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Analysis Of Paul E. Johnson And Sean Wilentz's The Kingdom Of Matthias

1463 Words6 Pages

Paul E. Johnson and Sean Wilentz’s book, The Kingdom of Matthias, is a story of a religious cult that is formed in response to the changing economic, religious, and social roles in society in the 1820s and 1830s. Johnson and Wilentz discovered the story of Matthias and his Kingdom at different times, but both found the story to be an interesting one to write together. Throughout their research, they found that the information they found presented itself perfectly as a historical narrative, especially the form of a stage play . After merging their differing writing styles, they were able to write a book that they think did a relatively small story in American history justice. Many other small sects of religious reform happened during this time …show more content…

With him at the head, his faithful believer Isabella behind him, and a small group of believers in his cult, the cult grows and dies in a short amount of time. The sources the authors use for this stage play historical narrative conflicted due to who was telling the story. Stone tried to keep sexual scandal out of the story, effectively adding a bias to his story and making it somewhat unreliable. Vale took into account a testimony from Matthias’ believer Isabella (whose testimony was always conveniently collaborated by at least one white witness). The last source, ghostwritten by Matthias’ wife, talked primarily of Matthias as a person before he became the leader of the Kingdom, but it was unreliable due to misdating. There are instances where Vale and Stone contradict each other, with Vale prevailing due to the lack of major bias within the source. The authors are good at identifying the bias and working around it within the writing. Their methodology for dealing with these contradicting sources was to compare the sources and deal with their biases, and to go from there. Their sources came from eyewitness accounts (Isabella, Matthias’ wife), which have a tendency to change as time goes on and memories fail. There were also sensationalized newspaper articles of the trial of Matthias , but they were not used due to accuracy of their

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