In this new edition of Overcoming America / America Overcoming, Stephen Rowe shows how the COVID-19 pandemic in tandem with Trumpism have brought basic dynamics of the American situation to high relief, and hence provide opportunity to address them - before it is too late. The dynamics he identifies are those of moral disease and political paralysis as symptomatic of the fact that America herself has been overtaken by the modern values which she exported to the rest of the world. He points to a way out of the current and potentially fatal malaise and violence: join other societies which are also struggling to move beyond the modern and consciously reappropriate those elements of tradition which have to do with cultivation of the mature human being. To avoid fundamentalism, Rowe discusses how this reappropriation must be undertaken in dialogue with those who also have come to recognize the unsustainable quality of the modern life, and who have been able to live beyond the nihilistic wish to tear it down. This book supports the call for an emerging global ethic and spirituality, providing resources of articulation and interpretation that allow for an ongoing dialogue between traditional and modern values-both worthy and problematic in their own ways-through which reliable policy and healthy living become possible.

While television today is taken for granted, Americans in the 1950s faced the challenge of negotiating the new medium's place in the home and in American culture in general. Protestant leaders--both mainstream and evangelical--began to think carefully about what television meant for their communities and its potential impact on their work. Using the American Protestant experience of the introduction of television, Rosenthal illustrates the importance of the interplay between a new medium and its users in an engaging book suitable for general readers and students alike.

Part of a 14-volume work covering writings in American religious history with specific attention to trends in American Protestantism; church and state; theological issues; social Christianity; women in religion; native American religion; regional and black religion; fundamentalism and creationism.

The Christian Heritage: Problems and Prospects delves into the history of the western Christian heritage. Challenges to the Christian heritage, a heritage nourished both by Judaism and by the western classics, have been stimulated by the very success of the way of life that is promoted, a way of life that is somehow responsible for the emergence of modern science with its revolutionary technology. The reader is encouraged to reconsider authors prominent in the religious tradition of the West. Guidance is provided for examinations of the fundamental assumptions and the enduring questions by which Western Civilization has been guided and challenged for millennia. The enduring texts that we in the West repeatedly encounter, especially the most challenging of them, are apt to draw upon, and to illuminate the fundamental assumptions and the enduring questions by which Western Civilization has been guided and challenged for millennia. Vital to Western Civilization has long been the Christian Heritage. That Heritage has been taken for granted in our general education, in something as prosaic as the everyday operations of our legal system, and perhaps even in our economic and other social arrangements.

The Christian Heritage: Problems and Prospects delves into the history of the western Christian heritage. Challenges to the Christian heritage, a heritage nourished both by Judaism and by the western classics, have been stimulated by the very success of the way of life that is promoted, a way of life that is somehow responsible for the emergence of modern science with its revolutionary technology. The reader is encouraged to reconsider authors prominent in the religious tradition of the West. Guidance is provided for examinations of the fundamental assumptions and the enduring questions by which Western Civilization has been guided and challenged for millenniums. The enduring texts that we in the West repeatedly encounter, especially the most challenging of them, are apt to draw upon, and to illuminate the fundamental assumptions and the enduring questions by which Western Civilization has been guided and challenged for millenniums. Vital to Western Civilization has long been the Christian Heritage. That Heritage has been taken for granted in our general education, in something as prosaic as the everyday operations of our legal system, and perhaps even in our economic and other social arrangements.

This book enters a lively discussion about religious faith and higher education in America that has been going on for a decade or more. During this time many scholars have joined the debate about how best to understand the role of faith in the academy at large and in the special arena of church-related Christian higher education. The notion of faith-informed scholarship has, of course, figured prominently in this conversation. But, argue Douglas and Rhonda Jacobsen, the idea of Christian scholarship itself has been remarkably under-discussed. Most of the literature has assumed a definition of Christian scholarship that is Reformed and evangelical in orientation: a model associated with the phrase "the integration of faith and learning." The authors offer a new definition and analysis of Christian scholarship that respects the insights of different Christian traditions (e.g., Catholic, Lutheran, Anabaptist, Wesleyan, Pentecostal) and that applies to the arts and to professional studies as much as it does to the humanities and the natural and social sciences. The book itself is organized as a conversation. Five chapters by the Jacobsens alternate with four contributed essays that sharpen, illustrate, or complicate the material in the preceding chapters. The goal is both to map the complex terrain of Christian scholarship as it actually exists and to help foster better connections between Christian scholars of differing persuasions and between Christians and the academy as a whole.

