Continuity and Change in the Rhetoric of the Moral Majority

Continuity and Change in the Rhetoric of the Moral Majority PDF Author: W David Snowball
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
ISBN: 0313388466
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 200

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Book Description
The persuasive strategies employed by the Moral Majority in the early 1980s reassured and calmed a segment of the American population left confused and uncertain by recent national events. David Snowball analyzes this powerful movement, how its rhetoric energized its supporters, the positions it endorsed and causes it championed, and its response to political and media critics. By examining the fundamental messages, the tactics used, and the personalities involved, the study reveals that, while the basic message of the Moral Majority remained constant, its changing popular image and maturing rhetoric, which initially added momentum to its rapid rise, may also have been at the root of its swift decline by the end of the decade. While tracing the movement's origins, Snowball investigates in-depth the American people's reaction to the influence of the Moral Majority. He subsequently reviews its founding tenets and the language typically used to encourage its disciples. A look at the specific issues which polarized critics and followers exposes the reasons for the movement's collapse and poses questions regarding its future. Although the primary focus of this study is the history of the Moral Majority, the analysis also provides valuable insight into the nature of the American political system's response to religiously-motivated movements in general.

Continuity and Change in the Rhetoric of the Moral Majority

Continuity and Change in the Rhetoric of the Moral Majority PDF Author: W David Snowball
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
ISBN: 0313388466
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 200

Get Book Here

Book Description
The persuasive strategies employed by the Moral Majority in the early 1980s reassured and calmed a segment of the American population left confused and uncertain by recent national events. David Snowball analyzes this powerful movement, how its rhetoric energized its supporters, the positions it endorsed and causes it championed, and its response to political and media critics. By examining the fundamental messages, the tactics used, and the personalities involved, the study reveals that, while the basic message of the Moral Majority remained constant, its changing popular image and maturing rhetoric, which initially added momentum to its rapid rise, may also have been at the root of its swift decline by the end of the decade. While tracing the movement's origins, Snowball investigates in-depth the American people's reaction to the influence of the Moral Majority. He subsequently reviews its founding tenets and the language typically used to encourage its disciples. A look at the specific issues which polarized critics and followers exposes the reasons for the movement's collapse and poses questions regarding its future. Although the primary focus of this study is the history of the Moral Majority, the analysis also provides valuable insight into the nature of the American political system's response to religiously-motivated movements in general.

Race and American Political Development

Race and American Political Development PDF Author: Joseph E. Lowndes
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1136086420
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 361

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Book Description
Race has been present at every critical moment in American political development, shaping political institutions, political discourse, public policy, and its denizens’ political identities. But because of the nature of race—its evolving and dynamic status as a structure of inequality, a political organizing principle, an ideology, and a system of power—we must study the politics of race historically, institutionally, and discursively. Covering more than three hundred years of American political history from the founding to the contemporary moment, the contributors in this volume make this extended argument. Together, they provide an understanding of American politics that challenges our conventional disciplinary tools of studying politics and our conservative political moment’s dominant narrative of racial progress. This volume, the first to collect essays on the role of race in American political history and development, resituates race in American politics as an issue for sustained and broadened critical attention.

Reaganland

Reaganland PDF Author: Rick Perlstein
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1476793069
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 1120

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Book Description
"From the bestselling author of Nixonland and The Invisible Bridge comes the dramatic conclusion of how conservatism took control of American political power"--

Religion und Politik in den Vereinigten Staaten von Amerika

Religion und Politik in den Vereinigten Staaten von Amerika PDF Author: Norbert Finzsch
Publisher: LIT Verlag Münster
ISBN: 3643114303
Category : Christianity and politics
Languages : en
Pages : 214

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Book Description


The Bible and the American Future

The Bible and the American Future PDF Author: Robert Jewett
Publisher: Wipf and Stock Publishers
ISBN: 162189259X
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 301

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Book Description
What does the Bible say about the American future? Does it contain an apocalyptic vision in which conflicts are to be resolved by war? Or does it contain a vision of coexistence under some system of conflict management? While both visions have biblical foundations, the apocalyptic alternative has dominated public discussion in the past generation. Most people are not even aware that another vision can be derived from the same Bible and that it transcends the usual definitions of liberal, conservative, or evangelical politics. The essays in this book, written by distinguished scholars from various sectors of the theological spectrum, throw surprising new light on these questions. They were presented as lectures at an extraordinary theological conference sponsored by a large Methodist church in Lincoln, Nebraska, in October 2009. In contrast to the usual shouting matches between partisans, this conference--and this book--featured liberal and conservative Protestant and Catholic scholars who calmly unearthed new insights about the Bible's relevance for the future of America and the world. Readers will be astonished to see these differing viewpoints on the pages of a single book, and even more amazed at the new common ground that is prepared by these fresh and profound furrows.

Anti-Atheist Nation

Anti-Atheist Nation PDF Author: Petra Klug
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 1000804429
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 180

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Book Description
Atheists are a growing but marginalized group in the American religious patchwork and they have been the target of ridicule and discrimination throughout the nation’s history. This book is the first comprehensive study of anti-atheism in the United States. It traces anti-atheism through five centuries of American history from colonization to the era of Donald Trump and contemporary conspiracy ideologies, such as the atheist New World Order. Describing anti-atheist prejudices and explaining the social and psychological mechanisms behind anti-atheist attitudes, it will appeal to scholars of sociology, religious studies and history with interests in religion in the United States.

