Jack-in-the-box faith: The religion problem in modern american history

Journal of American History

Volumn 90, Issue 4, 2004, Pages 1357-1378

  Butler, Jon ^a  

^a YALE UNIVERSITY   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 26944451758     PISSN: 00218723     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.2307/3660356     Document Type: Review

References (177)

1. Perry Miller, The New England Mind: The Seventeenth Century (New York, 1939), viii;
2. David D. Hall, "Narrating Puritanism", in New Directions in American Religious History, ed. Harry S. Stout and D. G. Hart (New York, 1997), 51-83;
3. David D. Hall, "On Common Ground: The Coherence of American Puritan Studies", William and Mary Quarterly, 44 (April 1987), 193-229;
4. Samuel Eliot Morison, The Puritan Pronaos: Studies in the Intellectual Life of New England in the Seventeenth Century (New York, 1936).
5. Charles L Cohen, "The Post-Puritan Paradigm of Early American Religious History", William and Mary Quarterly, 54 (Oct. 1997). 695-722;
6. Donald G. Mathews, "'Christianizing the South'-Sketching a Synthesis", in New Directions in American Religious History, ed. Stout and Hart, 84-115;
7. Daniel Walker Howe, "Protestantism, Voluntarism, and Personal Identity in Antebellum America", ibid., 206-35;
8. William J. Wolf, The Religion of Abraham Lincoln (New York, 1959), 40-42, 69-78;
9. Elton Trueblood, Abraham Lincoln: Theologian of American Anguish (New York, 1973);
10. Allen C. Guelzo, Abraham Lincoln: Redeemer President (Grand Rapids, 1999);
11. Jon Butler, "Born-Again History?", paper delivered at the annual meeting of the American Historical Association, Washington, D. C., 1992 (in Jon Butler's possession).
12. Paul Boyer, "In Search of the Fourth 'R': The Treatment of Religion in American History Textbooks and Survey Courses", in Religious Advocacy and American History, ed. Bruce Kuklick and D. G. Hart (Grand Rapids, 1997), 112-36.
13. George M. Marsden, The Outrageous Idea of Christian Scholarship (New York, 1997).
14. This conceptualization of religion merges one in Jon Butler, Awash in a Sea of Faith: Christianizing the American People (Cambridge, Mass., 1990), 3 ("religion is taken to mean belief in and resort to supernatural powers, sometimes beings, that determine the course of natural and human events") with that in "Preface", in The Secular Revolution: Power, Interests, and Conflict in the Secularization of American Public Life, ed.
15. Christian Smith (Berkeley, 2003), vii ("By religion I mean the distinctive way of life of communities of followers shaped by their particular system of beliefs and practices that are oriented toward the supernatural").
16. Christian Smith, "Introduction: Rethinking the Secularization of American Public Life", in Secular Revolution, ed. Smith, 3.
17. Charles Woodmason, The Carolina Backcountry on the Eve of the American Revolution: The Journal and Other Writings of Charles Woodmason, Anglican Itinerant, ed. Richard J. Hooker (Chapel Hill, 1953), 13;
18. Butler, Awash in a Sea of Faith, 7-36;
19. C. John Sommerville, "Secular Society/Religious Population: Our Tacit Rules for Using the Term 'Secularization, '" Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, 37 (June 1998), 249-53;
20. David A. Hollinger, "The 'Secularization' Question in the United States in the Twentieth Century", Church History, 70 (March 2001), 132-43;
21. David A. Hollinger, "Why Is There So Much Christianity in the United States? A Reply to Sommerville", ibid, 71 (Dec. 2002), 858-64.
