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Terminology, Myth, and Tribes

William M. Shea

in The Lion and the Lamb: Evangelicals and Catholics in America

This chapter begins with an explanation of the enmity between American evangelical Protestants and Roman Catholics, which can be traced back to colonial period. It then discusses scholarly literature ... More

This chapter begins with an explanation of the enmity between American evangelical Protestants and Roman Catholics, which can be traced back to colonial period. It then discusses scholarly literature on evangelical-Catholic relations, and analyzes three myths: the Protestant myth, Roman Catholic myth, and the Enlightenment myth. An overview of the chapters in this volume is also presented.Less

The Perils of Modernity

William M. Shea

in The Lion and the Lamb: Evangelicals and Catholics in America

This chapter examines the differences between evangelical Protestants and Catholics in coping with modernism in the 20th century. It focuses on the cultural changes that had the most immediate and ... More

This chapter examines the differences between evangelical Protestants and Catholics in coping with modernism in the 20th century. It focuses on the cultural changes that had the most immediate and direct effect on them, and elicited their most vigorous negative responses. “Modernity” represents the antireligious ideological factors in the changes in the West since the Enlightenment.Less

Introduction

Henry Chadwick

in East and West: The Making of a Rift in the Church: From Apostolic Times until the Council of Florence

Christian history is scarred by splits — between Chalcedonian and Monophysote, or between Roman Catholic and Evangelical Protestant, or between Lutheran and Calvinist or between High Calvinist and ... More

Christian history is scarred by splits — between Chalcedonian and Monophysote, or between Roman Catholic and Evangelical Protestant, or between Lutheran and Calvinist or between High Calvinist and Arminian. But the greatest Christian split has between East and West, between Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox. Divergences have occurred and are still alive between those for whom a sustained worldwide unity in a single communion is possible and those for whom the necessarily limited apprehension of one man offers too narrow a basis for whom the common mind of a universal Church has to have a more conciliar and collegial expression.Less

A New U.S.–Israeli Alliance, 1973–1979

Caitlin Carenen

in The Fervent Embrace: Liberal Protestants, Evangelicals, and Israel

This chapter details a new approach to Israel among American Protestants. Theological assessments of traditional Protestant teachings toward Jews and Judaism reflected a new sensitivity toward ... More

This chapter details a new approach to Israel among American Protestants. Theological assessments of traditional Protestant teachings toward Jews and Judaism reflected a new sensitivity toward Jewish–Christian relations, as mainline Protestants continued to grapple with the reality of Israel and the meaning of Judaism. The societal upheaval of the 1960s and 1970s, however, created a crisis for mainline Protestants. These mainline denominations lost members to evangelical Protestant churches that emphasized adherence to orthodox theology. The decline of mainstream Protestantism signaled the abandonment of the pragmatic and humanitarian advocacy for a strong U.S.–Israeli alliance. The alliance indeed grew stronger but for prophetic and eschatological reasons that were anathemas to the liberal Protestants preceding it. A new alliance would arise, more politically powerful than the one it preceded, and would alter the relationship between American Protestants, Jews, and Israel.Less

The Tide Turns, 1967–1973

Caitlin Carenen

in The Fervent Embrace: Liberal Protestants, Evangelicals, and Israel

This chapter describes a theological shift occurring in the late 1960s, wherein evangelicals and fundamentalists gradually dominated the landscape of American Protestantism. Disillusioned by the ... More

This chapter describes a theological shift occurring in the late 1960s, wherein evangelicals and fundamentalists gradually dominated the landscape of American Protestantism. Disillusioned by the increasing loss of theological distinctions between most mainline denominations and their abandonment of orthodoxy in favor of modernity, American Protestants in the late 1960s began to establish their own churches. A move into the suburbs to newer homes and newer church buildings, coupled with a reactionary return to orthodoxy, had created this shift. This religious realignment had profound implications for American politics, and especially for U.S. foreign policy. The mainline American Protestants who had supported Israel for pragmatic and humanitarian reasons were increasingly replaced in numbers and influence by evangelical and fundamentalist Protestants who viewed Israel through an eschatological lens.Less

Epilogue: The Subterranean River

Joshua Guthman

in Strangers Below: Primitive Baptists and American Culture

This epilogue outlines the reasons why the Primitive Baptists are overshadowed by their Evangelical Protestant counterparts. One reason is the organization of several denominations by the ... More

