Download or read book The Business Turn in American Religious History written by Amanda Porterfield and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2017 with total page 265 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Business has received little attention in American religious history, although it has profound implications for understanding the sustained popularity and ongoing transformation of religion in the United States. This volume offers a wide ranging exploration of the business aspects of American religious organizations. The authors analyze the financing, production, marketing, and distribution of religious goods and services and the role of wealth and economic organization in sustaining and even shaping worship, charity, philanthropy, institutional growth, and missionary work. Treating religion and business holistically, their essays show that American religious life has always been informed by business practices. Laying the groundwork for further investigation, the authors show how American business has functioned as a domain for achieving religious goals. Indeed they find that religion has historically been more powerful when interwoven with business. Chapters on Mormon enterprise, Jewish philanthropy, Hindu gurus, Native American casinos, and the wedding of business wealth to conservative Catholic social teaching demonstrate the range of new studies stimulated by the business turn in American religious history. Other chapters show how evangelicals joined neo-liberal economic practice and right-wing politics to religious fundamentalism to consolidate wealth and power, and how they developed marketing campaigns and organizational strategies that transformed the American religious landscape. Included are essays exposing the moral compromises religious organizations have made to succeed as centers of wealth and influence, and the religious beliefs that rationalize and justify these compromises. Still others examine the application of business practices as a means of sustaining religious institutions and expanding their reach, and look at controversies over business practices within religious organizations, and the adjustments such organizations have made in response. Together, the essays collected here offer new ways of conceptualizing the interdependence of religion and business in the United States, establishing multiple paths for further study of their intertwined historical development.
Download or read book Corporate Spirit written by Amanda Porterfield and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2018-03-01 with total page 217 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this groundbreaking work, Amanda Porterfield explores the long intertwining of religion and commerce in the history of incorporation in the United States. Beginning with the antecedents of that history in western Europe, she focuses on organizations to show how corporate strategies in religion and commerce developed symbiotically, and how religion has influenced the corporate structuring and commercial orientation of American society. Porterfield begins her story in ancient Rome. She traces the development of corporate organization through medieval Europe and Elizabethan England and then to colonial North America, where organizational practices derived from religion infiltrated commerce, and commerce led to political independence. Left more to their own devices than under British law, religious groups in the United States experienced unprecedented autonomy that facilitated new forms of communal governance and new means of broadcasting their messages. As commercial enterprise expanded, religious organizations grew apace, helping many Americans absorb the shocks of economic turbulence, and promoting new conceptions of faith, spirit, and will power that contributed to business. Porterfield highlights the role that American religious institutions played a society increasingly dominated by commercial incorporation and free market ideologies. She also shows how charitable impulses long nurtured by religion continued to stimulate reform and demand for accountability.
Download or read book The Business Turn in American Religious History written by Amanda Porterfield and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2017-07-19 with total page 265 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Business has received little attention in American religious history, although it has profound implications for understanding the sustained popularity and ongoing transformation of religion in the United States. This volume offers a wide ranging exploration of the business aspects of American religious organizations. The authors analyze the financing, production, marketing, and distribution of religious goods and services and the role of wealth and economic organization in sustaining and even shaping worship, charity, philanthropy, institutional growth, and missionary work. Treating religion and business holistically, their essays show that American religious life has always been informed by business practices. Laying the groundwork for further investigation, the authors show how American business has functioned as a domain for achieving religious goals. Indeed they find that religion has historically been more powerful when interwoven with business. Chapters on Mormon enterprise, Jewish philanthropy, Hindu gurus, Native American casinos, and the wedding of business wealth to conservative Catholic social teaching demonstrate the range of new studies stimulated by the business turn in American religious history. Other chapters show how evangelicals joined neo-liberal economic practice and right-wing politics to religious fundamentalism to consolidate wealth and power, and how they developed marketing campaigns and organizational strategies that transformed the American religious landscape. Included are essays exposing the moral compromises religious organizations have made to succeed as centers of wealth and influence, and the religious beliefs that rationalize and justify these compromises. Still others examine the application of business practices as a means of sustaining religious institutions and expanding their reach, and look at controversies over business practices within religious organizations, and the adjustments such organizations have made in response. Together, the essays collected here offer new ways of conceptualizing the interdependence of religion and business in the United States, establishing multiple paths for further study of their intertwined historical development.
