Head and heart : American Christianities / Garry Wills.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Wills, Garry, 1934-

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

United States--Church history.

United States.

Church history.

Physical Description:

626 pages : illustrations ; 25 cm

Other Title:

Head & heart

Place of Publication:

New York : Penguin Press, 2007.

Summary:

An examination of Christianity's place in American life through history, from the Puritans to the administration of George W. Bush. The struggle within American Christianity, historian Wills argues, has been between the head and the heart: reason and emotion, Enlightenment and Evangelism. 18th century America saw a religious revolution--an Enlightenment culture emerged whose hallmarks were tolerance for other faiths and a belief that religion was best divorced from political institutions. Wills shows how radical a departure this was, and shows the steps by which church-state separation was enshrined in the Constitution. He shows a repeating pattern in our history: a cooling of popular religious fervor, followed by an explosion in evangelical activity--generally during times of social transformation and anxiety--and then a backlash. Wills's message is to be vigilant against the triumph of emotions over reason, but to know that the tension between them is necessary, inevitable, and unending.--From publisher description.

Contents:

Pre-Enlightenment religion

Puritans

Mary Dyer must die

The Puritan psyche

The Puritan conscience

The Puritan intellect

Preludes to Enlightenment

Precursors : Samuel Sewall, Roger Williams

Spur to Enlightenment : the Great Awakening

Enlightened religion

Unitarians

Against the awakening

Quakers

Deists

Disestablishment

Beyond tolerance

Jefferson's statute

Madison's Remonstrance

First Amendment

Madisonian separation

The romantic era

Transcendentalism

Schism in New England

Emersonians

Religion of the heart

The second Great Awakening

Schisms over slavery

God of battles

Religion in the Gilded Age

Culture wars

Doomsday or progress?

Second-coming theology

Second-coming politics

The Social Gospel

Reversals

Evangelicals riding high

Evangelicals brought low

Religion in a radical time

Religious nation

Euphoria

Great religious truce

The rights revolution

Evangelicals counterattack

The Karl Rove era

Faith-based government

Ecumenical Karl

Life after Rove

Epilogue : Separation not suppression.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages [554]-598) and index.

ISBN:

9781594201462

1594201463

OCLC:

122309283