This epilogue outlines the reasons why the Primitive Baptists are overshadowed by their Evangelical Protestant counterparts. One reason is the organization of several denominations by the Evangelicals in the nineteenth century. These networks troubled the Primitives as it extended across ecclesiastical lines in the formation of interdenominational benevolent efforts with tiered bureaucracies and worldwide reach. Realizing that that awakening and organization went hand in hand, the Primitives attempted to slow this process by organizing themselves into regional church associations that might remind their fellows to search “for the old paths.” Another reason is the timing of their birth during the Second Great Awakening when the Primitives were seen as just one of the many subdenominations of a notoriously schismatic movement.Less

The Peculiar Stake U.S. Protestants Have in the Question of State Recognition of Same-Sex Marriages

Mary Anne Case

in After Secular Law

This chapter argues that opposition to legal recognition of same-sex marriage on the part of evangelical Protestant religious conservatives who claim such recognition would undercut their own ... More

This chapter argues that opposition to legal recognition of same-sex marriage on the part of evangelical Protestant religious conservatives who claim such recognition would undercut their own marriages can best be understood as the result of Protestant dependence on the state to enforce its legal traditions. It contrasts this concern with the practices of observant Jews and Roman Catholics, who clearly understand that civil marriage and marriage within their faith are not the same. Further, it argues that most American Protestants sacralize the state in a most unexpected way, incorporating it religiously by assigning it governance tasks essential to the maintenance of religious goals.Less

Introduction. The Chief Cornerstone

Charles F. Irons

in The Origins of Proslavery Christianity: White and Black Evangelicals in Colonial and Antebellum Virginia

This book is about the interactions between antebellum black and white Virginians who identified themselves across vast chasms of power as evangelical Protestants. It seeks to connect the two ... More

This book is about the interactions between antebellum black and white Virginians who identified themselves across vast chasms of power as evangelical Protestants. It seeks to connect the two aforementioned truths: that it was evangelical whites who built the strongest defense of slavery, and that whites and blacks interacted constantly within evangelical communities. The central thesis is that white evangelicals forged their policies on slavery in response to the spiritual initiatives of black evangelicals. When whites theorized about their moral responsibilities toward slaves, in other words, they thought first of their relationship with bondmen and -women in their own religious communities. Moreover, African American Virginians were active players in this process of ideological negotiation; through their ecclesiastical choices, they largely determined the timing and nature of decisions that white evangelicals made about race and slavery.Less

The “Epidemic of Bullying and Gay Teen Suicide”: Tyler Clementi and It Gets Better

Brett Krutzsch

in Dying to Be Normal: Gay Martyrs and the Transformation of American Sexual Politics

Chapter 3 examines the first gay death that incited national outrage after Matthew Shepard’s murder: Tyler Clementi’s suicide in 2010. Twelve years after Shepard’s murder, another white, Protestant, ... More

Chapter 3 examines the first gay death that incited national outrage after Matthew Shepard’s murder: Tyler Clementi’s suicide in 2010. Twelve years after Shepard’s murder, another white, Protestant, gay college student became a national name. The chapter explores why many elected officials and heterosexual citizens viewed Clementi’s suicide as an atrocity that the country needed to address. The chapter also investigates how several anti-gay Christian groups reframed their rhetoric about homosexuality as a direct response to Clementi’s suicide. The chapter’s other focus is the It Gets Better Project. It Gets Better became a cultural phenomenon soon after news broke of Clementi’s death. The chapter considers why It Gets Better achieved remarkable popularity, what messages the campaign has promoted as necessary for a “better” life, and how those largely Protestant messages are based on the assimilationist trends of white, middle-class, gender-typical, gay Americans.Less

Constructing a Region of Christian Free Enterprise

Elizabeth Fones-Wolf and Ken Fones-Wolf

in Struggle for the Soul of the Postwar South: White Evangelical Protestants and Operation Dixie

This chapter traces the emergence of a Christian free enterprise vision for the South at the end of the war. For evangelical businessmen, the region seemed a new promised land for growth and ... More

This chapter traces the emergence of a Christian free enterprise vision for the South at the end of the war. For evangelical businessmen, the region seemed a new promised land for growth and investment with a hard-working, low-wage labor force. Christian free-enterprise ideology meshed easily with the goals of corporate executives hoping to take advantage of the lower wages and conservative politics of the South. Moreover, The South was a bulwark against the further spread of liberal, New Deal politics. Meanwhile, for white Protestant evangelicals, Christian free enterprise could protect the region against the threats that modernism and state-centered bureaucracies posed to the southern way of life.Less

Feminist Catholic Women’s Grassroots Antiabortion Activism

Karissa Haugeberg

in Women against Abortion: Inside the Largest Moral Reform Movement of the Twentieth Century

This chapter addresses the history of socially progressive—and feminist-identified—Catholic women who mobilized to fight abortion in the 1970s and 1980s. Drawing upon oral history interviews, ... More

