Jamie L. Brummitt, "Protestant Relics in Early America" (Oxford UP, 2025)

August 27, 2026

AI Summary

5 min read

Protestant Relics in Early America

In 1775, as American soldiers marched toward Quebec for what would become one of the Revolution's most disastrous campaigns, they made a detour. They stopped at the tomb of George Whitefield, the famous evangelical preacher who had died five years earlier, and took pieces of him—his clothing, fragments of his corpse—carrying these objects into battle as supernatural aids. This was not an eccentric fringe practice. As Jamie L. Brummitt shows in Protestant Relics in Early America, it was part of a widespread, patterned religious culture that historians have largely missed because they assumed Protestants could not have relics.

What a Protestant Relic Actually Is

Brummitt defines a Protestant relic as "a supernatural memory object of the dead." This covers locks of hair, clothing, images of corpses, deathbed objects—anything transformed into a relic through Protestant devotional practice. The definition matters because it pushes against two entrenched assumptions: first, that relics are exclusively Catholic; second, that Protestantism is best understood as a tradition of abstract ideas rather than material practices.

Continue reading the full summary in the app — free to try.

Read Full Summary →

Free • No credit card required

Listen to Audio Summary Open in App

Never miss an episode of New Books in Christian Studies

Get every new episode summarized in your inbox — free, ~5 minutes to read.

No spam. Unsubscribe anytime.

What you'll learn

1 (02:19) **Definition: What is a "Protestant Relic"?** - Brummitt gives the core definition that frames the entire book.
2 (03:36) **Two Big Claims of the Book** - Brummitt outlines the major historiographical arguments she is making.
3 (07:48) **Connections to America 250 and Civil Religion** - The discussion turns to how the book is being received in the context of the upcoming semiquincentennial.
4 (11:09) **The Lived Religion Framework** - Brummitt explains the interdisciplinary method that makes her analysis possible.
5 (12:25) **Key Historiographical Interventions** - Brummitt details the scholarly debates she is correcting.
6 (20:42) **Archival Serendipity: The Deathbed Letter Template** - Brummitt shares a key moment of discovery in the archives.
7 (24:33) **Favorite Chapter: The Catholic Commentary** - Brummitt explains why the chapter on Catholic reactions was the most fun to write.

+ Full timestamped outline available in the app

Show Notes

Edward Blum interviews Dr. Jamie L. Brummitt on how new book Protestant Relics in Early America.

In Protestant Relics in Early America (Oxford UP, 2025), Jamie L. Brummitt upends long-held assumptions about religion and material culture in the early United States. Brummitt chronicles how American Protestants cultivated a lively relic culture centered around collecting supernatural memory objects associated with dead Christian leaders, family members, and friends. These objects materialized the real physical presences of God, Jesus, the Holy Spirit, and souls of the dead on earth.
As Brummitt demonstrates, people of nearly all Protestant denominations and walks of life--including members of Congress, college presidents, ministers, mothers, free Black activists, schoolchildren, and enslaved people--sought embodied and supernatural sense experiences with relics. They collected relics from deathbeds, stole relics from tombs, made relics in schools, visited relics at pilgrimage sites like George Washington's Mount Vernon, purchased relics in the marketplace, and carried relics into the American Revolution and the Civil War. Locks of hair, blood, bones, portraits, daguerreotypes, post-mortem photographs, memoirs, deathbed letters, Bibles, clothes, embroidered and painted mourning pieces, and a plethora of other objects that had been touched, used, or owned by the dead became Protestant relics. These relic practices were so pervasive that they shaped systems of earthly and heavenly power, from young women's education to national elections to Protestant-Catholic relations to the structure of freedom and families in the afterlife.
In recovering the forgotten history and presence of Protestant relics in early America, Brummitt demonstrates how material practices of religion defined early American politics and how the Enlightenment enhanced rather than diminished embodied presence. Moreover, Brummitt reveals how the secular historical method has obscured the supernatural significance of relics for the Protestants who made, collected, exchanged, treasured, and passed them down. This book will be an essential resource for scholars and students of early American history, religion, politics, art, and popular culture.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/christian-studies