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Author: Taso G. Lagos
Publisher: Cambridge Scholars Publishing
ISBN: 1527560481
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 148
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Book Description
The most interesting, vibrant and booming city in 1920s America was Los Angeles. Tens of thousands of new folks annually flocked to the City of Angels to enjoy its balmy, year-round pleasant weather. The site of new industries, including oil and technology companies and Hollywood film studios, it sparked another important and thriving, but less known, sector: the city’s expanding religious communities. As hard as it is for many to connect LA to religious matters, few cities gave more impetus to spiritual innovation than this idyllic Southern California metropolis. No two figures shaped this movement more than Sister Aimee Semple McPherson and Reverend Robert “Fighting Bob” Shuler. Both were newcomers, solidly within the Protestant faith, and both reached heights of unparalleled publicity and notoriety in the country, yet each despised the other, even while professing faith, obedience and fealty to the same Christ. This is their story, told from their hard-scrabble beginnings through to their popular ministries that deeply moved so many lives, even as their interpretation of religious commitment sparked a “holy” war between them. More entertaining than any boxing match, this war stimulated the growth and development of American Christianity that dominates religious and, increasingly, material existence in the United States. This is the first published biography of Rev. Shuler, a less well-known figure in American Protestant history, but whose own tale fighting sin and corruption of Los Angeles is nothing short of epic.
Author: Taso G. Lagos
Publisher: Cambridge Scholars Publishing
ISBN: 1527560481
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 148
Get Book Here
Book Description
The most interesting, vibrant and booming city in 1920s America was Los Angeles. Tens of thousands of new folks annually flocked to the City of Angels to enjoy its balmy, year-round pleasant weather. The site of new industries, including oil and technology companies and Hollywood film studios, it sparked another important and thriving, but less known, sector: the city’s expanding religious communities. As hard as it is for many to connect LA to religious matters, few cities gave more impetus to spiritual innovation than this idyllic Southern California metropolis. No two figures shaped this movement more than Sister Aimee Semple McPherson and Reverend Robert “Fighting Bob” Shuler. Both were newcomers, solidly within the Protestant faith, and both reached heights of unparalleled publicity and notoriety in the country, yet each despised the other, even while professing faith, obedience and fealty to the same Christ. This is their story, told from their hard-scrabble beginnings through to their popular ministries that deeply moved so many lives, even as their interpretation of religious commitment sparked a “holy” war between them. More entertaining than any boxing match, this war stimulated the growth and development of American Christianity that dominates religious and, increasingly, material existence in the United States. This is the first published biography of Rev. Shuler, a less well-known figure in American Protestant history, but whose own tale fighting sin and corruption of Los Angeles is nothing short of epic.
Author: Len Oakes
Publisher: Syracuse University Press
ISBN: 0815603991
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 264
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Book Description
New religious movements—or so-called "cults"—continue to attract and mystify us. While mainstream America views cults as an insidious mix of apocalyptic beliefs, science fiction, and paranoia, with new vehicles such as the World Wide Web, they are becoming even more influential as the millennium approaches. Len Oakes—a former member of such a movement—explores the phenomenon of cult leaders. He examines the psychology of charisma and proposes his own theory of the five-stage life cycle of the two types of prophets: the messianic and the charismatic.
Author: William Curtis Martin
Publisher: Broadway
ISBN: 0767922573
Category : Christianity and politics
Languages : en
Pages : 464
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Book Description
The rise of the Religious Right is one of the most important political and cultural stories of our time. To many, this controversial movement threatens to upset the nation's delicate balance of religious and secular interests. To others, the Religious Right is valiantly struggling to preserve religious liberty and to prove itself as the last, best hope to save America's soul. In With God on Our Side --the first balanced account of conservative Christians' impact on post-war politics--William Martin paints a vivid and authoritative portrait of America's most powerful political interest group. Although its members now number between forty and sixty million people, the Religious Right has not always carried the tremendous--and growing--political clout it enjoys today. A hundred years ago, scattered groups of conservative Christians worked fervently to spread the Gospel, but their involvement in politics was marginal. Early in this century, however, a series of charismatic and ambitious leaders began transforming the movement; by the election of John F. Kennedy as our first Catholic president, the Religious Right had found its voice. Politics and religion began mixing as never before. From Richard Nixon's strategic manipulation of Graham's religious influence in the 1970s, to Ronald Reagan's association with Falwell's Moral Majority in the 1980s, to the Christian Coalition's emergence as a slick, sophisticated political machine, the line separating the pulpit from the presidency became increasingly blurred. Now, preachers such as Graham, Falwell, and Pat Robertson preside over ministries so vast and well organized that most politicians can ill afford to ignore their views--or lose their votes. In recent years, the Religious Right's political influence has propelled it into spheres beyond pure politics. Race relations, abortion and reproductive rights, school curricula, the nature and role of the family--conservative Christians have embraced all of these socially charged issues, and their activism has irrevocably altered the way America confronts its thorniest problems. How does a free society draw the line between Church and State without removing religious conviction from public life? What motivates individual Americans to do battle in the culture wars? Most importantly, when politicians and religiously motivated activists join forces, who holds the reins? Drawing on over 100 new interviews with key figures in the movement, William Martin brilliantly captures the spirit of the age as he explores both sides of this dramatic debate. Written in conjunction with the producers of the public television series of the same name, this landmark book is essential reading for all Americans--conservative and liberal, fundamentalist and atheist--who care about the spiritual health and political future of our country. From the Hardcover edition.
