Elijah Pierson Sparknotes - 1247 Words

Paul E. Johnson and Sean Wilentz wrote a biographical story of a man named Matthias, whose original name was Matthew Roberts. They were intrigued by his murder trial from the nineteen century (181). The storyline clearly presents controversy of Matthew Roberts way of life, his preachings, and the events that took place in his Kingdom Mount Zion. Mr. Roberts was a great influencer as a religious man during the nineteenth century. Religion, in my opinion, are one of the main symbols of this storyline. Religion influenced the way the characters in this story made decision and acted in such vigorous ways. For example, the life of Elijah Pierson. He was one of the prestigious man in New York City who fell in love with Sarah Stanford. Sarah†¦show more content†¦The authors then started to describe Matthew Roberts life story in great detail from his childhood to his adulthood in chapter two just after the biography of Elijah Pierson. Matthew Roberts started out well for himself. Bu t later, I came to read that he was an abusive husband. He lost countless jobs due to his preaching to his coworkers of sinful doings which later resulted in him being discharge from his place of work. Because of Matthias inconsistency with work it led his family to drown in debt and became poor. Eventually, Matthias once again spoke in sermons about his beliefs. Although many thought he was insane, he still gained audiences that truly believed him. His acts of religion led him powerful enough to start a Kingdom named Mount Zion. Mount Zion was a placed owned originally by Elijah Pierson but when Matthias visited, he said it was the perfect place to start the Kingdom and so they did. It was indeed a perfect place in their eyes but things started to become chaotic when Matthias started assigning sexual partners for himself and his followers. These led to other suspicious events such as the sudden death of Elijah Pierson who later Matthias was accused for his death and was charge of m urder and fraud. He was also charged for his acts toward his daughter for beating her after Benjamin Folgers slept with her even though she was already a married woman. All in all this story was shocking from the themes of poverty, power, wealth, religion,