22. Roger Finke and Rodney Stark, The Churching of America, 1776-1990: Winners and Losers in Our Religious Economy (New Brunswick, 1992);
23. Darrett B. Rutman, Winthrop's Boston: Portrait of a Puritan Town, 1630-1649 (Chapel Hill, 1965), 147;
24. Barry A. Kosmin and Seymour Lachman, One Nation under God: Religion in Contemporary American Society (New York, 1993);
25. Philip K. Hastings and Dean R. Hoge, "Religious Trends among College Students, 1948-79", Social Forces, 60 (Dec. 1981), 517-31;
26. Sabino S. Acquaviva, The Decline of the Sacred in Industrial Society, trans. Patricia Lipscomb (Oxford, 1979);
27. Hugh McLeod, Secularisation in Western Europe, 1814-1914 (New York, 2000);
28. Callum G. Brown, The Death of Christian Britain: Understanding Secularisation, 1800-2000 (London, 2001);
29. Steve Bruce, Religion in the Modern World: From Cathedrals to Cults (New York, 1996);
30. Steve Bruce, Religion and Modernization: Sociologists and Historians Debate the Secularization Thesis (Oxford, 1992);
31. Gallup International Millennium Survey (Dec. 10, 2003).
32. Finke and Stark, Churching of America, 16, 24-30;
33. Patricia U. Bonomi and Peter R. Eisenstadt, "Church Adherence in the Eighteenth-Century British American Colonies", William and Mary Quarterly, 39 (April 1982), 245-86;
34. Theodore Caplow et al., "A Symposium on Church Attendance in the United States", American Sociological Review, 63 (Feb. 1998), 111-45;
35. C. Kirk Hadaway, Penny Long, and Mark Chaves, "What Polls Don't Show: A Closer Look at U. S. Church Attendance", ibid., 58 (Dec. 1993), 741-52.
36. Robert Orsi, "The Religious Boundaries of an Inbetween People: Street Feste and the Problem of the Dark-Skinned Other in Italian Harlem, 1920-1990" American Quarterly, 44 (Sept. 1992), 313-47.
37. Randall Balmer, Mine Eyes Have Seen the Glory: A Journey into the Evangelical Subculture in America (1989; New York, 2000), 99-100;
38. Richard M. Bernard, The Melting Pot and the Altar: Marital Assimilation in Early Twentieth-Century Wisconsin (Minneapolis, 1980).
39. Will Herberg, Protestant, Catholic, Jew: An Essay in American Religious Sociology (1955; Garden City, 1960), 322-34, esp. 260;
40. Ruby Jo Reeves Kennedy, "Single or Triple Melring-Pot? Intermarriage Trends in New Haven, 1870-1940", American Journal of Sociology, 49 (Jan. 1944), 331-39;
41. James Sydney Slotkin, Jewish Intermarriage in Chicago (n. p., 1943);
42. Alan Silverstein, It All Begins with a Date: Jewish Concerns about Intermarriage (Northvale, 1995);
43. Paul Cowan and Rachel Cowan, Mixed Blessings: Marriage between Jews and Christians (New York, 1987);
44. Commission on Reform Jewish Outreach, Reaching Adolescents: Interdating, Intermarriage, and Jewish Identity: A Program Guide (New York, 1990).
45. Ann Braude, "Women's History Is American Religious History", in Retelling U. S. Religious History, ed. Thomas A. Tweed (Berkeley, 1997), 87-107, esp. 87, 88.
46. Laurel Thatcher Ulrich, Good Wives: Image and Reality in the Lives of Women in Northern New England, 1650-1750 (New York, 1982);
47. Catherine A. Brekus, Strangers and Pilgrims: Female Preaching in America, 1740-1845 (Chapel Hill, 1998);
48. Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham, Righteous Discontent: The Women's Movement in the Black Baptist Church, 1880-1920 (Cambridge, Mass., 1993);
49. Cynthia G. Tucker, Prophetic Sisterhood: Liberal Women Ministers of the Frontier, 1880-1930 (Boston, 1990);
50. Mary Jo Weaver, New Catholic Women: A Contemporary Challenge to Traditional Religious Authority (San Francisco, 1995);
51. Margaret Lamberts Bendroth, Fundamentalism and Gender, 1875 to the Present (New Haven, 1993);
52. R. Marie Griffith, God's Daughters: Evangelical Women and the Power of Submission (Berkeley, 1997);
53. Lori L. Witt, "More than a 'Slaving Wife': The Limits, Possibilities, and Meaning of Womanhood for Conservative Protestant College Women in the 1920s and 1930s" (Ph. D. diss., Loyola University of Chicago, 2001).
