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What does the popularity of the Creation Museum tell us about the appeal of the Christian right? On May 28, 2007, the Creation Museum opened in Petersburg, Kentucky. Aimed at scientifically demonstrating that the universe was created less than ten thousand years ago by a Judeo-Christian god, the museum is hugely popular, attracting millions of visitors over the past eight years. Surrounded by themed topiary gardens and a petting zoo with camel rides, the site conjures up images of a religious Disneyland. Inside, visitors are met by dinosaurs at every turn and by a replica of the Garden of Eden that features the Tree of Life, the serpent, and Adam and Eve. In Righting America at the Creation ...
More than any other individual, William Bell Riley, pastor of the First Baptist Church of Minneapolis, inspired the resurgence of Protestant fundamentalism in 1930s America. Trollinger explores the development of Riley's theology and social thought, examining in detail the rise of the Northwestern Bible and Missionary Training School and other similar institutions. He sheds light upon the nature, successes, and failures of fundamentalist crusades and makes it clear that, to understand fundamentalist religion in America, one must focus upon its regional and local roots.
Based in the idea that social phenomena are best studied through the lens of different disciplinary perspectives, Empty Churches studies the growing number of individuals who no longer affiliate with a religious tradition. Co-editors Jan Stets, a social psychologist, and James Heft, a historian of theology, bring together leading scholars in the fields of sociology, developmental psychology, gerontology, political science, history, philosophy, and pastoral theology. The scholars in this volume explore the phenomenon by drawing from each other's work to understand better the multi-faceted nature of non-affiliation today. They explore the complex impact that non-affiliation has on individuals ...
In the 1920s, a revived Ku Klux Klan burst into prominence as a self-styled defender of American values, a magnet for white Protestant community formation, and a would-be force in state and national politics. But the hooded bubble burst at mid-decade, and the social movement that had attracted several million members and additional millions of sympathizers collapsed into insignificance. Since the 1990s, intensive community-based historical studies have reinterpreted the 1920s Klan. Rather than the violent, racist extremists of popular lore and current observation, 1920s Klansmen appear in these works as more mainstream figures. Sharing a restrictive American identity with most native-born wh...
Skillfully blending painstaking research, telling anecdotes, and astute analysis, Carpenter - a scholar who has spent twenty years studying American evangelicalism reveals that, contrary to the popular opinion of the day, fundamentalism was alive and well in America in the late 1920s, and used its isolation over the next two decades to build new strength from within. The book describes how fundamentalists developed a pervasive network of organizations outside of the church setting and quietly strengthened the movement by creating their own schools and oragnizations, may of which are prominent today, including Fuller Theological Seminary and the publishing and radio enterprises of the Moody B...
Evangelizing the Chosen People: Missions to the Jews in America, 1880 - 2000
In God's Own Party, Daniel K. Williams presents the first comprehensive history of the Christian Right, uncovering how evangelicals came to see the Republican Party as the vehicle through which they could reclaim America as a Christian nation.
This book deals with the structure and identity of American Protestantism in the 20th century, calling for a more nuanced, sophisticated profile than the standard bipolar model placing fundamentalism at one end and liberalism at the other.k
A prize-winning, five-decade history of the evangelical movement in Southern California that explains a sweeping realignment of American politics. From Bible Belt to Sun Belt tells the dramatic and largely unknown story of “plain-folk” religious migrants: hardworking men and women from Oklahoma, Texas, and Arkansas who fled the Depression and came to California for military jobs during World War II. Investigating this fiercely pious community at a grassroots level, Darren Dochuk uses the stories of religious leaders, including Billy Graham, as well as many colorful, lesser-known figures to explain how evangelicals organized a powerful political machine. This machine made its mark with Ba...
In this book Mark Noll makes the compelling case that how Americans have come to practice the Christian faith is just as globally important as what the American church has done in the world. He backs up this substantial claim with the scholarly attentiveness we've come to expect from him.