American Exceptionalism As Religion

Author : John D. Wilsey
Publisher : InterVarsity Press
Page : 267 pages
File Size : 50,9 Mb
Release : 2015-10-22
Category : Religion
ISBN : 9780830899296

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American Exceptionalism and Civil Religion by John D. Wilsey Pdf

Ever since John Winthrop told his fellow colonists in 1630 that they were about to establish a City upon a Hill, the idea of having a special place in history has captured the American imagination. Through centuries of crises and opportunities, many have taken up this theme to inspire the nation. But others have criticized the notion because it implies a sense of superiority which can fuel racism, warmongering and even idolatry. In this remarkable book, John Wilsey traces the historical development of exceptionalism, including its theological meaning and implications for civil religion. From seventeenth-century Puritans to twentieth-century industrialists, from politicians to educators, exceptionalism does not appear as a monolithic concept to be either totally rejected or devotedly embraced. While it can lead to abuses, it can also point to constructive civil engagement and human flourishing. This book considers historically and theologically what makes the difference. Neither the term nor the idea of American exceptionalism is going away. John Wilsey?s careful history and analysis will therefore prove an important touchstone for discussions of American identity in the decades to come.

Author : Jordan Carson
Publisher : Unknown
Page : 234 pages
File Size : 50,6 Mb
Release : 2022-11-08
Category : Electronic
ISBN : 0814255949

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American Exceptionalism as Religion by Jordan Carson Pdf

Identifies American exceptionalism as an emerging form of religion while exploring alternatives through works by Don DeLillo, Ana Castillo, Thomas Pynchon, George Saunders, and Marilynne Robinson.

Author : Jordan Carson
Publisher : Unknown
Page : 128 pages
File Size : 42,7 Mb
Release : 2020
Category : American literature
ISBN : 0814278116

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American Exceptionalism as Religion by Jordan Carson Pdf

Author : John D. Wilsey
Publisher : InterVarsity Press
Page : 267 pages
File Size : 50,8 Mb
Release : 2015-11-22
Category : Religion
ISBN : 9780830840946

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American Exceptionalism and Civil Religion by John D. Wilsey Pdf

The idea of America's special place in history has been a guiding light for centuries. With thoughtful insight, John D. Wilsey traces the concept of exceptionalism, including its theological meaning and implications for civil religion. This careful history considers not only the abuses of the idea but how it can also point to constructive civil engagement and human flourishing.

Author : Abram C. Van Engen
Publisher : Yale University Press
Page : 390 pages
File Size : 54,6 Mb
Release : 2020-02-25
Category : History
ISBN : 9780300252316

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City on a Hill by Abram C. Van Engen Pdf

A fresh, original history of America’s national narratives, told through the loss, recovery, and rise of one influential Puritan sermon from 1630 to the present day In this illuminating book, Abram Van Engen shows how the phrase “City on a Hill,” from a 1630 sermon by Massachusetts Bay governor John Winthrop, shaped the story of American exceptionalism in the twentieth century. By tracing the history of Winthrop’s speech, its changing status throughout time, and its use in modern politics, Van Engen asks us to reevaluate our national narratives. He tells the story of curators, librarians, collectors, archivists, antiquarians, and often anonymous figures who emphasized the role of the Pilgrims and Puritans in American history, paving the way for the saving and sanctifying of a single sermon. This sermon’s rags-to-riches rise reveals the way national stories take shape and shows us how those tales continue to influence competing visions of the country—the many different meanings of America that emerge from its literary past.

Author : Dennis R. Hoover
Publisher : Unknown
Page : 0 pages
File Size : 54,5 Mb
Release : 2013
Category : Exceptionalism
ISBN : 0415857090

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Religion and American Exceptionalism by Dennis R. Hoover Pdf

"American exceptionalism" was once a rather obscure and academic concept, but in the 2012 presidential election campaign it became a prominent phrase in political rhetoric. This book takes a step back from the partisan rhetorical bluster and examines afresh the historical and analytical meanings of American exceptionalism, and the extent to which religion--both "real" religion and the more ambiguous "civil" religion--has shaped these meanings and their uses/abuses. This book was published as a special issue of The Review of Faith and International Affairs.