54. Robert A. Orsi, Thank You, St. Jude: Women's Devotion to the Patron Saint of Hopeless Causes (New Haven, 1996).
55. Mark C. Carnes, Secret Ritual and Manhood in Victorian America (New Haven, 1989);
56. Clifford Putney, Muscular Christianity: Manhood and Sports in Protestant America, 1880-1920 (Cambridge, Mass., 2001);
57. Colleen McDannell, "'True Men As We Need Them': Catholicism and the Irish-American Male", American Studies, 27 (1986), 19-36;
58. Lisa MacFarlane, "Resurrecting Man: Desire and The Damnation of Theron Ware", in A Mighty Baptism: Race, Gender, and the Creation of American Protestantism, ed. Susan Juster and Lisa MacFarlane (Ithaca, 1996), 65-80;
59. Rhys H. Williams, ed., Promise Keepers and the New Masculinity: Private Lives and Public Morality (Lanham, 2001);
60. Dane S. Claussen, ed., The Promise Keepers: Essays on Masadinity and Christianity (Jefferson, 2000);
61. Dane S. Claussen, ed., Standing on the Promises: The Promise Keepers and the Revival of Manhood (Cleveland, 1999);
62. Sarah Leslie, The Pagan Roots of Promise Keepers: Resurrecting Pagan Rites (Cambridge, Eng., 1996).
63. Anne M. Boylan, Sunday School: The Formation of an American Institution, 1790-1880 (New Haven, 1988);
64. Charles Stelzle, Boys of the Street: How to Win Them (New York, 1904);
65. Paul Boyer, Urban Masses and Moral Order in America, 1820-1920 (Cambridge, Mass., 1978), 108-22;
66. Thomas Bergler, "Winning America: Christian Youth Groups and the Middle-Class Culture of Crisis, 1930-1965" (Ph. D. diss., University of Notre Dame, 2001);
67. Richard Quebedeaux, I Found It!: The Story of Bill Bright and Campus Crusade (San Francisco, 1979);
68. Margaret L. Bendroth, Growing Up Protestant: Parents, Children, and Mainline Churches (New Brunswick, 2002).
69. Robert Coles, The Moral Life of Children (Boston, 1986);
70. Robert Coles, The Spiritual Life of Children (Boston, 1990);
71. James Garbarino, Lost Boys: Why Our Sons Turn Violent and How We Can Save Them (New York, 1999).
72. Leonard Dinnerstein, Antisemitism in America (New York, 1994), 139;
73. Edward S. Shapiro, A Time for Healing: American Jewry since World War II (Baltimore, 1992), 5;
74. Gary Gerstle, American Crucible: Race and Nation in the Twentieth Century (Princeton, 2001), 204-5.
75. On religious themes in the work of James Baldwin and Mary McCarthy, see Barbara K. Olson", 'Come-to-Jesus Stuff' in James Baldwin's Go Tell It on the Mountain and The Amen Corner? African American Review, 31 (Summer 1997), 295-302;
76. Debra Campbell, Graceful Exits: Catholic Women and the Art of Departure (Bloomington, 2003);
77. Eve Stwertka and Margo Viscusi, eds., Twenty-Four Ways of Looking at Mary McCarthy: The Writer and Her Work (Westport, 1996);
78. Elizabeth N. Evasdaughter, Catholic Girlhood Narratives: The Church and SelfDenial (Boston, 1996). On religion in the work of Flannery O'Connor, Thomas Merton, Dorothy Day, and Walker Percy
79. see Paul Elie, The Life You Save May Be Your Own: An American Pilgrimage (New York, 2003).