Download or read book Retelling U S Religious History written by Thomas A. Tweed and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 2023-09-01 with total page 318 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This collection marks a turning point in the study of the history of American religions. In challenging the dominant paradigm, Thomas A. Tweed and his coauthors propose nothing less than a reshaping of the way that American religious history is understood, studied, and taught. The range of these essays is extraordinary. They analyze sexual pleasure, colonization, gender, and interreligious exchange. The narrators position themselves in a number of geographical sites, including the Canadian border, the American West, and the Deep South. And they discuss a wide range of groups, from Pueblo Indians and Russian Orthodox to Japanese Buddhists and Southern Baptists.
Download or read book American Religious History written by Amanda Porterfield and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2008-04-15 with total page 352 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this outstanding historical reader, the editor has gathered nine essays and over thirty primary documents to present a coherent picture of the history of American religion.
Download or read book Evangelicals Incorporated written by Daniel Vaca and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2019-12-03 with total page 337 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A new history explores the commercial heart of evangelical Christianity. American evangelicalism is big business. For decades, the world’s largest media conglomerates have sought out evangelical consumers, and evangelical books have regularly become international best sellers. In the early 2000s, Rick Warren’s The Purpose Driven Life spent ninety weeks on the New York Times Best Sellers list and sold more than thirty million copies. But why have evangelicals achieved such remarkable commercial success? According to Daniel Vaca, evangelicalism depends upon commercialism. Tracing the once-humble evangelical book industry’s emergence as a lucrative center of the US book trade, Vaca argues that evangelical Christianity became religiously and politically prominent through business activity. Through areas of commerce such as branding, retailing, marketing, and finance, for-profit media companies have capitalized on the expansive potential of evangelicalism for more than a century. Rather than treat evangelicalism as a type of conservative Protestantism that market forces have commodified and corrupted, Vaca argues that evangelicalism is an expressly commercial religion. Although religious traditions seem to incorporate people who embrace distinct theological ideas and beliefs, Vaca shows, members of contemporary consumer society often participate in religious cultures by engaging commercial products and corporations. By examining the history of companies and corporate conglomerates that have produced and distributed best-selling religious books, bibles, and more, Vaca not only illustrates how evangelical ideas, identities, and alliances have developed through commercial activity but also reveals how the production of evangelical identity became a component of modern capitalism.
Download or read book Religion in American Life written by Jon Butler and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2011-10-06 with total page 573 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Quite ambitious, tracing religion in the United States from European colonization up to the 21st century.... The writing is strong throughout."--Publishers Weekly (starred review) "One can hardly do better than Religion in American Life.... A good read, especially for the uninitiated. The initiated might also read it for its felicity of narrative and the moments of illumination that fine scholars can inject even into stories we have all heard before. Read it."--Church History This new edition of Religion in American Life, written by three of the country's most eminent historians of religion, offers a superb overview that spans four centuries, illuminating the rich spiritual heritage central to nearly every event in our nation's history. Beginning with the state of religious affairs in both the Old and New Worlds on the eve of colonization and continuing through to the present, the book covers all the major American religious groups, from Protestants, Jews, and Catholics to Muslims, Hindus, Mormons, Buddhists, and New Age believers. Revised and updated, the book includes expanded treatment of religion during the Great Depression, of the religious influences on the civil rights movement, and of utopian groups in the 19th century, and it now covers the role of religion during the 2008 presidential election, observing how completely religion has entered American politics.