Author: Brad Christerson
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 019063569X
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 201
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Book Description
Why, when traditionally organized religious groups are seeing declining membership and participation, are networks of independent churches growing so explosively? Drawing on in-depth interviews with leaders and participants, The Rise of Network Christianity explains the social forces behind the fastest-growing form of Christianity in the U.S., which Brad Christerson and Richard Flory have labeled "Independent Network Charismatic." This form of Christianity emphasizes aggressive engagement with the supernatural-including healing, direct prophecies from God, engaging in "spiritual warfare" against demonic spirits--and social transformation. Christerson and Flory argue that macro-level social changes since the 1970s, including globalization and the digital revolution, have given competitive advantages to religious groups organized as networks rather than traditionally organized congregations and denominations. Network forms of governance allow for experimentation with controversial supernatural practices, innovative finances and marketing, and a highly participatory, unorthodox, and experiential faith, which is attractive in today's unstable religious marketplace. Christerson and Flory hypothesize that as more religious groups imitate this type of governance, religious belief and practice will become more experimental, more orientated around practice than theology, more shaped by the individual religious "consumer," and authority will become more highly concentrated in the hands of individuals rather than institutions. Network Christianity, they argue, is the future of Christianity in America.
Author: Chris Hedges
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 0743293797
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 273
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Book Description
Twenty-five years ago, when Pat Robertson and other radio and televangelists first spoke of the United States becoming a Christian nation that would build a global Christian empire, it was hard to take such hyperbolic rhetoric seriously. Today, such language no longer sounds like hyperbole but poses, instead, a very real threat to our freedom and our way of life. In American Fascists, Chris Hedges, veteran journalist and author of the National Book Award finalist War Is a Force That Gives Us Meaning, challenges the Christian Right's religious legitimacy and argues that at its core it is a mass movement fueled by unbridled nationalism and a hatred for the open society. Hedges, who grew up in rural parishes in upstate New York where his father was a Presbyterian pastor, attacks the movement as someone steeped in the Bible and Christian tradition. He points to the hundreds of senators and members of Congress who have earned between 80 and 100 percent approval ratings from the three most influential Christian Right advocacy groups as one of many signs that the movement is burrowing deep inside the American government to subvert it. The movement's call to dismantle the wall between church and state and the intolerance it preaches against all who do not conform to its warped vision of a Christian America are pumped into tens of millions of American homes through Christian television and radio stations, as well as reinforced through the curriculum in Christian schools. The movement's yearning for apocalyptic violence and its assault on dispassionate, intellectual inquiry are laying the foundation for a new, frightening America. American Fascists, which includes interviews and coverage of events such as pro-life rallies and weeklong classes on conversion techniques, examines the movement's origins, its driving motivations and its dark ideological underpinnings. Hedges argues that the movement currently resembles the young fascist movements in Italy and Germany in the 1920s and '30s, movements that often masked the full extent of their drive for totalitarianism and were willing to make concessions until they achieved unrivaled power. The Christian Right, like these early fascist movements, does not openly call for dictatorship, nor does it use physical violence to suppress opposition. In short, the movement is not yet revolutionary. But the ideological architecture of a Christian fascism is being cemented in place. The movement has roused its followers to a fever pitch of despair and fury. All it will take, Hedges writes, is one more national crisis on the order of September 11 for the Christian Right to make a concerted drive to destroy American democracy. The movement awaits a crisis. At that moment they will reveal themselves for what they truly are -- the American heirs to fascism. Hedges issues a potent, impassioned warning. We face an imminent threat. His book reminds us of the dangers liberal, democratic societies face when they tolerate the intolerant.