80. Robert H. Abzug, Cosmos Crumbling: American Reform and the Religious Imagination (New York, 1994);
81. Lee Benson et al., eds., The History of American Electoral Behavior (Princeton, 1978);
82. David Brion Davis, "Some Themes of Countersubversion: An Analysis of Anti-Masonic, Anti-Catholic, and Anti-Mormon Literature", Mississippi Valley Historical Review, 47 (Sept. 1960), 205-24;
83. David Brion Davis, In the Image of God: Religion, Moral Values, and Our Heritage of Slavery (New Haven, 2001);
84. David W. Blight, Frederick Douglass' Civil War: Keeping Faith in Jubilee (Baton Rouge, 1989);
85. Nancy F. Cott, The Bonds of Womanhood: "Woman's Sphere" in New England, 1780-1835 (New Haven, 1977);
86. Don Harrison Doyle, The Social Order of a Frontier Community: Jacksonville, Illinois, 1825-70 (Urbana, 1978);
87. Ronald P. Formisano, The Birth of Mass Political Parties, Michigan, 1827-1861 (Princeton, 1971);
88. Daniel Walker Howe, "Religion and Politics in the Antebellum North", in Religion and American Politics: From the Colonial Period to the 1980s, ed. Mark A. Noll (New York, 1990), 121-45;
89. Linda Kerber, Women of the Republic: Intellect and Ideology in Revolutionary America (Chapel Hill, 1980);
90. Paul Kleppner, The Cross of Culture: A Social Analysis of Midwestern Politics, 1850-1900 (New York, 1970);
91. Anne Norton, Alternative Americas: A Reading of Antebellum Political Culture (Chicago, 1986);
92. Mary Ryan, Cradle of the Middle Class: The Family in Oneida County, New York, 1790-1865 (New York, 1981);
93. Robert P. Swierenga, "Ethnoreligious Political Behavior in the Mid-Nineteenth Century: Voting, Values, Cultures", in Religion and American Politics, ed. Noll, 146-71;
94. Ronald G. Walters, American Reformers, 1815-1860 (New York, 1978);
95. Sean Wilenrz, Chants Democratic: New York City and the Rise of the American Working Class, 1788-1850 (New York, 1984);
96. Bertram Wyatt-Brown, "Prelude to Abolitionism: Sabbatarian Politics and the Rise of the Second Party System", Journal of American History, 58 (Sept. 1971), 316-41;
97. Joel H. Silbey, The American Political Nation, 1838-1893 (Stanford, 1991), 162-63.
98. Smith, "Introduction: Rethinking the Secularization of American Public Life", 3.
99. David A. Hollinger, Science, Jews, and Secular Culture: Studies in Mid-Twentieth-Century American Intellectual History (Princeton, 1996);
100. Gregory D. Black, The Catholic Crusade against the Movies, 1940-1975 (New York, 1997);
101. Kraig Beyerlein, "Educational Elites and the Movement to Secularize Public Education: The Case of the National Education Association", in Secular Revolution, ed. Smith, 160-96;
102. Richard W. Flory, "Promoting a Secular Standard: Secularization and Modern Journalism, 1870-1930", ibid., 395-433;
103. George M. Marsden, The Soul of the American University: From Protestant Establishment to Established Nonbelief (New York, 1994);
104. Terry Teachout, The Skeptic: A Life of H. L. Mencken (New York, 2002).
105. Henry F. May, Protestant Churches and Industrial America (New York, 1949), esp. 263-65;
106. Robert Morse Crunden, Ministers of Reform: The Progressives' Achievement in American Civilization, 1889-1920 (New York, 1982);
107. David M. Kennedy, Freedom from Fear: The American People in Depression and War, 1929-1945 (New York, 1999), 97, 216.
108. Aaron I. Abell, American Catholicism and Social Action (Garden Ciry, 1960);
109. Mel Piehl, Breaking Bread: The Catholic Worker and the Origin of Catholic Radicalism in America (Philadelphia, 1982);
110. Daniel J. Kevles, In the Name of Eugenics: Genetics and the Uses of Human Heredity (New York, 1985);
111. Richard Wightman Fox, Reinhold Niebuhr: A Biography (New York, 1985);
112. Wilhelm Pauck and Marion Pauck, Paul Tillich: His Life and Thought (New York, 1976);
113. Abraham Joshua Heschel, Man Is Not Alone: A Philosophy of Religion (New York, 1951);
114. Edward K. Kaplan and Samuel H. Dresner, Abraham Joshua Heschel: Prophetic Witness (New Haven, 1998).
115. Jeff Manza and Clem Brooks, Social Cleavages and Political Change: Voter Alignments and U. S. Party Coalitions (New York, 1999).