Download or read book A Companion to American Religious History written by Benjamin E. Park and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2021-02-09 with total page 400 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A collection of original essays exploring the history of the various American religious traditions and the meaning of their many expressions The Blackwell Companion to American Religious History explores the key events, significant themes, and important movements in various religious traditions throughout the nation’s history from pre-colonization to the present day. Original essays written by leading scholars and new voices in the field discuss how religion in America has transformed over the years, explore its many expressions and meanings, and consider religion’s central role in American life. Emphasizing the integration of religion into broader cultural and historical themes, this wide-ranging volume explores the operation of religion in eras of historical change, the diversity of religious experiences, and religion’s intersections with American cultural, political, social, racial, gender, and intellectual history. Each chronologically-organized chapter focuses on a specific period or event, such as the interactions between Moravian and Indigenous communities, the origins of African-American religious institutions, Mormon settlement in Utah, social reform movements during the twentieth century, the growth of ethnic religious communities, and the rise of the Religious Right. An innovative historical genealogy of American religious traditions, the Companion: Highlights broader historical themes using clear and compelling narrative Helps teachers expose their students to the significance and variety of America’s religious past Explains new and revisionist interpretations of American religious history Surveys current and emerging historiographical trends Traces historical themes to contemporary issues surrounding civil rights and social justice movements, modern capitalism, and debates over religious liberties Making the lessons of American religious history relevant to a broad range of readers, The Blackwell Companion to American Religious History is the perfect book for advanced undergraduate and graduate students in American history courses, and a valuable resource for graduate students and scholars wanting to keep pace with current historiographical trends and recent developments in the field.
Download or read book Religious Outsiders and the Making of Americans written by R. Laurence Moore and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 1987-12-03 with total page 264 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In light of the curious compulsion to stress Protestant dominance in America's past, this book takes an unorthodox look at religious history in America. Rather than focusing on the usual mainstream Protestant churches--Episcopal, Congregationalist, Methodist, Baptist, and Lutheran--Moore instead turns his attention to the equally important "outsiders" in the American religious experience and tests the realities of American religious pluralism against their history in America. Through separate but interrelated chapters on seven influential groups of "outsiders"--the Mormons, Catholics, Jews, Christian Scientists, Millennialists, 20th-century Protestant Fundamentalists, and the African-American churches--Moore shows that what was going on in mainstream churches may not have been the "normal" religious experience at all, and that many of these "outside" groups embodied values that were, in fact, quintessentially American.
Download or read book Major Problems in American Religious History written by Patrick Allitt and published by Major Problems in American His. This book was released on 2013 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Designed to encourage critical thinking about history, the [book] introduces students to both primary sources and analytical essays on important topics in U.S. history. [The book] presents a ... selected group of readings in a format that asks students to evaluate primary sources, test the interpretations of distinguished historians and others, and draw their own conclusions"--P. [4] of cover.
Download or read book The Columbia Guide to Religion in American History written by Paul Harvey and published by Columbia University Press. This book was released on 2012-02-14 with total page 830 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.
Download or read book A Companion to American Religious History written by Benjamin E. Park and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2021-01-26 with total page 512 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A collection of original essays exploring the history of the various American religious traditions and the meaning of their many expressions The Blackwell Companion to American Religious History explores the key events, significant themes, and important movements in various religious traditions throughout the nation’s history from pre-colonization to the present day. Original essays written by leading scholars and new voices in the field discuss how religion in America has transformed over the years, explore its many expressions and meanings, and consider religion’s central role in American life. Emphasizing the integration of religion into broader cultural and historical themes, this wide-ranging volume explores the operation of religion in eras of historical change, the diversity of religious experiences, and religion’s intersections with American cultural, political, social, racial, gender, and intellectual history. Each chronologically-organized chapter focuses on a specific period or event, such as the interactions between Moravian and Indigenous communities, the origins of African-American religious institutions, Mormon settlement in Utah, social reform movements during the twentieth century, the growth of ethnic religious communities, and the rise of the Religious Right. An innovative historical genealogy of American religious traditions, the Companion: Highlights broader historical themes using clear and compelling narrative Helps teachers expose their students to the significance and variety of America’s religious past Explains new and revisionist interpretations of American religious history Surveys current and emerging historiographical trends Traces historical themes to contemporary issues surrounding civil rights and social justice movements, modern capitalism, and debates over religious liberties Making the lessons of American religious history relevant to a broad range of readers, The Blackwell Companion to American Religious History is the perfect book for advanced undergraduate and graduate students in American history courses, and a valuable resource for graduate students and scholars wanting to keep pace with current historiographical trends and recent developments in the field.