This prophetic manifesto for the preservation of the world brings together Joan Chittister's most powerful, influential, and celebrated writings. Passionate and provocative, this collection combines the spiritual practices of the Rule of Saint Benedict with the contemporary struggles for social justice, feminism, and ecology. Today's most pressing spiritual, political, social, economical, and environmental questions are addressed and individuals of every religious and political persuasion are challenged to unite under a new and bold vision that honors the earth, its people, and all of life.

The Lutheran Reformation of the early sixteenth century brought about immense and far-reaching change in the structures of church and state, and in religious and secular ideas. This book investigates the relationship between the law and religious ideology in Luther's Germany, showing how they developed in response to the momentum of Lutheran teachings and influence. John Witte, Jr. argues that it is not enough to understand the Reformation in either only theological or legal terms but that a perspective is required which takes proper account of both.

Young spiritual leaders are beginning to remove the reasons why so many of us have kept religion at arm's length. "Spiritual sagacity does not belong only to seniors like Mother Teresa and Dorothy Day, Martin Buber and Abraham Joshua Heschel, the veteran Desmond Tutu and the aging Dalai Lama. Let's hear from a generation that is marked by new experiences." —from the Preface by Martin E. Marty By transforming our faith traditions in light of today's increasing diversity, the search for community, the Internet and our changing lifestyles, these young, visionary spiritual leaders are helping to create the new spirituality. Ten contributors, most in their mid-thirties, span the spectrum of religious traditions—Protestant, Catholic, Jewish, Unitarian, Buddhist—and offer their "visions," bold spiritual manifestos, for transforming our faith communities and our lives. Hear how one Catholic priest proclaims "all religion and spirituality ought to be zesty, passionate, rich and deep"; how one rabbi serves a "congregation" on the web for Microsoft and rides in squad cars on drug busts in New York City; how a self-described "Zen priest" is serving an Episcopal church in Alaska; and how a talented young woman lives her "wild and precious life" changing the world as a nun. These stories, and others, will challenge your assumptions about what religion is—and isn't.

Americans in the 1950s faced the challenge of negotiating the new medium's place in the home and in American culture in general. Using the American Protestant experience of the introduction of television, Rosenthal illustrates the importance of the interplay between a new medium and its users.

In this new edition of "The Amish and the State" Donald Kraybill brings together legal scholars and social scientists to explore the unique series of conflicts between a traditional religious minority and the modern state. In the process, the authors trace the preservation--and the erosion--of religious liberty in American life. Kraybill begins with an overview of the Amish in North America and describes the "negotiation model" used throughout the book to interpret a variety of legal conflicts. Subsequent chapters deal with specific aspects of religious freedom over which the Amish and the state have clashed. Focusing on the period from 1925 to 2001 in the United States, the authors examine conflicts over military service and conscription, Social Security and taxes, education, health care, land use and zoning, regulation of slow-moving vehicles, and other first amendment issues. New concluding chapters, by constitutional expert William Ball, who defended the Amish before the Supreme Court in 1972 in the landmark "Wisconsin v. Yoder" case, and law professor Garret Epps, assess the Amish contribution to preserving religious liberty in the United States.

Martin E. Marty argues that religion in twentieth-century America was essentially shaped by its encounter with modernity. In this first volume, he records and explores the diverse ways in which American religion embraced, rejected, or cautiously accepted the modern world. "Marty writes with the highest standards of scholarship and with his customary stylistic grace. No series of books is likely to tell us as much about the religious condition of our own time as "Modern American Religion." --Robert L. Spaeth, "Minneapolis Star Tribune" "The wealth of material and depth of insight are beyond reproach. This book will clearly stand as an important meteorological guide to the storm front of modernity as it swept Americans into the twentieth century." --Belden C. Lane, "Review of Religions" "Whatever one thinks about Marty's theological or philosophical position as a historian, the charm of his friendly circumspective approach to American religious history is irresistible." -- John E. Wilson, "Theological Studies" "Marty attempts to impose historical order on the divergent ways a century of Americans have themselves tried to find order in their worlds...

In this fifth volume of the Fundamentalism Project, "Fundamentalisms Comprehended," the distinguished contributors return to and test the endeavor's beginning premise: that fundamentalisms in all faiths share certain "family resemblances." Several of the essays reconsider the project's original definition of fundamentalism as a reactive, absolutist, and comprehensive mode of anti-secular religious activism. The book concludes with a capstone statement by R. Scott Appleby, Emmanuel Sivan, and Gabriel Almond that builds upon the entire Fundamentalism Project. Identifying different categories of fundamentalist movements, and delineating four distinct patterns of fundamentalist behavior toward outsiders, this statement provides an explanatory framework for understanding and comparing fundamentalisms around the world.

