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This volume is edited by leading figures in the field. The book
will cover all major topics studied on a religion and sport course
so will be the go-to volume for students approaching the topic for
the first time. Topics covered are relevant and engaging for
students.
This volume is edited by leading figures in the field. The book
will cover all major topics studied on a religion and sport course
so will be the go-to volume for students approaching the topic for
the first time. Topics covered are relevant and engaging for
students.
Evangelicalism has left its indelible mark on American history,
politics, and culture. It is also true that currents of American
populism and politics have shaped the nature and character of
evangelicalism. This story of evangelicalism in America is thus
riddled with paradox. Despite the fact that evangelicals, perhaps
more than any other religious group, have benefited from the First
Amendment and the separation of church and state, several prominent
evangelical leaders over the past half century have tried to
abrogate the establishment clause of the First Amendment. And
despite evangelicalism's legacy of concern for the poor, for women,
and for minorities, some contemporary evangelicals have repudiated
their own heritage of compassion and sacrifice stemming from Jesus'
command to love the least of these. In Evangelicalism in America
Randall Balmer chronicles the history of evangelicalismaits origins
and development as well as its diversity and contradictions. Within
this lineage Balmer explores the social varieties and political
implications of evangelicalism's inception as well as its present
and paradoxical relationship with American culture and politics.
Balmer debunks some of the cherished myths surrounding this
distinctly American movement while also prophetically speaking
about its future contributions to American life.
When Joseph Smith ran for president as a radical protest candidate
in 1844, Mormons were a deeply distrusted group in American
society, and their efforts to enter public life were met with
derision. When Mitt Romney ran for president as a Republican in
2008 and 2012, the public had come to regard Mormons as consummate
Americans: patriotic, family-oriented, and conservative. How did
this shift occur? In this collection, prominent scholars of
Mormonism, including Claudia L. Bushman, Richard Lyman Bushman, Jan
Shipps, and Philip L. Barlow, follow the religion's quest for
legitimacy in the United States and its intersection with American
politics. From Brigham Young's skirmishes with the federal
government over polygamy to the Mormon involvement in California's
Proposition 8, contributors combine sociology, political science,
race and gender studies, and popular culture to track Mormonism's
rapid integration into American life. The book takes a broad view
of the religion's history, considering its treatment of women and
African Americans and its portrayal in popular culture and the
media. With essays from both Mormon and non-Mormon scholars, this
anthology tells a big-picture story of a small sect that became a
major player in American politics.
When Joseph Smith ran for president as a radical protest candidate
in 1844, Mormons were a deeply distrusted group in American
society, and their efforts to enter public life were met with
derision. When Mitt Romney ran for president as a Republican in
2008 and 2012, the public had come to regard Mormons as consummate
Americans: patriotic, family-oriented, and conservative. How did
this shift occur? In this collection, prominent scholars of
Mormonism, including Claudia L. Bushman, Richard Lyman Bushman, Jan
Shipps, and Philip L. Barlow, follow the religion's quest for
legitimacy in the United States and its intersection with American
politics. From Brigham Young's skirmishes with the federal
government over polygamy to the Mormon involvement in California's
Proposition 8, contributors combine sociology, political science,
race and gender studies, and popular culture to track Mormonism's
rapid integration into American life. The book takes a broad view
of the religion's history, considering its treatment of women and
African Americans and its portrayal in popular culture and the
media. With essays from both Mormon and non-Mormon scholars, this
anthology tells a big-picture story of a small sect that became a
major player in American politics.
As America has become more pluralistic, Protestantism, with its
long roots in American history and culture, has hardly remained
static. This finely crafted portrait of a remarkably complex group
of Christian denominations describes Protestantism's history,
constituent subgroups and their activities, and the way in which
its dialectic with American culture has shaped such facets of the
wider society as healthcare, welfare, labor relations, gender
roles, and political discourse.
Part I provides an introduction to the religion's essential
beliefs, a brief history, and a taxonomy of its primary American
varieties. Part II shows the diversity of the tradition with vivid
accounts of life and worship in a variety of mainline and
evangelical churches. Part III explores the vexed relationship
Protestantism maintains with critical social issues, including
homosexuality, feminism, and social justice. The appendices include
biographical sketches of notable Protestant leaders, a chronology,
a glossary, and an annotated list of resources for further
study.
"Quite ambitious, tracing religion in the United States from
European colonization up to the 21st century.... The writing is
strong throughout."--Publishers Weekly (starred review)
"One can hardly do better than Religion in American Life.... A good
read, especially for the uninitiated. The initiated might also read
it for its felicity of narrative and the moments of illumination
that fine scholars can inject even into stories we have all heard
before. Read it."--Church History
This new edition of Religion in American Life, written by three of
the country's most eminent historians of religion, offers a superb
overview that spans four centuries, illuminating the rich spiritual
heritage central to nearly every event in our nation's history.
