Synopses & Reviews
The ten essays in this volume explore the vast diversity of religions in the United States, from Judaic, Catholic, and African American to Asian, Muslim, and Native American traditions. Chapters on religion and the South, religion and gender, indigenous sectarian religious movements, and the metaphysical tradition round out the collection.
The contributors examine the past, present, and future of American religion, first orienting readers to historiographic trends and traditions of interpretation in each area, then providing case studies to show their vision of how these areas should be developed. Full of provocative insights into the complexity of American religion, this volume helps us better understand America's religious history and its future challenges and directions.
Review
"This book comes along at the time time when 'the center did not hold,' when we are beginning to lose the 'core denominations' and 'mainstream historians' as a reference group. There is much fresh material here."--Martin E. Marty, author of Religion and the Republic: The American Circumstance
Review
"This book is balanced and makes a wonderful collection."--Charles Lippy, author of Being Religious, American Style: A History of Popular Religiosity in the United States
Synopsis
The ten essays in this volume explore the vast diversity of religions in the United States, from Judaic, Catholic, and African American to Asian, Muslim, and Native American traditions. Chapters on religion and the South, religion and gender, indigenous sectarian religious movements, and the metaphysical tradition round out the collection.
The contributors examine the past, present, and future of American religion, first orienting readers to historiographic trends and traditions of interpretation in each area, then providing case studies to show their vision of how these areas should be developed. Full of provocative insights into the complexity of American religion, this volume helps us better understand America's religious history and its future challenges and directions.
About the Author
Walter H. Conser Jr. is a professor of religious studies, professor of history, and chair of the department of philosophy and religion at the University of North Carolina, Wilmington. He has written and edited several books, including God and the Natural World: Religion and Science in Antebellum America. Sumner B. Twiss is a professor of religious studies and department chair at Brown University. He has coauthored or coedited four books, including coediting, with Conser, Experience of the Sacred: Readings in the Phenomenology of Religion.
Table of Contents
Editorial introduction : past traditions, future directions --Late nineteenth-century American Jewish awakening /Jonathan D. Sarna --Search for an American Catholicism, 1780-1820 /Jay P. Dolan --Retelling Carter Woodson's story : archival sources for Afro-American church history /Albert J. Raboteau ... et al. --Religion and the South : authenticity and purity : pulling us together, tearing us apart /Donald G. Mathews --"When the subject is female" : the impact of gender on revisioning American religious history /Rosemary Skinner Keller -- History, historians, and the historiography of indigenous sectarian religious movements in America /Stephen J. Stein --Dissident history : American religious culture and the emergence of the metaphysical tradition /Catherine L. Albanese --Asian religions in the United States : reflections on an emerging subfield /Thomas A. Tweed --Make room for the Muslims? /Yvonne Yazbeck Haddad --Century of Lakota Sioux Catholicism at Pine Ridge /Christopher Vecsey.