For fascination, influence, inspiration, and controversy, "Dietrich Bonhoeffer's Letters and Papers from Prison" is unmatched by any other book of Christian reflection written in the twentieth century. A Lutheran pastor and theologian, Bonhoeffer spent two years in Nazi prisons before being executed at age thirty-nine, just a month before the German surrender, for his role in the plot to kill Hitler. The posthumous "Letters and Papers from Prison" has had a tremendous impact on both Christian and secular thought since it was first published in 1951, and has helped establish Bonhoeffer's reputation as one of the most important Protestant thinkers of the twentieth century. In this, the first history of the book's remarkable global career, National Book Award-winning author Martin Marty tells how and why "Letters and Papers from Prison" has been read and used in such dramatically different ways, from the cold war to today.

In his late letters, Bonhoeffer raised tantalizing questions about the role of Christianity and the church in an increasingly secular world. Marty tells the story of how, in the 1960s and the following decades, these provocative ideas stirred a wide range of thinkers and activists, including civil rights and antiapartheid campaigners, "death-of-God" theologians, and East German Marxists.

In the process of tracing the eventful and contested history of Bonhoeffer's book, Marty provides a compelling new perspective on religious and secular life in the postwar era.

The Lutheran Reformation of the early sixteenth century brought about immense and far-reaching change in the structures of church and state, and in religious and secular ideas. This book investigates the relationship between the law and religious ideology in Luther's Germany, showing how they developed in response to the momentum of Lutheran teachings and influence. John Witte, Jr. argues that it is not enough to understand the Reformation in either only theological or legal terms but that a perspective is required which takes proper account of both.

In this third volume of his acclaimed chronicle of faith in twentieth-century America, Martin E. Marty presents the first authoritative account of American religious culture from the entry of the United States into World War II through the Eisenhower years.
"Under God, Indivisible, 1941-1960" is the first book to systematically address religion and the roles it played in shaping the social and political life of mid-century America. A work of exceptional clarity and historical depth, it will interest general readers as well as historians of American and church history.
"The series will become a standard account of the nation's variegated religious culture during the current century. The four volumes, the fruition of decades of research, may rank as much honored Marty's most significant contribution to U.S. studies."--Richard N. Ostling, "Time"
"When America needs some advice or commentary on the state of modern theology, the person it turns to is Martin Marty."--"Publishers Weekly"

"Accounting for Fundamentalisms" features treatments of fundamentalist movements, groups that often make headlines but are rarely understood, as part of the multivolume Fundamentalism Project. This book remains a standard reference source for comprehending the dynamics of fundamentalist movements around the world. Surveying fundamentalist movements in Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Hinduism, Sikhism, and Buddhism, the contributors to "Accounting for Fundamentalisms" describe the organization of these movements, their leadership and recruiting techniques, and the ways in which their ideological programs and organizational structures shift over time in response to changing political and social environments.

This volume is an encyclopedic introduction to movements of religious reaction in the twentieth century. The fourteen chapters are thematically linked by a common set of concerns: the social, political, cultural, and religious contexts in which these movements were born; the particular world-views, systems of thought, and beliefs that govern each movement; the ways in which leaders and group members make sense of and respond to the challenges of the modern, postcolonial era in world history. The contributors include sociologists, cultural anthropologists, and historians, some of whom have been participant-observers in the groups under consideration. As an analysis of the global resurgence of religion, Fundamentalisms Observed sheds new light on current religious movements and cultures from North America to the Far East.

Not since the Civil War had America been so divided by conflict. Religion was the prime agent in this unusual war: Left versus Right, Fundamentalists versus Modernists; Christians versus Jews; Protestant versus Catholic; white versus black. In this volume, Martin E. Marty tells the riveting story of how America has survived religious disturbances and culturally prospered from them. He tells the story of the 1920s and 1930s] with a verve seldom equaled and manages to condense in one volume the results of dozens of specialized monographs. . . . It] bears the usual hallmarks of a Marty book: a smoothly flowing narrative, passages studded with suggestive insight inviting further research, and apt quotations that capture the gist of complicated issues. . . . A] splendid book. . . . Deserves a wide readership and undoubtedly will receive it. --James H.