116. Charles Marsh, God's Long Summer: Stories of Faith and Civil Rights (Princeton, 1997), 50;
117. Steven F. Lawson, "Freedom Then, Freedom Now: The Historiography of the Civil Rights Movement", American Historical Review, 96 (April 1991), 456-71, esp. 461;
118. Charles M. Payne, I've Got the Light of Freedom: The Organizing Tradition and the Mississippi Freedom Struggle (Berkeley, 1995);
119. John Dittmer, Local People: The Struggle for Civil Rights in Mississippi (Urbana, 1994);
120. Neil R. McMillen, Dark Journey: Black Mississippians in the Age of Jim Crow (Urbana, 1989);
121. John T. McGreevy, Parish Boundaries: The Catholic Encounter with Race in the Twentieth-Century Urban North (Chicago, 1996).
122. Marsh, God's Long Summer, 68.
123. Michael Lienesch, Redeeming America: Piety and Politics in the New Christian Right (Chapel Hill, 1993), 139-94;
124. Francis A. Schaeffer, How Should We Then Live?: The Rise and Decline of Western Thought and Culture (Old Tappan, 1976).
125. For Barry Goldwater's statement, see Patrick Allitt, Catholic Intellectuals and Conservative Politics in America, 1950-1985 (Ithaca, 1993), 262.
126. Lisa McGirr, Suburban Warriors: The Origins of the New American Right (Princeton, 2001);
127. Donald G. Mathews and Jane Sherron De Hart, Sex, Gender, and the Politics of era: A State and the Nation (New York, 1990);
128. Mary Frances Berry, Why era Failed: Politics, Women's Rights, and the Amending Process of the Constitution (Bloomington, 1986).
129. Ralph Reed, Active Faith: How Christians Are Changing the Soul of American Politics (New York, 1996), 112.
130. Jerome L. Himmelstein and James A. McRae Jr., "Social Conservatism, New Republicans, and the 1980 Election", Public Opinion Quarterly, 48 (Autumn 1984), 592-605;
131. Corwin Smidt, "Born-Again Politics: The Political Behavior of Evangelical Christians in the South and Non-South", in Religion and Politics in the South: Mass and Elite Perspectives, ed. Tod A. Baker, Robert P. Steed, and Laurence W. Moreland (New York, 1983), 2756;
132. Corwin Smidt, "The Mobilization of Evangelical Voters in 1980: An Initial Test of Several Hypotheses", Southeastern Political Review, 16 (Fall 1988), 3-33.
133. Reed, Active Faith, 9.
134. Pat Robertson, America's Date with Destiny (Nashville, 1986), 273, 279;
135. Michael Lind, "Rev. Robertson's Grand International Conspiracy Theory", New York Review of Books, Feb. 2, 1995, pp. 21-25;
136. Edith L. Blumhofer, Aimee Semple McPherson: Everybody's Sister (Grand Rapids, 1993), 266-68;
137. Tona J. Hangen, Redeeming the Dial: Radio, Religion, and Popular Culture in America (Chapel Hill, 2002);
138. Steve Bruce, Pray TV: Televangelism in America (New York, 1990);
139. Mark Silk, "Notes on the Judeo-Christian Tradition in America", American Quarterly, 36 (Spring 1984), 65-85.
140. William James, The Varieties of Religious Experience: A Study in Human Nature (1901; New York, 1999), 36;
141. William A. Lessa and Evon Z. Vogt, eds., Reader in Comparative Religion (New York, 1979);
142. Daniel L. Pals, Seven Theories of Religion (New York, 1996). Functionalism emphasizes how religion works and what it accomplishes and is contrasted with historical approaches that stress the origins of religion. On functionalism in American social science
143. see Dorothy Ross, The Origins of American Social Science (New York, 1991).