Author : Winnifred Fallers Sullivan,Elizabeth Shakman Hurd
Publisher : Religion and the Human
Page : 154 pages
File Size : 51,8 Mb
Release : 2021-09-07
Category : Religion
ISBN : 0253061709

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Theologies of American Exceptionalism by Winnifred Fallers Sullivan,Elizabeth Shakman Hurd Pdf

Together these essays challenge the reader to think America anew.

Author : Stephen Brooks
Publisher : Routledge
Page : 172 pages
File Size : 45,7 Mb
Release : 2013
Category : Exceptionalism
ISBN : 9780415636414

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American Exceptionalism in the Age of Obama by Stephen Brooks Pdf

The election of President Obama in 2008 and the apparent decline of American power in the world has rekindled an old and important debate. Is the United States exceptional in its values and institutions, as well as in the role that it is destined to play in world affairs? In this book, Stephen Brooks argues that American exceptionalism has been and continues to be real. In making this argument he focuses on five aspects of American politics and society that are most crucial to an understanding of American exceptionalism today. They include the appropriate relationship between the state and citizens, religion, socio-economic mobility, America's role in the world, and ideas about the Constitution. American exceptionalism matters in domestic politics chiefly as a political narrative around which support for and opposition to certain policies, values and vision of American society coalesce. But in world affairs it is not the story but the empirical reality of American exceptionalism that matters. Although the long era of America's global economic dominance has entered what might be called a period of diminished expectations, the United States remains exceptional--the indispensable nation--in world affairs and is likely to remain so for many years to come.

Author : Timothy Roberts
Publisher : Routledge
Page : 422 pages
File Size : 42,7 Mb
Release : 2017-07-05
Category : History
ISBN : 9781351576857

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American Exceptionalism by Timothy Roberts Pdf

American exceptionalism the idea that America is fundamentally distinct from other nations is a philosophy that has dominated economics, politics, religion and culture for two centuries. This collection of primary source material seeks to understand how this belief began, how it developed and why it remains popular.

Author : Mugambi Jouet
Publisher : Univ of California Press
Page : 358 pages
File Size : 46,6 Mb
Release : 2017-04-03
Category : Social Science
ISBN : 9780520966468

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Exceptional America by Mugambi Jouet Pdf

Why did Donald Trump follow Barack Obama into the White House? Why is America so polarized? And how does American exceptionalism explain these social changes? In this provocative book, Mugambi Jouet describes why Americans are far more divided than other Westerners over basic issues, including wealth inequality, health care, climate change, evolution, gender roles, abortion, gay rights, sex, gun control, mass incarceration, the death penalty, torture, human rights, and war. Raised in Paris by a French mother and Kenyan father, Jouet then lived in the Bible Belt, Manhattan, and beyond. Drawing inspiration from Alexis de Tocqueville, he wields his multicultural sensibility to parse how the intense polarization of U.S. conservatives and liberals has become a key dimension of American exceptionalism—an idea widely misunderstood as American superiority. While exceptionalism once was a source of strength, it may now spell decline, as unique features of U.S. history, politics, law, culture, religion, and race relations foster grave conflicts. They also shed light on the intriguing ideological evolution of American conservatism, which long predated Trumpism. Anti-intellectualism, conspiracy-mongering, a visceral suspicion of government, and Christian fundamentalism are far more common in America than the rest of the Western world—Europe, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand. Exceptional America dissects the American soul, in all of its peculiar, clashing, and striking manifestations.

Author : Timothy Roberts
Publisher : Routledge
Page : 261 pages
File Size : 43,8 Mb
Release : 2017-07-05
Category : History
ISBN : 9781351576819

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American Exceptionalism Vol 4 by Timothy Roberts Pdf

American exceptionalism ? the idea that America is fundamentally distinct from other nations ? is a philosophy that has dominated economics, politics, religion and culture for two centuries. This collection of primary source material seeks to understand how this belief began, how it developed and why it remains popular.