Clean Living Movements

Clean Living Movements PDF Author: Ruth Clifford Engs
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
ISBN: 031338990X
Category : Medical
Languages : en
Pages : 328

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Book Description
Over the past 200 years, a health reform movement has emerged about every 80 years. These clean living cycles surged with, or were tangential to, a religious awakening. Simultaneously with these awakenings, out groups such as immigrants and/or youth were seen to exhibit behaviors that undermined society. Middle class fear of these dangerous classes and a desire to eliminate disease, crime, and other perceived health or social problems led to crusades in each of the three reform eras against alcohol, tobacco, drugs, certain foods, and sexual behaviors. A backlash began to emerge from some segments of the population against reform efforts. After the dissipation of the activism phase, laws made during the reform era often became ignored or repealed. With a few exceptions, during the 30 to 40 year ebb of the cycle, the memory of the movement disappeared from public awareness. The desire for improved health and social conditions also led to campaigns in favor of exercise, semi-vegetarian diets, women's rights, chastity, and eugenics. Engs describes the interweaving of temperance, women's rights, or religion with most health issues. Factions of established faiths emerged to fight perceived immorality, while alternative religions formed and adopted health reform as dogma. In the reform phase of each cycle, a new infectious disease threatened the population. Some alternative medical practices became popular that later were incorporated into orthodox medicine and public health. Ironically, over each succeeding movement, reformers became more likely to represent grass roots beliefs, or even to be state or federal officials, rather than independent activists.

Great Awakenings

Great Awakenings PDF Author: Frank Hoffmann
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317764129
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 301

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Book Description
As religious fervor grows, Dr. Fishwick, a recipient of the Ray and Pat Browne Award for Lifetime Achievement from The American Culture Association, takes a sweeping look at religion in the United States--the country with the highest church attendance in the Western world. Popular religion can take many shapes and forms. It can wax and wane, but it cannot be eliminated or ignored. That is what prompted him to write Great Awakenings: Popular Religion and Popular Culture. He ponders how religion affects American life and popular culture, and why religion has become a major force in contemporary politics. How has the Electronic Revolution furthered the religious right? What does popular religion tell us about popular culture? And about our faith? He identifies and explores five great religious revivals or “Great Awakenings:” the Atlantic Seaboard Awakening the Urban Awakening the Modernist Awakening the Celebrity Preacher Awakening the Electronic Awakening Fishwick explores the current events preceding and during each awakening, its leaders, followers, and critics. Great Awakenings gives a new understanding of the American religious past and leaves us with an anticipation for the next great awakening.

The New Temperance

The New Temperance PDF Author: David Wagner
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 0429975775
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 205

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Book Description
The war on drugs ... the campaigns against smoking cigarettes ... v-chips to control what children watch on TV ... censoring the Internet and Calvin Klein jeans ads...bipartisan lectures about the dangers of teen sex ... constant warnings about food and fat ... all are examples of what David Wagner terms the "New Temperance." The New Temperance contrasts the new obsession with personal behavior in America during the last two decades with the brief period of relative freedom in the 1960s and early 1970s and suggests strong consistencies with our past. In particular, the late twentieth century appears to have re-created the mood of the Victorian and Progressive Periods, when social movements such as the Temperance, Social Purity, and Vice and Vigilance movements held sway. The New Temperance questions the constant mantra in the media and in political debates about the dangers of personal behavior and challenges America's love affair with repression.

Evangelicals and Presidential Politics

Evangelicals and Presidential Politics PDF Author: Andrew S. Moore
Publisher: LSU Press
ISBN: 0807174866
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 179

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Book Description
Using as their starting point a 1976 Newsweek cover story on the emerging politicization of evangelical Christians, contributors to Evangelicals and Presidential Politics engage the scholarly literature on evangelicalism from a variety of angles to offer new answers to persisting questions about the movement. The standard historical narrative describes the period between the 1925 Scopes Trial and the early 1970s as a silent one for evangelicals, and when they did re-engage in the political arena, it was over abortion. Randall J. Stephens and Randall Balmer challenge that narrative. Stephens moves the starting point earlier in the twentieth century, and Balmer concludes that race, not abortion, initially motivated activists. In his examination of the relationship between African Americans and evangelicalism, Dan Wells uses the Newsweek story’s sidebar on Black activist and born-again Christian Eldridge Cleaver to illuminate the former Black Panther’s uneasy association with white evangelicals. Daniel K. Williams, Allison Vander Broek, and J. Brooks Flippen explore the tie between evangelicals and the anti-abortion movement as well as the political ramifications of their anti-abortion stance. The election of 1976 helped to politicize abortion, which both encouraged a realignment of alliances and altered evangelicals’ expectations for candidates, developments that continue into the twenty-first century. Also in 1976, Foy Valentine, leader of the Southern Baptist Christian Life Commission, endeavored to distinguish the South’s brand of Protestant Christianity from the evangelicalism described by Newsweek. Nevertheless, Southern Baptists quickly became associated with the evangelicalism of the Religious Right and the South’s shift to the Republican Party. Jeff Frederick discusses evangelicals’ politicization from the 1970s into the twenty-first century, suggesting that southern religiosity has suffered as southern evangelicals surrendered their authenticity and adopted a moral relativism that they criticized in others. R. Ward Holder and Hannah Dick examine political evangelicalism in the wake of Donald Trump’s election. Holder lays bare the compromises that many Southern Baptists had to make to justify their support for Trump, who did not share their religious or moral values. Hannah Dick focuses on media coverage of Trump’s 2016 campaign and contends that major news outlets misunderstood the relationship between Trump and evangelicals, and between evangelicals and politics in general. The result, she suggests, was that the media severely miscalculated Trump’s chances of winning the election.