Download or read book The Production of American Religious Freedom written by Finbarr Curtis and published by NYU Press. This book was released on 2016-08-02 with total page 219 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Americans love religious freedom. Few agree, however, about what they mean by either “religion” or “freedom.” Rather than resolve these debates, Finbarr Curtis argues that there is no such thing as religious freedom. Lacking any consistent content, religious freedom is a shifting and malleable rhetoric employed for a variety of purposes. While Americans often think of freedom as the right to be left alone, the free exercise of religion works to produce, challenge, distribute, and regulate different forms of social power. The book traces shifts in the notion of religious freedom in America from The Second Great Awakening, to the fiction of Louisa May Alcott and the films of D.W. Griffith, through William Jennings Bryan and the Scopes Trial, and up to debates over the Tea Party to illuminate how Protestants have imagined individual and national forms of identity. A chapter on Al Smith considers how the first Catholic presidential nominee of a major party challenged Protestant views about the separation of church and state. Moving later in the twentieth century, the book analyzes Malcolm X’s more sweeping rejection of Christian freedom in favor of radical forms of revolutionary change. The final chapters examine how contemporary controversies over intelligent design and the claims of corporations to exercise religion are at the forefront of efforts to shift regulatory power away from the state and toward private institutions like families, churches, and corporations. The volume argues that religious freedom is produced within competing visions of governance in a self-governing nation.
Download or read book One Nation Under God written by Kevin M. Kruse and published by Basic Books. This book was released on 2015-04-14 with total page 385 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The provocative and authoritative history of the origins of Christian America in the New Deal era We're often told that the United States is, was, and always has been a Christian nation. But in One Nation Under God, historian Kevin M. Kruse reveals that the belief that America is fundamentally and formally Christian originated in the 1930s. To fight the "slavery" of FDR's New Deal, businessmen enlisted religious activists in a campaign for "freedom under God" that culminated in the election of their ally Dwight Eisenhower in 1952. The new president revolutionized the role of religion in American politics. He inaugurated new traditions like the National Prayer Breakfast, as Congress added the phrase "under God" to the Pledge of Allegiance and made "In God We Trust" the country's first official motto. Church membership soon soared to an all-time high of 69 percent. Americans across the religious and political spectrum agreed that their country was "one nation under God." Provocative and authoritative, One Nation Under God reveals how an unholy alliance of money, religion, and politics created a false origin story that continues to define and divide American politics to this day.
Download or read book Religious Intolerance in America Second Edition written by John Corrigan and published by UNC Press Books. This book was released on 2019-11-27 with total page 356 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The story of religion in America is one of unparalleled diversity and protection of the religious rights of individuals. But that story is a muddied one. This new and expanded edition of a classroom favorite tells a jolting history—illuminated by historical texts, pictures, songs, cartoons, letters, and even t-shirts—of how our society has been and continues to be replete with religious intolerance. It powerfully reveals the narrow gap between intolerance and violence in America. The second edition contains a new chapter on Islamophobia and adds fresh material on the Christian persecution complex, white supremacy and other race-related issues, sexuality, and the role played by social media. John Corrigan and Lynn S. Neal's overarching narrative weaves together a rich, compelling array of textual and visual materials. Arranged thematically, each chapter provides a broad historical background, and each document or cluster of related documents is entwined in context as a discussion of the issues unfolds. The need for this book has only increased in the midst of today's raging conflicts about immigration, terrorism, race, religious freedom, and patriotism.
Download or read book The Religious History of America written by Edwin S. Gaustad and published by HarperCollins. This book was released on 2015-12-15 with total page 357 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A Dynamic Account of Religion's Central Role in American History
Download or read book Religion and the Marketplace in the United States written by and published by . This book was released on 2015 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