Author: Stephen Mansfield
Publisher: Frontline
ISBN: 9781591859901
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 228
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Book Description
Treading on a subject where few books have gone, this volume examines the religious and spiritual issues in America's wars, and then considers what is lost to America's military through a secular approach to battle. (Practical Life)
Author: Kathleen M. Sands
Publisher: Yale University Press
ISBN: 0300245378
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 347
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Book Description
How American conflicts about religion have always symbolized our foundational political values When Americans fight about “religion,” we are also fighting about our conflicting identities, interests, and commitments. Religion-talk has been a ready vehicle for these conflicts because it is built on enduring contradictions within our core political values. The Constitution treats religion as something to be confined behind a wall, but in public communications, the Framers treated religion as the foundation of the American republic. Ever since, Americans have translated disagreements on many other issues into an endless debate about the role of religion in our public life. Built around a set of compelling narratives—George Washington’s battle with Quaker pacifists; the fight of Mormons and Catholics for equality with Protestants; Teddy Roosevelt’s concept of land versus the Lakota’s concept; the creation-evolution controversy; and the struggle over sexuality—this book shows how religion, throughout American history, has symbolized, but never resolved, our deepest political questions.
Author: Vincent W. Lloyd
Publisher: Columbia University Press
ISBN: 0231545207
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 156
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Book Description
Martin Luther King, Jr., has charisma—as does Adolf Hitler. So do Brad Pitt, Mother Teresa, and many a high school teacher. Charisma marks, or masks, power; it legitimates but also attracts suspicion. Sociologists often view charisma as an irrational, unstable source of authority, superseded by the rational, bureaucratic legitimacy of modernity. Yet charisma endures in the modern world; perhaps it is reinvigorated in the postmodern, as the notoriety of celebrities, politicians, and New Age gurus attests. Is charisma a tool of oppression, or can it help the fight against oppression? Can reexamining the concept of charisma teach us anything useful about contemporary movements for social justice? In Defense of Charisma develops an account of moral charisma that weaves insights from politics, ethics, and religion together with reflections on contemporary culture. Vincent W. Lloyd distinguishes between authoritarian charisma, which furthers the interests of the powerful, naturalizing racism, patriarchy, and elitism, and democratic charisma, which prompts observers to ask new questions and discover new possibilities. At its best, charisma can challenge the way we see ourselves and our world, priming us to struggle for justice. Exploring the biblical Moses alongside Charlton Heston’s performance in The Ten Commandments, the image of Martin Luther King, Jr., together with tweets from the Black Lives Matter movement, and the novels of Harper Lee and Sherman Alexie juxtaposed with the writings of Emmanuel Levinas, In Defense of Charisma challenges readers to turn away from the blinding charisma of celebrities toward the humbler moral charisma of the neighbor, colleague, or relative.
Author: Paul Harvey
Publisher: Columbia University Press
ISBN: 0231530781
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 830
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Book Description
The first guide to American religious history from colonial times to the present, this anthology features twenty-two leading scholars speaking on major themes and topics in the development of the diverse religious traditions of the United States. These include the growth and spread of evangelical culture, the mutual influence of religion and politics, the rise of fundamentalism, the role of gender and popular culture, and the problems and possibilities of pluralism. Geared toward general readers, students, researchers, and scholars, The Columbia Guide to Religion in American History provides concise yet broad surveys of specific fields, with an extensive glossary and bibliographies listing relevant books, films, articles, music, and media resources for navigating different streams of religious thought and culture. The collection opens with a thematic exploration of American religious history and culture and follows with twenty topical chapters, each of which illuminates the dominant questions and lines of inquiry that have determined scholarship within that chapter's chosen theme. Contributors also outline areas in need of further, more sophisticated study and identify critical resources for additional research. The glossary, "American Religious History, A–Z," lists crucial people, movements, groups, concepts, and historical events, enhanced by extensive statistical data.
Author: Len Oakes
Publisher: Syracuse University Press
ISBN: 9780815603986
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 268
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Book Description
New religious movements—or so-called “cults”—continue to attract and mystify us. While mainstream America views cults as an insidious mix of apocalyptic beliefs, science fiction, and paranoia, with new vehicles such as the World Wide Web, they are becoming even more influential as the millennium approaches. Len Oakes—a former member of such a movement—explores the phenomenon of cult leaders. He examines the psychology of charisma and proposes his own theory of the five-stage life cycle of the two types of prophets: the messianic and the charismatic.
