Nurturing happiness : how religion shapes emotional practice / Robert Wuthnow.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Wuthnow, Robert, Author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Happiness--Religious aspects.

Happiness.

Religion and sociology--United States.

Religion and sociology.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (x, 232 pages)

Other Title:

How religion shapes emotional practice

Place of Publication:

New York, NY : Oxford University Press, [2025]

Summary:

"Nurturing Happiness describes how American religious leaders at pivotal moments in their history attempted to guide - and control - their adherents' thoughts about happiness and their experiences of it. It shows how religious authorities used their discursive power to draw moral distinctions among kinds of happiness and their institutional power to manage where it took place and how it was expressed. It demonstrates that religious authorities' efforts to nurture happiness, while not always effective, played a crucial role in faith communities' adaptation to changing social conditions. Nurturing Happiness describes these adaptations in colonial-era arguments about heavenly joy and virtuous living, nineteenth-century revival meetings and festive events, Progressive-era advocacy for useful service, and recent efforts to link play with transcendence and to associate spirituality with personal discipline. This is a book for first-time students of religion and sociology as well as for advanced scholars and for interested readers who want to understand better how religion relates to happiness"-- Provided by publisher.

Contents:

Introduction : perspectives on happiness

Earthly and heavenly happiness : dialogic comparisons in colonial America

Getting happy : revival era exuberance and conviviality

Festive emotion : fairs, gender, and identity in the age of industrialization

Durable happiness : progressive era constructions of work and service

Transcendent play : searching for wholeness in the 1960s and beyond

Spiritual discipline : the hard work of finding joy

Illicit happiness : the fallout from betrayals of trust

Conclusion : nurturing happiness.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Online resource; title from digital title page (Oxford Academic, viewed January 5, 2026).

Other Format:

Print version: Wuthnow, Robert. Nurturing happiness.

ISBN:

9780197807071

0197807070

9780197807064

0197807062

9780197807057

0197807054

OCLC:

1514606783

Access Restriction:

Restricted for use by site license