Cincinnati’s Infernal Regions Exhibit and the Waning of Calvinist Authority
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 16768871 |
|---|---|
| Authors | David J Voelker (0000-0002-3049-4799, University of Wisconsin–Green Bay, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2008 |
| Volume | 9 |
| Issue | 3 |
| Pages | 219-239 |
| Publication date | 2008-09-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | American Nineteenth Century History (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 1466-4658 • E-ISSN: 1743-7903 |
| Publisher | Informa UK Limited (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.1080/14664650802348417 |
| OpenAlex | W1984633526 |
| Language | EN |
| References cited | 32 |
The Infernal Regions exhibit, which was hosted by Cincinnati’s Western Museum from 1828 to 1867, presented visitors with a vivid virtual hell. Created primarily by English author Francis Trollope and soon‐to‐be‐famous sculptor Hiram Powers, the exhibit featured an array of realistic, mobile automatons, as well as special effects of sound and lighting. Famous in its time, the simulated hell reflected a fundamental transformation of American religious culture. While some visitors took the exhibit’s content seriously, the producers of the Infernal Regions were critics of Calvinist theology, and they treated their subject – hell, damnation, and eternal suffering – as a source of entertainment and profit. While the mechanical ingenuity and novelty of the Infernal Regions drew thousands of paying customers, the religious content signaled the declining power of Christian ministers to control religious and moral discourse – especially the fading ability of educated Calvinist ministers to maintain rigorous doctrines of predestination and hell
Art · Broadside · Calvinism · Damnation · Entertainment · Epistemology · Ingenuity · Literature · Orthodoxy · Political science · Predestination · Sociology · Subject (documents · Theology · American Constitutional Law and Politics · Computer Science · History · Law · Philosophy · Reformation and Early Modern Christianity · Religious studies · Religious Tourism and Spaces
The Democratization of American Christianity
Historical atlas of religion in America.
Revolution and the word
A religious history of the American people
The Sermons of Jonathan Edwards
Domestic Manners of the Americans
Without God, Without Creed
Hiram Powers
Hell Disappeared. No One Noticed. A Civic Argument
Men and Manners in America
From the Age of Reason to the Age of Barnum
Piety versus Moralism
The Beginnings of Unitarianism in America
The Rungless Ladder
Cosmos Crumbling
Changing Conceptions of Original Sin
The River and the Garden
The Beginnings of Unitarianism in America
A Certain Magnificence
Murder Most Foul
Awash in a Sea of Faith
The Role of Automata in the History of Technology
Beginnings of Literary Culture in the Ohio Valley
Society, Manners, and Politics in the United States
Curiosities Too Numerous to Mention
| Citation velocity | historical |
|---|---|
| Highly cited | No |