Beginning with the state of religious affairs in both the Old and
New Worlds on the eve of colonization and continuing through to the
present, the book covers all the major American religious groups,
from Protestants, Jews, and Catholics to Muslims, Hindus, Mormons,
Buddhists, and New Age believers. Revised and updated, the book
includes expanded treatment of religion during the Great
Depression, of the religious influences on the civil rights
movement, and of utopian groups in the 19th century, and it now
covers the role of religion during the 2008 presidential election,
observing how completely religion has entered American politics.
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The Immaculate Mistake (Paperback)
Rodney Wallace Kennedy; Foreword by Randall Balmer; Preface by William V. Trollinger
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R781
R641
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The Immaculate Mistake (Hardcover)
Rodney Wallace Kennedy; Foreword by Randall Balmer; Preface by William V. Trollinger
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R1,170
R933
Discovery Miles 9 330
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How did we go from John F. Kennedy declaring that religion
should play no role in the elections to Bush saying, "I believe
that God wants me to be president"?
Historian Randall Balmer takes us on a tour of presidential
religiosity in the last half of the twentieth century--from
Kennedy's 1960 speech that proposed an almost absolute wall between
American political and religious life to the soft religiosity of
Lyndon B. Johnson's Great Society; from Richard Nixon's
manipulation of religion to fit his own needs to Gerald Ford's
quiet stoicism; from Jimmy Carter's introduction of evangelicalism
into the mainstream to Ronald Reagan's co-option of the same group;
from Bill Clinton's covert way of turning religion into a non-issue
to George W. Bush's overt Christian messages, Balmer reveals the
role religion has played in the personal and political lives of
these American presidents.
Americans were once content to disregard religion as a criterion
for voting, as in most of the modern presidential elections before
Jimmy Carter.But today's voters have come to expect candidates to
fully disclose their religious views and to deeply illustrate their
personal relationship to the Almighty. God in the White House
explores the paradox of Americans' expectation that presidents
should simultaneously trumpet their religious views and
relationship to God while supporting the separation of church and
state. Balmer tells the story of the politicization of religion in
the last half of the twentieth century, as well as the
"religionization" of our politics. He reflects on the implications
of this shift, which have reverberated in both our religious and
political worlds, and offers a new lens through which to see not
only these extraordinary individuals, but also our current
political situation.
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Revelation (Hardcover)
Dale Coleman; Foreword by Randall Balmer
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R1,754
R1,372
Discovery Miles 13 720
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Revelation (Paperback)
Dale Coleman; Foreword by Randall Balmer
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R1,119
R901
Discovery Miles 9 010
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As America has become more pluralistic, Protestantism, with its
long roots in American history and culture, has hardly remained
static. This finely crafted portrait of a remarkably complex group
of Christian denominations describes Protestantism's history,
constituent subgroups and their activities, and the way in which
its dialectic with American culture has shaped such facets of the
wider society as healthcare, welfare, labor relations, gender
roles, and political discourse.
Part I provides an introduction to the religion's essential
beliefs, a brief history, and a taxonomy of its primary American
varieties. Part II shows the diversity of the tradition with vivid
accounts of life and worship in a variety of mainline and
evangelical churches. Part III explores the vexed relationship
Protestantism maintains with critical social issues, including
homosexuality, feminism, and social justice. The appendices include
biographical sketches of notable Protestant leaders, a chronology,
a glossary, and an annotated list of resources for further
study.
With impressively clear prose and a superb command of history,
best-selling author Randall Balmer offers a spirited history of
evangelical Christianity in the United States. Effortlessly
situating developments in evangelicalism in their wider historical
context, he demonstrates the ways American social and cultural
settings influenced the course of the evangelical tradition. By
revealing the four key moments in the movement's history, he ably
demonstrates how American Evangelicalism is truly American.
Concluding with a manifesto directing where evangelicalism must go
from here forth, Balmer's The Making of Evangelicalism will
interest every readeraevangelical, mainline, secularawho wants to
better understand evangelicals today.
In the lauded Faith of the Founders, revered historianEdwin Gaustad
provides a careful consideration of the developing relationship
between religion and the state after the American Revolution. With
concise focus on Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, Benjamin
Franklin, George Washington, and John Adams, Gaustad identifies
seven varying--sometimes contrary--perspectives on religion that
guided the nation's founders. Faith of the Founders masterfully
shows how these figures possessed an intuitive understanding of
religion that helped nourish a young country. Repackaged for a new
generation of readers and with a new foreword by Randall Balmer,
this brief but insightful book offers a look into the founding
fathers' genius--and points to a way forward through the
ideological boundaries that threaten to upend the daily doings of
American government today.
Using as their starting point a 1976 Newsweek cover story on the
emerging politicization of evangelical Christians, contributors to
this collection engage the scholarly literature on evangelicalism
from a variety of angles to offer new answers to persisting
questions about the movement. The standard historical narrative
describes the period between the 1925 Scopes Trial and the early
1970s as a silent one for evangelicals, and when they did re-engage
in the political arena, it was over abortion. Randall J. Stephens
and Randall Balmer challenge that narrative. Stephens moves the
starting point earlier in the twentieth century, and Balmer
concludes that race, not abortion, initially motivated activists.
