were evil and that they tempted men and distracted them from the word of God. Later on, Matthews began to become delusional and claimed to see visions and hear God speak. He eventually saw himself as “Prophet of the God of the Jews”. He began to attract followers and these followers would give him money, like offerings in a church. In 1832, Matthews and Pierson meet and Pierson wholeheartedly believes that Matthews is God’s Prophet. Matthews uses Pierson’s wealth and the money from his followers to establish a community which is known as the “kingdom”. Within the community Matthews would preach on a regular basis. He began to compare Christianity to the Devil’s work and hate extreme hate towards women. Many of his followers would reject the concept of Christian marriage and decided to be united in the “Spirit of Truth”. This caused a scandalous habit of basically switching up partners. This freedom of sexual activity was too much and some members of the community revolt. Hate from the public against the “kingdom”, along with the revolt, ultimately led to the “kingdom’s” …show more content…
However, the three of most importance are: William Leete Stone’s Matthias and His Impostures, Margaret Matthew’s Matthias. By His Wife, and Gilbert Vale’s Fanaticism. Stone’s account was published a little while after Matthias was convicted and it’s written from the point of view of Benjamin and Ann Folger. The pamphlet written by Margaret Matthews tells of her own experiences with her husband. Finally, Gilbert Vale’s two volumes were written from the point of view of Isabella Van Wagenen. The authors of The Kingdom of Matthias had to use independent sources to verify every detail of these accounts. Of the three, I would believe that Margaret Matthews’s accounts would be the one that was most rich in information and details about Robert Matthews. She was there through it all and the authors used her accounts to inform us of Robert Matthews life before he became Matthias. The authors do acknowledge that these sources are extremely biased and that each source must be fact checked. The sources were also weighted against each other to get facts that were as close to the truth as possible. The heavy use of bias sources makes a lot of the events questionable. Everything that was written was based off of fact and reality and even though the authors go to great lengths to get the truth from contradicting and biased sources, there still remains the question