Americas Battle For God
Download Americas Battle For God full books in PDF, epub, and Kindle. Read online free Americas Battle For God ebook anywhere anytime directly on your device. Fast Download speed and no annoying ads. We cannot guarantee that every ebooks is available!
| Author | : Muller-Fahrenholz |
| Publisher | : Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing |
| Total Pages | : 204 |
| Release | : 2007 |
| Genre | : History |
| ISBN | : 0802844189 |
A theologian and ecumenical consultant who has served in the World Council of Churches, the Lutheran Church, and Costa Rica, M ller-Fahrenholz tries to make some sense of religious undercurrents in the public culture and political life of the US. He hopes that an outsider may be able to identify elements that Americans are too close to see, acknowl
| Author | : Mark A. Noll |
| Publisher | : Oxford University Press |
| Total Pages | : 637 |
| Release | : 2002-10-03 |
| Genre | : Religion |
| ISBN | : 0199882231 |
Religious life in early America is often equated with the fire-and-brimstone Puritanism best embodied by the theology of Cotton Mather. Yet, by the nineteenth century, American theology had shifted dramatically away from the severe European traditions directly descended from the Protestant Reformation, of which Puritanism was in the United States the most influential. In its place arose a singularly American set of beliefs. In America's God, Mark Noll has written a biography of this new American ethos. In the 125 years preceding the outbreak of the Civil War, theology played an extraordinarily important role in American public and private life. Its evolution had a profound impact on America's self-definition. The changes taking place in American theology during this period were marked by heightened spiritual inwardness, a new confidence in individual reason, and an attentiveness to the economic and market realities of Western life. Vividly set in the social and political events of the age, America's God is replete with the figures who made up the early American intellectual landscape, from theologians such as Jonathan Edwards, Nathaniel W. Taylor, William Ellery Channing, and Charles Hodge and religiously inspired writers such as Harriet Beecher Stowe and Catherine Stowe to dominant political leaders of the day like Washington, Jefferson, and Lincoln. The contributions of these thinkers combined with the religious revival of the 1740s, colonial warfare with France, the consuming struggle for independence, and the rise of evangelical Protestantism to form a common intellectual coinage based on a rising republicanism and commonsense principles. As this Christian republicanism affirmed itself, it imbued in dedicated Christians a conviction that the Bible supported their beliefs over those of all others. Tragically, this sense of religious purpose set the stage for the Civil War, as the conviction of Christians both North and South that God was on their side served to deepen a schism that would soon rend the young nation asunder. Mark Noll has given us the definitive history of Christian theology in America from the time of Jonathan Edwards to the presidency of Abraham Lincoln. It is a story of a flexible and creative theological energy that over time forged a guiding national ideology the legacies of which remain with us to this day.
| Author | : Raymond Haberski, Jr. |
| Publisher | : Rutgers University Press |
| Total Pages | : 301 |
| Release | : 2012-07-23 |
| Genre | : History |
| ISBN | : 0813553180 |
Americans have long considered their country to be good—a nation "under God" with a profound role to play in the world. Yet nothing tests that proposition like war. Raymond Haberski argues that since 1945 the common moral assumptions expressed in an American civil religion have become increasingly defined by the nation's experience with war. God and War traces how three great postwar “trials”—the Cold War, the Vietnam War, and the War on Terror—have revealed the promise and perils of an American civil religion. Throughout the Cold War, Americans combined faith in God and faith in the nation to struggle against not only communism but their own internal demons. The Vietnam War tested whether America remained a nation "under God," inspiring, somewhat ironically, an awakening among a group of religious, intellectual and political leaders to save the nation's soul. With the tenth anniversary of 9/11 behind us and the subsequent wars in Iraq and Afghanistan winding down, Americans might now explore whether civil religion can exist apart from the power of war to affirm the value of the nation to its people and the world.
| Author | : Karen Armstrong |
| Publisher | : HarperCollins UK |
| Total Pages | : 460 |
| Release | : 2001 |
| Genre | : History |
| ISBN | : 0006383483 |
One of the most potent forces bedevilling the modern world is religious fundamentalism. Armstrong explains how and why fundamentalists' understanding of religion and society differs so starkly from that of their contemporaries.
