In this cultural and intellectual history, David Burns contends
that the influence of biblical criticism in America was more
widespread than previously thought. Burns proves this point by
uncovering the hidden history of the radical historical Jesus, a
construct created and sustained by freethinkers, feminists,
socialists and anarchists during the Gilded Age and Progressive
Era. The result of this exploration is a new narrative revealing
that Cyrenus Osborne Ward, Caroline Bartlett, George Herron, Bouck
White, and other radical religionists had an impact on the history
of religion in America rivaling that of recognized religious
intellectuals such as Shailer Mathews, Charles Briggs, Francis
Peabody, and Walter Rauschenbusch. The methods and approaches
utilized by radical religionists were different from those employed
by elite liberal divines, however, and part of a larger struggle
over the relationship between religion and civilization. There were
numerous reasons for this conflict, but, as Burns argues, the
primary one was that radicals used Ernest Renan's The Life of Jesus
to create an imaginative brand of biblical criticism that struck a
balance between the demands of reason and the doctrines of
religion. Thus, while radical religionists like Robert Ingersoll,
Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and Eugene Debs were secular-minded
thinkers who sought to purge Christianity of its supernatural
dimensions, they believed the religious imagination that enabled
modern day radicals to make common cause with an ancient peasant
from Galilee was something wonderful. This provocative blend of
reason and religion produced a vibrant countercultural movement
that spanned communities, classes, and creeds and makes The Life
and Death of the Radical Historical Jesus a book that deserves a
wide readership in an era when public intellectuals and politicians
on both the left and right draw rigid lines between the secular and
the sacred.
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