144. Colleen McDannell, The Christian Home in Victorian America, 1840-1900 (Bloomington, 1986);
145. Colleen McDannell, Material Christianity: Religion and Popular Culture in America (New Haven, 1996);
146. Leigh Eric Schmidt, Consumer Rites: The Buying and Selling of American Holidays (Princeton, 1995);
147. Rew R. Heinze, Adapting to Abundance: Jewish Immigrants, Mass Consumption, and the Search for American Identity (New York, 1990);
148. Jenna Weissman Joselit, The Wonders of America: Reinventing Jewish Culture, 1880-1950 (New York, 1994);
149. Paul Gutjahr, An American Bible: A History of the Good Book in the United States, 1777-1880 (Stanford, 1999);
150. David Morgan, Protestants and Pictures: Religion, Visual Culture, and the Age of American Mass Production (New York, 1999).
151. William Severini Kowinski, The Mailing of America: An Inside Look at the Great Consumer Paradise (New York, 1985);
152. M. Jeffrey Hardwick, Mall Maker: Victor Gruen, Architect of an American Dream (Philadelphia, 2003).
153. William H. Whyte, The Organization Alan (New York, 1956), 405-22;
154. Serge Carlos, "Religious Participation and the Urban-Suburban Continuum", American Journal of Sociology, 75 (March 1970), 742-59;
155. Susan Curtis, A Consuming Faith: The Social Gospel and Modem American Culture (Baltimore, 1991), 258-62;
156. Beth S. Wenger, New York Jews and the Great Depression: Uncertain Promise (New Haven, 1996), 166-96.
157. Gerald H. Gamm, Urban Exodus: Why the Jews Left Boston and the Catholics Stayed (Cambridge, Mass., 1999);
158. Eran Diamond, And I Will Dwell in TheirMidst: Orthodox Jews in Suburbia (Chapel Hill, 2000);
159. Etan Diamond, Souls of the City: Religion and the Search for Community in Postwar America (Bloomington, 2003);
160. James Hudnut-Beumler, Lookingfor God in the Suburbs: The Religion of the American Dream and Its Critics, 1945-1965 (New Brunswick, 1994).
161. Sydney Ahlstrom, A Religious History of the American People New Haven, 1972), 1019;
162. Martin Marty, Pilgrims in Their Own Land: Five Hundred Years of Religion in America Boston, 1984), 319-35;
163. Carol V. R. George, God's Salesman: Norman Vincent Peak and the Power of Positive Thinking (New York, 1993).
164. Beryl Satter, Each Mind a Kingdom: American Women, SexualPurity, and the New Thought Movement, 1875-1920 (Berkeley, 1999);
165. Rew R. Heinze, "The First Mass-Market Rabbi", Midstream, 42 (June-July 1996), 1417;
166. Robert N. Bellah et al., Habits of the Heart: Individualism and Commitment in American Life (Berkeley, 1985);
167. Wade Clark Roof, Spiritual Marketplace: Baby Boomers and the Remaking of American Religion (Princeton, 1999);
168. Robert Wuthnow, After Heaven: Spirituality in America since the 1950s (Berkeley, 1998).
169. Donald Meyer, The Positive Thinkers: A Study of the American Quest for Health, Wealth, and Personal Power from Mary Baker Eddy to Norman Vincent Peale (Garden City, 1965);
170. George, God's Salesman, 218-19;
171. Christian Financial Network (Aug. 19, 2003).
172. Kuklick and Hart, eds., Religious Advocacy and American History;
173. Kenneth Lynn, "Perry Miller", American Scholar, 52 (Spring 1983), 221-27.
174. Yvonne Yazbeck Haddad, The Muslims of America (New York, 1991);
175. Yvonne Yazbeck Haddad and Jane I. Smith, Muslim Communities in North America (Albany, 1994);
176. Jane I. Smith, Islam in America (New York, 1999);
177. C. Eric Lincoln and Lawrence H. Mamiya, The Black Church in the African American Experience (Durham, 1990), 209.