Read complete books and articles on: Democracy and Religion in America

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14 of the Best Books and Articles on: Democracy and Religion in America

as selected by Questia librarians

1.

Religion and Politics in America: Faith, Culture, and Strategic Choices » Read Now
by Robert Booth Fowler, Allen Hertzke D. 287 pgs.

Collections: Religious Studies, History, Entire Library

...exercise their religion. It was literally...their "Errand in the Wilderness...quoted, America was to be...safe for democracy," to John...popular religion often...
2.

Religion and American Politics: From the Colonial Period to the 1980s » Read Now
by Mark A. Noll. 401 pgs.

Collections: Religious Studies, History, Entire Library

How do religion and politics interact in America? Why is it that at certain periods in American history, religious and political thought have followed a parallel course while at other times they have moved in entirely different directions? To what extent have minority perspectives challenged the...
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How do religion and politics interact in America? Why is it that at certain periods in American history, religious and political thought have followed a parallel course while at other times they have moved in entirely different directions? To what extent have minority perspectives challenged the majority position on the religious and political issues that impinge on each other? These are among the many important and fascinating questions examined in this book, the first thorough historical survey of the multi-layered connections between religion and politics in the United States. This unique collection presents previously unpublished essays by seventeen of America's leading historians and social scientists, including John Murrin, Harry Stout, John F. Wilson, Daniel Walker Howe, Bertram Wyatt-Brown, Robert Swierenga, Martin Marty, Robert Wuthnow, and George Marsden. Together, these distinguished contributors provide comprehensive coverage of the historical interaction between religion and politics in America, from the colonial and Revolutionary periods, with intense commitments to and disagreements over religion, through the evangelical Protestant ascendency that marked the nineteenth century, to the growing pluralism and heightened antagonism between liberal and conservative factions that typify our own era.
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3.

Defenders of the Faith: Religion and Politics from the Pilgrim Fathers to Ronald Reagan » Read Now
by Wilbur Edel. 270 pgs.

Collections: Religious Studies, Entire Library

Acknowledgments Introduction A Nation Is Molded Religion and Politics in the World of Our Ancestors Church and State in Colonial America Impact of the Revolution A Century of Change What the Constitution Did--and Didn't Do The Economics, Politics, and Ethics of Slavery New Trends--New Problems...
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Acknowledgments Introduction A Nation Is Molded Religion and Politics in the World of Our Ancestors Church and State in Colonial America Impact of the Revolution A Century of Change What the Constitution Did--and Didn't Do The Economics, Politics, and Ethics of Slavery New Trends--New Problems Religion, Politics, and the Law Religious Freedom Reconsidered Religion Returns to the Political Arena Ronald Reagan: Defender of the Faith Morality and World Politics Religion and Foreign Policy The New Crusaders Where Are We Heading? Notes Bibliography Index About the Author
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4.

Religion and the Founding of the American Republic » Read Now
by James H. Hutson, Jaroslav Pelikan. 136 pgs.

Collections: Religious Studies, Entire Library

A balanced & lively look at the role of religion between colonization & the 1840s.
5.

Religion and American Democracy » Read Now
by Roy F. Nichols. 112 pgs.

Collections: Religious Studies, Entire Library

...relationship between religion and American democracy. Such a definition...possible in the words...contributions of religion to American democracy. A London...found himself...
6.

Puritanism and Democracy » Read Now
by Ralph Barton Perry. 680 pgs.

Collections: Religious Studies, History, Entire Library
7.

Democratic Religion: Freedom, Authority, and Church Discipline in the Baptist South, 1785-1900 » Read Now
by Gregory A. Wills. 198 pgs.

Collections: Religious Studies, Entire Library

No American denomination identified itself more closely with the nation's democratic ideal than the Baptists. Most antebellum southern Baptist churches allowed women and slaves to vote on membership matters and preferred populists preachers who addressed their appeals to the common person...
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No American denomination identified itself more closely with the nation's democratic ideal than the Baptists. Most antebellum southern Baptist churches allowed women and slaves to vote on membership matters and preferred populists preachers who addressed their appeals to the common person. Paradoxically no denomination could wield religious authority as zealously as the Baptists. Between 1785 and 1860 they ritually excommunicated forty to fifty thousand church members in Georgia alone. Wills demonstrates how a denomination of freedom-loving individualists came to embrace an exclusivist spirituality--a spirituality that continues to shape Southern Baptist churches in contemporary conflicts between moderates who urge tolerance and conservatives who require belief in scriptural inerrancy. Wills's analysis advances our understanding of the interaction between democracy and religious authority, and will appeal to scholars of American religion, culture, and history, as well as to Baptist observers.
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8.

