Synopses & Reviews
View the
Table of Contents. Read the
Introduction.
"Lindvall offers a history of the Protestant Church's role in making and promoting Christian movies, from the very beginning of the industry (circa 1895) through the end of the silent era. . . . This well-researched book is recommended for large academic and theology collection."
Library Journal XPress
"Provides a masterful and fascinating survey of the history of the Christian silent film industry and its demise."
John Lyden, author of Film as Religion: Myths, Morals, and Rituals
"Lindvall provides his readers with the largely untold story of the beginning decades of the Christian film industry. Now, almost a hundred years later, message movies with a religious core are re-emerging. To understand their current pitfalls and promise, Sanctuary Cinema is important reading. It's also great fun!"
Robert K. Johnston, Professor of Theology and Culture, Fuller Theological Seminary, and author of Reel Spirituality: Theology and Film in Dialogue
Sanctuary Cinema provides the first history of the origins of the Christian film industry. Focusing on the early days of film during the silent era, it traces the ways in which the Church came to adopt film making as a way of conveying the Christian message to adherents. Surprisingly, rather than separating themselves from Hollywood or the American entertainment culture, early Christian film makers embraced Hollywood cinematic techniques and often populated their films with attractive actors and actresses. But they communicated their sectarian message effectively to believers, and helped to shape subsequent understandings of the Gospel message, which had historically been almost exclusively verbal, not communicated through visual media.
Despite early successes in attracting new adherents with the lure of the film, the early Christian film industry ultimately failed, in large part due to growing fears that film would corrupt the church by substituting an American "civil religion" in place of solid Christian values and amidst continuing Christian unease about the potential for the glorification of images to revert to idolatry. While radio eclipsed the motion picture as the Christian communication media of choice by the 1920, the early film makers had laid the foundations for the current re-emergence of Christian film and entertainment, from Veggie Tales to The Passion of the Christ.
Review
“Provides a masterful and fascinating survey of the history of the Christian silent film industry and its demise.“
-John Lyden,author of Film as Religion: Myths, Morals, and Rituals
Review
“Thoroughly researched and free of jargon, this book fills the gap in film history.“
-Choice,
Review
“Lindvall offers a history of the Protestant Churchs role in making and promoting Christian movies, from the very beginning of the industry (circa 1895) through the end of the silent era. . . . This well-researched book is recommended for large academic and theology collection.“
-Library Journal XPress,
Review
“Lindvall provides his readers with the largely untold story of the beginning decades of the Christian film industry. Now, almost a hundred years later, message movies with a religious core are re-emerging. To understand their current pitfalls and promise, Sanctuary Cinema is important reading. Its also great fun!“
-Robert K. Johnston,Professor of Theology and Culture, Fuller Theological Seminary, and author of Reel Spirituality: Theology and Film in Dialogue
Review
“Lindvalls book provides a wonderful and wonderfully readable history of this important period. Issues that churches and those interested in communication, culture, and religion wrestle with today turn out to have appeared almost 100 years ago. Anyone interested in film, religion, theology, and culture should read this book.“
-Paul A. Soukup,S.J., Santa Clara University
Review
“Lindvall’s book provides a wonderful and wonderfully readable history of this important period. Issues that churches and those interested in communication, culture, and religion wrestle with today turn out to have appeared almost 100 years ago. Anyone interested in film, religion, theology, and culture should read this book.“
- Paul A. Soukup, S.J., Santa Clara University
“Lindvall’s book provides a wonderful and wonderfully readable history of this important period. Issues that churches and those interested in communication, culture, and religion wrestle with today turn out to have appeared almost 100 years ago. Anyone interested in film, religion, theology, and culture should read this book.“
“Thoroughly researched and free of jargon, this book fills the gap in film history.“
“Lindvall offers a history of the Protestant Church’s role in making and promoting Christian movies, from the very beginning of the industry (circa 1895) through the end of the silent era. . . . This well-researched book is recommended for large academic and theology collection.“
“Provides a masterful and fascinating survey of the history of the Christian silent film industry and its demise.“
Review
“Provides a masterful and fascinating survey of the history of the Christian silent film industry and its demise.“
Review
“The debate over welfare suffers from lack of historical perspective. Now come Mink and Solinger to transform our understanding with a clearly articulated, carefully organized, and judiciously selected collection of key sources and illustrative documents that illuminates the past and present of aid to poor women and their children. Essential for classroom use, this book also belongs on the desks of policy makers and activists alike.”
