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The Character of God - Recovering the Lost Literary Power of American Protestantism (Hardcover)
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The Character of God - Recovering the Lost Literary Power of American Protestantism (Hardcover)
Series: Religion in America
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Educated people have become bereft of sophisticated ways to develop
their religious inclinations. A major reason for this is that
theology has become vague and dull. In The Character of God, author
Thomas E. Jenkins maintains that Protestant theology became boring
by the late nineteenth century because the depictions of God as a
character in theology became boring. He shows how in the early
nineteenth century, American Protestant theologians downplayed
biblical depictions of God's emotional complexity and refashioned
his character according to their own notions, stressing emotional
singularity. These notions came from many sources, but the major
influences were the neoclassical and sentimental literary styles of
characterization dominant at the time. The serene benevolence of
neoclassicism and the tender sympathy of sentimentalism may have
made God appealing in the mid-1800s, but by the end of the century,
these styles had lost much of their cultural power and increasingly
came to seem flat and vague. Despite this, both liberal and
conservative theologians clung to these characterizations of God
throughout the twentieth century.
Jenkins argues that a way out of this impasse can be found in
romanticism, the literary style of characterization that supplanted
neoclassicism and sentimentalism and dominated American literary
culture throughout the twentieth century. Romanticism emphasized
emotional complexity and resonated with biblical depictions of God.
A few maverick religious writers-- such as Harriet Beecher Stowe,
W. G. T. Shedd, and Horace Bushnell--did devise emotionally complex
characterizations of God and in some cases drew directly from
romanticism. But their strange andsometimes shocking depictions of
God were largely forgotten in the twentieth century. s use
"theological" as a pejorative term, implying that an argument is
needlessly Jenkins urges a reassessment of their work and a
greaterin understanding of the relationship between theology and
literature. Recovering the lost literary power of American
Protestantism, he claims, will make the character of God more
compelling and help modern readers appreciate the peculiar power of
the biblical characterization of God.
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