David Fahey's post this morning effectively opens the floor on our "virtual seminar" on Laura Schmidt's new paper, "'A Battle Not Man's But God's': Origins of the American Temperance Crusade in the Struggle for Religious Authority," *Journal of Studies on Alcohol* 56:110-121, 1995. All ATHG-L members are, of course, cordially invited to participate. Perhaps some introductory comments are in order--primarily to "spike" this seminar with some discussion-starting questions & probes: As I read it, Schmidt's paper falls squarely in a broad revisionist tradition begun with Burnham's 1968 paper ("New Perspectives on the Prohibition 'Experiment' of the 1920s," *Journal of Social History* 2:51-68), given bold expression in Clark's (1976) essay, & carried forward in Blocker's (1989) *Temperance Cycles* monograph. This revised historiography aims to take the temperance move- ment *seriously*--by faithfully assessing its observation- al perspectives & aspirations, by taking seriously the drinking patterns & personal/social problems that 19th-c. temperance advocates faced, & by eschewing the dismissive rhetorical stance of a previous, Repeal-spawned historio- graphy (from, roughly speaking, Barnes [1932: *Prohibition Versus Civilization: Analyzing the Dry Psychosis*, New York: The Viking Press] to Sinclair [1962: *Prohibition: The Era of Excess*, Boston, Toronto: Little, Brown & Co.). In beautifully plainspoken prose, Schmidt offers both some history & some interesting argumentation. She positions her argument as a new "idealism" juxtaposed to the "materialisms" of a selection of past theorist. But how well does that dichotomy actually fit her paper's argu- ment? Is her story of conservative Protestant leadership struggling to maintain status under the new pressures of the Early Republic in fact more like than unlike Gus- field's "status politics" argument in *Symbolic Crusade*? How well does the "materialist" label actually fit Le- vine's & Rorabaugh's hypotheses about temperance's Amer- ican origins? Where is arguably the temperance movement's most materialistically oriented American theorist--John Rum- barger--in Schmidt's discussion? Schmidt's essay implicitly locates the seeds of what Selden Bacon called the classic American temperance movement in the beleagured leadership of contemporary Presbyterian & Congregational churches. But how then are we to interpret the strong currents of temperance sentiment that flowed as readily through the evangelical denominations (Methodists & Baptists) whose numbers swelled over the 19th-c's 1st half? How should we translate the status-preserving preoccupations of men like Dwight & Beecher into the motives & interests of the men & women of the T movement's rank & file? Schmidt argues that the key doctrinal shift at the temperance movement's commencement was the jettisoning of traditional Calvinism's commitment to predestination & the community of the elect. She makes the novel & interesting argument that a new commitment to sobriety derived from the new premium on sober rationality that the new ideology of earned or self-chosen grace occasioned. But doesn't this premium on sobriety also as easily recall traditional Calvinism's demand for second-to-second vigilance re personal conduct? How does Schmidt's argument relating to this new premium on sober rationality apply to the temperance-related enthusiasms of the considerably less rationalistically oriented evangelical denominations? The floor, folks, is open!