| Author | : Thomas Albert Howard |
| Publisher | : Oxford University Press |
| Total Pages | : 271 |
| Release | : 2011-01-20 |
| Genre | : History |
| ISBN | : 0199565511 |
The first major work of cultural and intellectual history devoted to the subject of the transatlantic religious divide. Using nineteenth and early twentieth century commentary on the subject, Howard helps us understand why Americans have maintained much friendlier ties with traditional forms of religion than their European counterparts.
| Author | : Kevin M. Kruse |
| Publisher | : Basic Books |
| Total Pages | : 385 |
| Release | : 2015-04-14 |
| Genre | : History |
| ISBN | : 0465040640 |
The provocative and authoritative history of the origins of Christian America in the New Deal era We're often told that the United States is, was, and always has been a Christian nation. But in One Nation Under God, historian Kevin M. Kruse reveals that the belief that America is fundamentally and formally Christian originated in the 1930s. To fight the "slavery" of FDR's New Deal, businessmen enlisted religious activists in a campaign for "freedom under God" that culminated in the election of their ally Dwight Eisenhower in 1952. The new president revolutionized the role of religion in American politics. He inaugurated new traditions like the National Prayer Breakfast, as Congress added the phrase "under God" to the Pledge of Allegiance and made "In God We Trust" the country's first official motto. Church membership soon soared to an all-time high of 69 percent. Americans across the religious and political spectrum agreed that their country was "one nation under God." Provocative and authoritative, One Nation Under God reveals how an unholy alliance of money, religion, and politics created a false origin story that continues to define and divide American politics to this day.
| Author | : Jason W. Stevens |
| Publisher | : Harvard University Press |
| Total Pages | : 449 |
| Release | : 2011-03-15 |
| Genre | : History |
| ISBN | : 0674058844 |
Religion has been on the rise in America for decades—which strikes many as a shocking new development. To the contrary, Jason Stevens asserts, the rumors of the death of God were premature. Americans have always conducted their cultural life through religious symbols, never more so than during the Cold War. In God-Fearing and Free, Stevens discloses how the nation, on top of the world and torn between grandiose self-congratulation and doubt about the future, opened the way for a new master narrative. The book shows how the American public, powered by a national religious revival, was purposefully disillusioned regarding the country’s mythical innocence and fortified for an epochal struggle with totalitarianism. Stevens reveals how the Augustinian doctrine of original sin was refurbished and then mobilized in a variety of cultural discourses that aimed to shore up democratic society against threats preying on the nation’s internal weaknesses. Suddenly, innocence no longer meant a clear conscience. Instead it became synonymous with totalitarian ideologies of the fascist right or the communist left, whose notions of perfectability were dangerously close to millenarian ideals at the heart of American Protestant tradition. As America became riddled with self-doubt, ruminations on the meaning of power and the future of the globe during the “American Century” renewed the impetus to religion. Covering a wide selection of narrative and cultural forms, Stevens shows how writers, artists, and intellectuals, the devout as well as the nonreligious, disseminated the terms of this cultural dialogue, disputing, refining, and challenging it—effectively making the conservative case against modernity as liberals floundered.
| Author | : Stephen Mansfield |
| Publisher | : Thomas Nelson |
| Total Pages | : 268 |
| Release | : 2012-11-12 |
| Genre | : Biography & Autobiography |
| ISBN | : 159555419X |
Join New York Times bestselling author Stephen Mansfield as he dives into the incredible story of Abraham Lincoln's spiritual life and draws from it a deeper meaning that's sure to inspire us all. Abraham Lincoln is, undoubtedly, among the most beloved of all U.S. presidents. He helped to abolish slavery, gave the world some of its most memorable speeches, and redefined the meaning of America. He did all of this with endless wisdom, compassion, and wit. Yet, throughout his life, Lincoln fought with God. In his early years in Illinois, he rejected even the existence of God and became the village atheist. In time, this changed but still, he wrestled with the truth of the Bible, preachers, doctrines, the will of God, the providence of God, and then, finally, God's purposes in the Civil War. Still, on the day he was shot, Lincoln said he longed to go to Jerusalem to walk in the Savior's steps. In this thrilling journey through a largely unknown part of American history, Mansfield traces Lincoln's exploring: Lincoln's lifelong spiritual journey The ways that Lincoln's faith shaped his presidency and beyond How Lincoln's struggle with faith can inspire modern believers Let Lincoln's Battle with God show you Lincoln's life and legacy in a brand new light.
