Building a Protestant left : Christianity and crisis magazine, 1941-1993 / Mark Hulsether.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Hulsether, Mark.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Christianity and crisis.

Christianity and politics--United States--History--20th century.

Christianity and politics.

New Left.

History.

Liberalism (Religion).

United States.

Liberalism (Religion)--Protestant churches--History--20th century.

Liberalism (Religion)--Protestant churches.

Liberalism (Religion)--United States--History--20th century.

New Left--United States--History--20th century.

Physical Description:

xxxix, 374 pages ; 25 cm

Edition:

First edition.

Place of Publication:

Knoxville : University of Tennessee Press, [1999]

Summary:

Founded in 1941 by Reinhold Niebuhr and others, the magazine Christianity and Crisis (C&C) achieved a level of influence far exceeding its small circulation. A forum for important writers ranging from Paul Tillich to Rosemary Ruether, from George Kennan to Noam Chomsky, from Margaret Mead to Cornel West, from Lewis Mumford to Daniel Berrigan, C&C for half a century commanded great respect in left-liberal circles, both religious and secular. In Building a Protestant Left, Mark Hulsether uses the history of C&C as a case study to explore changing ideas about religion and society in the latter half of the twentieth century. He follows the twists and turns of this story from Niebuhr's Christian realist positions of the 1940s, through Protestant participation in the complex social movements of the 1950s and 1960s, to the emergence of various liberation theologies - African American, feminist, Latin American, and others - that used C&C as a central arena of debate in the 1970s and 1980s. Throughout, Hulsether places these changes in the context of postwar cultural and social history, relating C&C's theological and ethical positions to the broader social and political issues that the journal addressed.

Contents:

The social gospel and C&C's prehistory

The emergence of Christianity and crisis

White male Protestants on blacks, women, and Catholics

Evolving liberalism and emerging polarization

Sex, movies, and the death of God: changing approaches to culture and theology

The shattering of consensus over black power and Vietnam

Flashpoints of conflict: third world radicalism, the religious right, and the student left

Picking up the pieces, integrating feminist approaches

Toward new contexts and standpoints for theology

Ongoing debates about race, postmodernity, and the Reagan era

Producing C&C and (sometimes) balancing the budget

Conclusion: waiting for the ghost of Tom Joad

Appendix: note on sources and research methods

Notes

Select bibliography

Index.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages [353]-366) and index.

ISBN:

1572330228

OCLC:

39051862