Autonomy and Democracy in an Autocratic Organization: The Case of the Roman Catholic Church, in Sociology of Religion » Read Now
by William V. D'Antonio. 18 pgs.

Collections: Religious Studies, Entire Library

...Coleman, J. A. 1992 . Not democracy but democratization, pp. 226-47 in Bianchi and Ruether, q.v...Indicators of Change Among the American Catholic Laity, pp. 1-23 in...
9.

Democracy and Catholicism in America » Read Now
by Currin V. Shields. 310 pgs.

Collections: Religious Studies, Entire Library
10.

Selling God: American Religion in the Marketplace of Culture » Read Now
by R. Laurence Moore. 315 pgs.

Collections: Religious Studies, Entire Library

Religion in America is up for sale. The products range from a plethora of merchandise in questionable taste--such as Bible-based diet books (More of Jesus. Less of Me), Rapture T-shirts (one features a basketball game with half its players disappearing in the Rapture--the caption is "Fast Break")...
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Religion in America is up for sale. The products range from a plethora of merchandise in questionable taste--such as Bible-based diet books (More of Jesus. Less of Me), Rapture T-shirts (one features a basketball game with half its players disappearing in the Rapture--the caption is "Fast Break"), and bumper stickers and Frisbees with inspirational messages--to the unabashed consumerism of Jim Bakker's Heritage USA, a grandiose Christian theme park with giant water slide, shopping mall, and office complex. We tend to think of these phenomena--which also include a long line of multimillionaire televangelists and the almost manic promotion of Christmas giving--as a fairly recent development. But as R. Laurence Moore points out in Selling God, religion has been deeply involved in our commercial culture since the beginning of the nineteenth century. In a sweeping, colorful history that spans over two centuries of American culture, Moore examines the role of religion in the marketplace, revealing how religious leaders have borrowed (and invented) commercial practices to promote religion--and how business leaders have borrowed (and invented) religion to promote commerce. It is a book peopled by a fascinating roster of American originals, including showman P.T. Barnum and circuit rider Lorenzo Dow, painter Frederick Church and dime novelist Ned Buntline, Sylvester Graham (inventor of the Graham cracker) and the "Poughkeepsie Seer" Andrew Jackson Davis, film directors D.W. Griffith and Cecil B. DeMille, Norman Vincent Peale and Bishop Fulton J. Sheen. Moore paints insightful portraits of figures such as Mason Locke Weems (Weems's marriage of aggressive marketing and a moral mission--in such bloody, violent tales as The Drunkard's Looking Glass or God's Revenge Against Adultery--was an important starting point of America's culture industry), religious orator George Whitefield (who transformed church services into mass entertainment, using his acting talents to enthrall vast throngs of people), and Dwight Moody, a former salesman for a boot-and-shoe operation who founded a religious empire centered on the Moody Bible Institute in Chicago (and who advertised his meetings in the entertainment pages of the newspaper). Moore also shows how the Mormons pioneered leisure activities (Brigham Young built the famed Salt Lake Theater, seating 1,500 people, months before work on the Tabernacle started), how Henry Ward Beecher helped the ardent Protestant became the consummate consumer (explicitly justifying the building of expensive mansions, and the collecting of art and antique furniture, as the proper tendencies of pious men), and how the First Amendment, in denying religious groups the status and financial solvency of a state church, forced them to compete in the marketplace for the attention of Americans: religious leaders could either give in to the sway of the market or watch their churches die. Ranging from the rise of gymnasiums and "muscular Christianity," to the creation of the Chautauqua movement (blending devotional services with concerts, fireworks, bonfires, and humorous lectures), to Oral Robert's "Blessing Pacts" and L. Ron Hubbard's Church of Scientology, Selling God provides both fascinating social history and an insightful look at religion in America.
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11.

God's Name in Vain: How Religion Should and Should Not Be Involved in Politics » Read Now
by Stephen L. Carter. 249 pgs.

