Introduction

Abstract The Introduction to Protestant Relics in Early America explains how Protestants in the early United States engaged relics as supernatural memory objects that generated the real presences of the dead. Protestant Relics were physical objects that transformed into supernatural matter at the moment of death. They included locks of hair, postmortem images, Bibles, clothes, letters, jewelry, and other objects that had belonged to, been touched by, or were associated with the dead. The Introduction includes a historiography of Protestant relics, as well as a discussion of the book’s methods for studying religion and material culture. Tracing Protestant relics from the Reformation to nineteenth-century America, this chapter reveals why relics are crucial for understanding American Protestantism, history, and politics. It argues that recovering the history and presence of Protestant relics in early America requires historians to set aside modern assumptions about matter that are embedded in the secular historical method.