Author : David Gelernter
Publisher : Doubleday
Page : 175 pages
File Size : 41,6 Mb
Release : 2007-06-19
Category : Political Science
ISBN : 9780385522953

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Americanism:The Fourth Great Western Religion by David Gelernter Pdf

What does it mean to “believe” in America? Why do we always speak of our country as having a mission or purpose that is higher than other nations? Modern liberals have invested a great deal in the notion that America was founded as a secular state, with religion relegated to the private sphere. David Gelernter argues that America is not secular at all, but a powerful religious idea—indeed, a religion in its own right. Gelernter argues that what we have come to call “Americanism” is in fact a secular version of Zionism. Not the Zionism of the ancient Hebrews, but that of the Puritan founders who saw themselves as the new children of Israel, creating a new Jerusalem in a new world. Their faith-based ideals of liberty, equality, and democratic governance had a greater influence on the nation’s founders than the Enlightenment. Gelernter traces the development of the American religion from its roots in the Puritan Zionism of seventeenth-century New England to the idealistic fighting faith it has become, a militant creed dedicated to spreading freedom around the world. The central figures in this process were Abraham Lincoln, Teddy Roosevelt, and Woodrow Wilson, who presided over the secularization of the American Zionist idea into the form we now know as Americanism. If America is a religion, it is a religion without a god, and it is a global religion. People who believe in America live all over the world. Its adherents have included oppressed and freedom-loving peoples everywhere—from the patriots of the Greek and Hungarian revolutions to the martyred Chinese dissidents of Tiananmen Square. Gelernter also shows that anti-Americanism, particularly the virulent kind that is found today in Europe, is a reaction against this religious conception of America on the part of those who adhere to a rival religion of pacifism and appeasement. A startlingly original argument about the religious meaning of America and why it is loved—and hated—with so much passion at home and abroad.

Author : Deborah L. Madsen
Publisher : Univ. Press of Mississippi
Page : 200 pages
File Size : 49,9 Mb
Release : 1998
Category : History
ISBN : 1578061083

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American Exceptionalism by Deborah L. Madsen Pdf

American Exceptionalism provides an accessible yet comprehensive historical account of one of the most important concepts underlying modern theories of American cultural identity. Deborah Madsen charts the contribution of exceptionalism to the evolution of the United States as an ideological and geographical entity from 1620 to the present day. She explains how this sense of spiritual and political destiny has shaped American culture and how it has promoted exciting counter arguments from Native American and Chicano perspectives and in the contemporary writings of authors such as Thomas Pynchon and Toni Morrison.

Author : Dennis Hoover
Publisher : Routledge
Page : 220 pages
File Size : 49,9 Mb
Release : 2020-06-09
Category : Political Science
ISBN : 9781000155600

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Religion and American Exceptionalism by Dennis Hoover Pdf

"American exceptionalism" was once a rather obscure and academic concept, but in the 2012 presidential election campaign the phrase attained unprecedented significance in political rhetoric. President Obama’s conservative critics—most notably Sarah Palin, Newt Gingrich, and Mitt Romney—accused the president of disbelieving in American exceptionalism and thereby offending the nation’s civil religion. This creed traditionally has included the notion that America is a political "new Israel" called by God and guided by His Providence to be the exemplar, vanguard, and champion of liberal democracy and the free market for all humanity. The newly politicized narrative of exceptionalism portrayed Obama as a president embarrassed by his own country and intent on remaking the United States in the image of the secularist and socialist countries of Europe. This book takes a step back from the partisan rhetorical bluster and examines afresh the historical and analytical meanings of American exceptionalism, and the extent to which religion—both "real" religion and the more ambiguous "civil" religion—has shaped these meanings and their uses/abuses. This book was published as a special issue of The Review of Faith and International Affairs.

Author : Timothy Roberts
Publisher : Routledge
Page : 364 pages
File Size : 48,8 Mb
Release : 2017-07-05
Category : History
ISBN : 9781351576901

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American Exceptionalism Vol 1 by Timothy Roberts Pdf

American exceptionalism ? the idea that America is fundamentally distinct from other nations ? is a philosophy that has dominated economics, politics, religion and culture for two centuries. This collection of primary source material seeks to understand how this belief began, how it developed and why it remains popular.