-Eileen Boris,Hull Professor of Womens Studies, University of California, Santa Barbara
Review
“A stirringly dramatic narrative of welfare policy history. Through the documents they select, Mink and Solinger bring to life an immensely important human drama, and they do so in a way that paves a path to a higher awareness of the deeply ingrained biases of gender, race, and class that operate in welfare policy.”
-Social Service Review,
Synopsis
Winner of the Religious Communication Association Book of the Year Award for 2008Sanctuary Cinema provides the first history of the origins of the Christian film industry. Focusing on the early days of film during the silent era, it traces the ways in which the Church came to adopt film making as a way of conveying the Christian message to adherents. Surprisingly, rather than separating themselves from Hollywood or the American entertainment culture, early Christian film makers embraced Hollywood cinematic techniques and often populated their films with attractive actors and actresses. But they communicated their sectarian message effectively to believers, and helped to shape subsequent understandings of the Gospel message, which had historically been almost exclusively verbal, not communicated through visual media.
Despite early successes in attracting new adherents with the lure of the film, the early Christian film industry ultimately failed, in large part due to growing fears that film would corrupt the church by substituting an American “civil religion” in place of solid Christian values and amidst continuing Christian unease about the potential for the glorification of images to revert to idolatry. While radio eclipsed the motion picture as the Christian communication media of choice by the 1920, the early film makers had laid the foundations for the current re-emergence of Christian film and entertainment, from Veggie Tales to The Passion of the Christ.
Synopsis
Federal welfare policy has been a political and cultural preoccupation in the United States for nearly seven decades. Debates about who poor people are, how they got that way, and what the government should do about poverty were particularly bitter and misleading at the end of the twentieth century. These public discussions left most Americans with far more attitude than information about poverty, the poor, and poverty policy in the United States.
In response, Gwendolyn Mink and Rickie Solinger compiled the first documentary history of welfare in America, from its origins through the present. Welfare: A Documentary History of U.S. Policy and Politics provides historical context for understanding recent policy developments, as it traces public opinion, recipients experiences, and policy continuities and innovations over time. The documents collected range across more than 100 years, from government documents and proclamations of presidents throughout the 20th century, to accounts of activist and grass roots organizations, newspaper reports and editorials, political cartoons, posters and more.
They enable readers to go straight to the source to find out how public figures racialized welfare in the minds of white Americans, to explore the origins of the claim that poor women have babies in order to collect welfare, and to trace how that notion has been perpetuated and contested. The documents also illustrate how policymakers in different eras have invoked and politicized the idea of dependency, as well as how ideas about women's dependency have followed changing characterizations of poor women as workers and as mothers.
Welfare provides a picture of the governments evolving ideas about poverty and provision, along side powerful examples of the voices too often eclipsed in the public square—welfare recipients and their advocates, speaking about mothering, poverty, and human rights.
About the Author
Political scientist
Gwendolyn Mink is the author of
The Wages of Motherhood: Inequality in the Welfare State, 1917-1942 and
Welfare's End, and the editor of
Whose Welfare?. She is also the co-editor of
The Reader's Companion to U.S. Womens History and of the forthcoming
Encyclopedia of Poverty and Social Welfare in the U.S. Rickie Solinger is an independent historian who lives in the Hudson Valley. Her books include Wake Up Little Susie: Single Pregnancy and Race Before Roe v. Wade, The Abortionist: A Woman Against the Law, and Beggars and Choosers: How the Politics of Choice Shapes Adoption, Abortion, and Welfare in the United States.
Frances Fox Piven is Distinguished Professor of Political Science and Sociology at the Graduate School, City University of New York. She is coeditor of Work, Welfare and Politics. Her other award-winning books include Regulating the Poor, Why Americans Don't Vote, and Poor People's Movements: Why They Succeed, How They Fail (all with Richard Cloward).