In his examination of the relationship between African Americans
and evangelicalism, Dan Wells uses the Newsweek story's sidebar on
black activist and born-again Christian Eldridge Cleaver to
illuminate the former Black Panther's uneasy association with white
evangelicals. Daniel K. Williams, Allison Vander Broek, and J.
Brooks Flippen explore the tie between evangelicals and the
anti-abortion movement as well as the political ramifications of
their anti-abortion stance. The election of 1976 helped to
politicize abortion, which both encouraged a realignment of
alliances and altered evangelicals' expectations for candidates,
developments that continue into the twenty-first century. Also in
1976, Foy Valentine, leader of the Southern Baptist Christian Life
Commission, endeavored to distinguish the South's brand of
Protestant Christianity from the evangelicalism described by
Newsweek. Nevertheless, Southern Baptists quickly became associated
with the evangelicalism of the Religious Right and the South's
shift to the Republican Party. Jeff Frederick discusses
evangelicals' politicization from the 1970s into the twenty-first
century, suggesting that southern religiosity has suffered as
southern evangelicals surrendered their authenticity and adopted a
moral relativism that they criticized in others. R. Ward Holder and
Hannah Dick examine political evangelicalism in the wake of Donald
Trump's election. Holder lays bare the compromises that many
Southern Baptists had to make to justify their support for Trump,
who did not share their religious or moral values. Hannah Dick
focuses on media coverage of Trump's 2016 campaign and contends
that major news outlets misunderstood the relationship between
Trump and evangelicals, and between evangelicals and politics in
general. The result, she suggests, was that the media severely
miscalculated Trump's chances of winning the election.
When Art Disrupts Religion opens at London's Tate Modern Museum,
with a young Evangelical man contemplating a painting by Mark
Rothko, an aesthetic experience that proves disruptive to his
religious life. Without those moments with Rothko, he says, "there
never would have been an undoing of my conservative Evangelical
worldview." The memoirs, interviews, and ethnographic field notes
gathered by Philip Francis for this book lay bare the power of the
arts to unsettle and overturn deeply ingrained religious beliefs
and practices. Francis explores the aesthetic disturbances of more
than 80 Evangelical respondants. From the paintings of Rothko to
the films of Ingmar Bergman, from The Brothers Karamozov to The
Freewheelin' Bob Dylan, Francis finds that the arts function as
sites of "defamiliarization," "comfort in uncertainty," "a stand-in
for faith" and a "surrogate transcendence." Bridging the gap
between aesthetic theory and lived religion, this book sheds light
on the complex interrelationship of religion and art in the modern
West, and the role of the arts in education and social life.
For much of American history, evangelicalism was aligned with
progressive political causes-the abolition of slavery, universal
suffrage, and public education. But contemporary conservative
activists have defaulted on this majestic legacy, embracing instead
an agenda virtually indistinguishable from the Republican Party
platform. How has evangelical Christianity become so entrenched in
partisan politics? Randall Balmer, an evangelical Christian and a
historian of American religion, deftly combines ethnographic
research, theological reflections, and historical context to
examine the nature of the Religious Right today-and offers a
rallying cry for liberal Christians to reclaim the noble traditions
of their faith.
Balmer examines the clash of Dutch and English cultures in colonial New York and New Jersey and charts the decline of a European culture in North America. He shows that the combination of political intrigue, English cultural imperialism and internal socioeconomic tensions eventually drove the Dutch away from their hereditary customs, language and culture. After Leisler's Rebellion in 1689, the Dutch Reformed Church divided, largely along socioeconomic lines, into an orthodox camp, anchored in New York City, and a pietist faction whose stronghold lay in rural areas, especially northern New Jersey. Balmer argues that the divisions in the Dutch Reformed Church persisted into the Revolutionary era and that the religious alignments of the Dutch in the middle of the eighteenth century provide the most accurate predictors of political sympathies during the American Revolution.
Randall Balmer was a late convert to sports talk radio, but he
quickly became addicted, just like millions of other devoted
American sports fans. As a historian of religion, the more he
listened, Balmer couldn't help but wonder how the fervor he heard
related to religious practice. Houses of worship once railed
against Sabbath-busting sports events, but today most willingly
accommodate Super Bowl Sunday. On the other hand, basketball's
inventor, James Naismith, was an ardent follower of Muscular
Christianity and believed the game would help develop religious
character. But today those religious roots are largely forgotten.
Here one of our most insightful writers on American religion trains
his focus on that other great passion-team sports-to reveal their
surprising connections. From baseball to basketball and football to
ice hockey, Balmer explores the origins and histories of big-time
sports from the late nineteenth century to the present, with
entertaining anecdotes and fresh insights into their ties to
religious life. Referring to Notre Dame football, The Catholic Sun
called its fandom "a kind of sacramental." Legions of sports fans
reading Passion Plays will recognize exactly what that means.
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