Collections: Religious Studies, Entire Library

America faces a crisis of legitimacy. It's a crisis that dramatizes the separation of church and state. A crisis that, in the messages sent by our culture, marginalizes religion as a relatively unimportant human activity that plays an unimportant role in the national debate. Because the nation...
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America faces a crisis of legitimacy. It's a crisis that dramatizes the separation of church and state. A crisis that, in the messages sent by our culture, marginalizes religion as a relatively unimportant human activity that plays an unimportant role in the national debate. Because the nation chooses to secularize the principal points of contact between government and people (schools, taxes, marriage, etc.), it has persuaded many religious people that a culture war has been declared.
Stephen Carter, in this sequel to his best-selling Culture of Disbelief, argues that American politics is unimaginable without America's religious voice. Using contemporary and historical examples, from abolitionist sermons to presidential candidates' confessions, he illustrates ways in which religion and politics do and do not mesh well and ways in which spiritual perspectives might make vital contributions to our national debates.
Yet, while Carter is eager to defend the political involvement of the religious from its critics, he also warns us of the importance of setting some sensible limits so that religious institutions do not allow themselves to be seduced, by the lure of temporal power, into a kind of passionate, dysfunctional, and even immoral love affair. Lastly, he offers strong examples of principled and prophetic religious activism for those who choose their God before their country.
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12.

In Washington but Not of It: The Prophetic Politics of Religious Lobbyists » Read Now
by Daniel J. B. Hofrenning. 246 pgs.

Collections: Religious Studies, Entire Library

...virtually all the American founders thought religion was essential...citizens. Democracy might not...significant part in many other...and the American Civil...
13.

Pulpit and Politics: Clergy in American Politics at the Advent of the Millennium » Read Now
by Corwin E. Smidt. 352 pgs.

Collections: Religious Studies, Entire Library
14.

Torn at the Roots: The Crisis of Jewish Liberalism in Postwar America » Read Now
by Michael E. Staub. 386 pgs.

Collections: Religious Studies, History, Entire Library

When Jewish neoconservatives burst upon the political scene, many people were surprised. Conventional wisdom held that Jews were uniformly liberal. This book explodes the myth of a monolithic liberal Judaism. Michael Staub tells the story of the many fierce battles that raged in postwar America over...
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When Jewish neoconservatives burst upon the political scene, many people were surprised. Conventional wisdom held that Jews were uniformly liberal. This book explodes the myth of a monolithic liberal Judaism. Michael Staub tells the story of the many fierce battles that raged in postwar America over what the authentically Jewish position ought to be on issues ranging from desegregation to Zionism, from Vietnam to gender relations, sexuality, and family life. Throughout the three decades after 1945, Michael Staub shows, American Jews debated the ways in which the political commitments of Jewish individuals and groups could or should be shaped by their Jewishness. Staub shows that, contrary to conventional wisdom, the liberal position was never the obvious winner in the contest. By the late 1960s left-wing Jews were often accused by their conservative counterparts of self-hatred or of being inadequately or improperly Jewish. They, in turn, insisted that right-wing Jews were deaf to the moral imperatives of both the Jewish prophetic tradition and Jewish historical experience, which obliged Jews to pursue social justice for the oppressed and the marginalized. Such declamations characterized disputes over a variety of topics: American anticommunism, activism on behalf of African American civil rights, imperatives of Jewish survival, Israel and Israeli-Palestinian relations, the 1960s counterculture, including the women's and gay and lesbian liberation movements, and the renaissance of Jewish ethnic pride and religious observance. Spanning these controversies, Staub presents not only a revelatory and clear-eyed prehistory of contemporary Jewish neoconservatism but also an important corrective to investigations of "identity politics" that have focused on interethnic contacts and conflicts while neglecting intraethnic ones. Revising standard assumptions about the timing of Holocaust awareness in postwar America, Staub charts how central arguments over the Holocaust's purported lessons were to intra-Jewish political conflict already in the first two decades after World War II. Revisiting forgotten artifacts of the postwar years, such as Jewish marriage manuals, satiric radical Zionist cartoons, and the 1970s sitcom about an intermarried couple entitled Bridget Loves Bernie, and incidents such as the firing of a Columbia University rabbi for supporting anti-Vietnam war protesters and the efforts of the Miami Beach Hotel Owners Association to cancel an African Methodist Episcopal Church convention, Torn at the Roots sheds new light on an era we thought we knew well.
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