| Author | : George C. Rable |
| Publisher | : Univ of North Carolina Press |
| Total Pages | : 599 |
| Release | : 2010-11-29 |
| Genre | : History |
| ISBN | : 0807899313 |
Throughout the Civil War, soldiers and civilians on both sides of the conflict saw the hand of God in the terrible events of the day, but the standard narratives of the period pay scant attention to religion. Now, in God's Almost Chosen Peoples, Lincoln Prize-winning historian George C. Rable offers a groundbreaking account of how Americans of all political and religious persuasions used faith to interpret the course of the war. Examining a wide range of published and unpublished documents--including sermons, official statements from various churches, denominational papers and periodicals, and letters, diaries, and newspaper articles--Rable illuminates the broad role of religion during the Civil War, giving attention to often-neglected groups such as Mormons, Catholics, blacks, and people from the Trans-Mississippi region. The book underscores religion's presence in the everyday lives of Americans north and south struggling to understand the meaning of the conflict, from the tragedy of individual death to victory and defeat in battle and even the ultimate outcome of the war. Rable shows that themes of providence, sin, and judgment pervaded both public and private writings about the conflict. Perhaps most important, this volume--the only comprehensive religious history of the war--highlights the resilience of religious faith in the face of political and military storms the likes of which Americans had never before endured.
| Author | : Jon Meacham |
| Publisher | : Random House Trade Paperbacks |
| Total Pages | : 449 |
| Release | : 2007-03-20 |
| Genre | : History |
| ISBN | : 0812976665 |
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • Pulitzer Prize-winning author Jon Meacham reveals how the Founding Fathers viewed faith—and how they ultimately created a nation in which belief in God is a matter of choice. At a time when our country seems divided by extremism, American Gospel draws on the past to offer a new perspective. Meacham re-creates the fascinating history of a nation grappling with religion and politics–from John Winthrop’s “city on a hill” sermon to Thomas Jefferson’s Declaration of Independence; from the Revolution to the Civil War; from a proposed nineteenth-century Christian Amendment to the Constitution to Martin Luther King, Jr.’s call for civil rights; from George Washington to Ronald Reagan. Debates about religion and politics are often more divisive than illuminating. Secularists point to a “wall of separation between church and state,” while many conservatives act as though the Founding Fathers were apostles in knee britches. As Meacham shows in this brisk narrative, neither extreme has it right. At the heart of the American experiment lies the God of what Benjamin Franklin called “public religion,” a God who invests all human beings with inalienable rights while protecting private religion from government interference. It is a great American balancing act, and it has served us well. Meacham has written and spoken extensively about religion and politics, and he brings historical authority and a sense of hope to the issue. American Gospel makes it compellingly clear that the nation’s best chance of summoning what Lincoln called “the better angels of our nature” lies in recovering the spirit and sense of the Founding. In looking back, we may find the light to lead us forward. Praise for American Gospel “In his American Gospel, Jon Meacham provides a refreshingly clear, balanced, and wise historical portrait of religion and American politics at exactly the moment when such fairness and understanding are much needed. Anyone who doubts the relevance of history to our own time has only to read this exceptional book.”—David McCullough, author of 1776 “Jon Meacham has given us an insightful and eloquent account of the spiritual foundation of the early days of the American republic. It is especially instructive reading at a time when the nation is at once engaged in and deeply divided on the question of religion and its place in public life.”—Tom Brokaw, author of The Greatest Generation
