Religion and the American Nation - read free eBook in online reader or directly download on the web page. Select files or add your book in reader. Download and read online ebook Religion and the American Nation write by John Frederick Wilson. This book was released on 2003. Religion and the American Nation available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. This lively survey ranges across several centuries of change in the ways historians have thought and written about religion in America. In particular, John F. Wilson is concerned with how historians have perceived religion's relationship to the political organization of our country. He begins by establishing the genesis of religion as a specialized area of American history in the nineteenth century, and then discusses religious history's development through the early 1970s. Along the way he considers topics ranging from the "long shadow" the Puritans have cast over our comprehension of religion in American history to the ascendancy of such institutions as the University of Chicago as systematizing forces in religious scholarship. Wilson then discusses how scholars, since the early 1970s, have sought to ground their accounts of American religious trends and events in ways that either avoid or transcend references to Puritanism. The rise of comparative religious histories, Wilson notes, has been the welcome outcome. Moving into the present, Wilson explores a range of behaviors, if not beliefs, that might be understood as religious aspects of American life, and looks at how the spiritual or religious dimensions of American cultural life have been expressed in gnosticism, the mass media, and consumerism. One commentator, Wilson notes, suggested that there are no longer any religions as such in America today, but only religious "brands." Wilson himself sees America as a place where there is room for Old World traditions and new spiritual initiatives, a modern nation remarkably hospitable to ancient preoccupations.
Conceived in Doubt
Conceived in Doubt - read free eBook in online reader or directly download on the web page. Select files or add your book in reader. Download and read online ebook Conceived in Doubt write by Amanda Porterfield. This book was released on 2012-04-23. Conceived in Doubt available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Americans have long acknowledged a deep connection between evangelical religion and democracy in the early days of the republic. This is a widely accepted narrative that is maintained as a matter of fact and tradition—and in spite of evangelicalism’s more authoritarian and reactionary aspects. In Conceived in Doubt, Amanda Porterfield challenges this standard interpretation of evangelicalism’s relation to democracy and describes the intertwined relationship between religion and partisan politics that emerged in the formative era of the early republic. In the 1790s, religious doubt became common in the young republic as the culture shifted from mere skepticism toward darker expressions of suspicion and fear. But by the end of that decade, Porterfield shows, economic instability, disruption of traditional forms of community, rampant ambition, and greed for land worked to undermine heady optimism about American political and religious independence. Evangelicals managed and manipulated doubt, reaching out to disenfranchised citizens as well as to those seeking political influence, blaming religious skeptics for immorality and social distress, and demanding affirmation of biblical authority as the foundation of the new American national identity. As the fledgling nation took shape, evangelicals organized aggressively, exploiting the fissures of partisan politics by offering a coherent hierarchy in which God was king and governance righteous. By laying out this narrative, Porterfield demolishes the idea that evangelical growth in the early republic was the cheerful product of enthusiasm for democracy, and she creates for us a very different narrative of influence and ideals in the young republic.
Was America Founded as a Christian Nation?
Was America Founded as a Christian Nation? - read free eBook in online reader or directly download on the web page. Select files or add your book in reader. Download and read online ebook Was America Founded as a Christian Nation? write by John Fea. This book was released on 2011-02-16. Was America Founded as a Christian Nation? available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Fea offers an even-handed primer on whether America was founded to be a Christian nation, as many evangelicals assert, or a secular state, as others contend. He approaches the title's question from a historical perspective, helping readers see past the emotional rhetoric of today to the recorded facts of our past. Readers on both sides of the issues will appreciate that this book occupies a middle ground, noting the good points and the less-nuanced arguments of both sides and leading us always back to the primary sources that our shared American history comprises.
Patriotism and Piety
Patriotism and Piety - read free eBook in online reader or directly download on the web page. Select files or add your book in reader. Download and read online ebook Patriotism and Piety write by Jonathan J. Den Hartog. This book was released on 2015-01-12. Patriotism and Piety available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. In Patriotism and Piety, Jonathan Den Hartog argues that the question of how religion would function in American society was decided in the decades after the Constitution and First Amendment established a legal framework. Den Hartog shows that among the wide array of politicians and public figures struggling to define religion’s place in the new nation, Federalists stood out—evolving religious attitudes were central to Federalism, and the encounter with Federalism strongly shaped American Christianity. Den Hartog describes the Federalist appropriations of religion as passing through three stages: a "republican" phase of easy cooperation inherited from the experience of the American Revolution; a "combative" phase, forged during the political battles of the 1790s–1800s, when the destiny of the republic was hotly contested; and a "voluntarist" phase that grew in importance after 1800. Faith became more individualistic and issue-oriented as a result of the actions of religious Federalists. Religious impulses fueled party activism and informed governance, but the redirection of religious energies into voluntary societies sapped party momentum, and religious differences led to intraparty splits. These developments altered not only the Federalist Party but also the practice and perception of religion in America, as Federalist insights helped to create voluntary, national organizations in which Americans could practice their faith in interdenominational settings. Patriotism and Pietyfocuses on the experiences and challenges confronted by a number of Federalists, from well-known leaders such as John Adams, John Jay, Charles Cotesworth Pinckney, and Timothy Dwight to lesser-known but still important figures such as Caleb Strong, Elias Boudinot, and William Jay.
Inventing American Religion
Inventing American Religion - read free eBook in online reader or directly download on the web page. Select files or add your book in reader. Download and read online ebook Inventing American Religion write by Robert Wuthnow. This book was released on 2015. Inventing American Religion available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Inventing American Religion traces the history of polling, examining its powerful rise in supplying information about the nation's faith, chronicling its current weaknesses, and tackling the difficult questions of how we should think about polls and surveys in American religion today.