This chapter addresses the history of socially progressive—and feminist-identified—Catholic women who mobilized to fight abortion in the 1970s and 1980s. Drawing upon oral history interviews, organizational records, arrest dockets, and newspaper clippings, it reveals that lay Catholic women initially welcomed evangelicals into the grassroots anti-abortion movement, but were unprepared for the patriarchal worldview that evangelicals would impose on the movement. Although they were ultimately pushed out of leadership positions, lay Catholic women’s influence on the character of abortion protest continued to flourish long after they had withdrawn from the movement. When progressive Catholic women, including Juli Loesch, left leadership posts, anti-abortion support for welfare programs, peace, and social justice waned.Less

The Turn to Subjectivity

Frank M. Turner

Richard A. Lofthouse (ed.)

in European Intellectual History from Rousseau to Nietzsche

This chapter first discusses the Protestant Evangelical Awakening, a religious movement that swept across the transatlantic world from central Europe to Massachusetts in the early eighteenth century. ... More

This chapter first discusses the Protestant Evangelical Awakening, a religious movement that swept across the transatlantic world from central Europe to Massachusetts in the early eighteenth century. The awakening commenced in the 1730s and lasted for about a quarter of a century in different degrees of intensity in different regions. The story of the evangelical awakening is important because it revivified the Protestant impulses in European and American culture to inwardness. It also fostered the antinomian impulse to challenge existing ecclesiastical structures and established clergy. The remainder of the chapter deals with Protestants whose lives were deeply influenced by Protestant pietism and Protestant theology, namely Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Immanuel Kant. It explains their turn to subjectivity which represented a rejection of existing intellectual, social, or religious authority.Less

Good Things Worth Sharing?

Méadhbh McIvor

in Representing God: Christian Legal Activism in Contemporary England

This concluding chapter addresses the following themes: evangelism in the public sphere, emergent trends in Christian activism, and the changing place of Christianity in English law. It highlights ... More

This concluding chapter addresses the following themes: evangelism in the public sphere, emergent trends in Christian activism, and the changing place of Christianity in English law. It highlights the almost paradoxical situation in which English evangelical Protestants feel themselves to live: one in which Christianity is valued as an aspect of heritage, but rejected as a living faith. Those looking to protect England's Christian heritage are, in part, responding to social and demographic changes beyond their control: increasing ethnic, cultural, and religious diversity; decreasing adherence to traditional forms of authority, whether religious, political, social, or generational; value pluralism; and other challenges to Protestant hegemony. These shifts all impact the place of majority religion in contemporary England. Yet, by stressing the particularly religious nature of the words, beliefs, and actions for which they seek protection, Christian activists also contribute to these changes. Pursuing their claims under religious freedom legislation works to confirm that these are niche interests set apart from the everyday, thus invoking a secular distinction between the 'religious' and other spheres of life.Less

Meaning, Cultural Symbols, and Campaign Strategies

David C. Leege and Kenneth D. Wald

in The Affect Effect: Dynamics of Emotion in Political Thinking and Behavior

This chapter, which argues for emotion's central role in cultural politics, first introduces a theory of cultural politics followed by the dynamics of political campaigns. It then evaluates how ... More

This chapter, which argues for emotion's central role in cultural politics, first introduces a theory of cultural politics followed by the dynamics of political campaigns. It then evaluates how emotions are applied to mobilize or demobilize target groups within rival political coalitions. Emotions play a key role in long-term electoral transitions. Modern campaign industries make cultural politics powerful. White evangelical Protestants and white business and professional women have played key roles in the realignment and mobilization of the political parties, and white business and professional women have become a new base of the Democratic Party. The crucial assumption of affective intelligence theory implies that the voter is faced with a binary decision. But voters have a third option, abstention, which they often exercise when faced with unpalatable alternatives.Less

Making America’s First Moral Majority

Kyle G. Volk

in Moral Minorities and the Making of American Democracy

This chapter describes the rise of moral reform movements in the early nineteenth century, focusing especially on the political ideology and grass-roots tactics of leading movements. It argues that ... More

This chapter describes the rise of moral reform movements in the early nineteenth century, focusing especially on the political ideology and grass-roots tactics of leading movements. It argues that Protestant evangelicals and middle-class reformers were driven by a fundamental desire to ensure that the American republic and its widening electorate had the proper moral foundations that popular self-government required. Moreover, it shows that reformers not only sought to reform individuals but also set their sights on reforming the immoral practices of American government. From Sunday mail delivery and liquor licensing to the existence of slavery in Washington, DC, reformers saw government promoting immorality and ultimately contributing to the demise of American society. As temperance activists, Sabbath reformers, and radical abolitionists pressed their cases for reform, they incited critical moments of dissent and resistance that foreshadowed the later struggles that would bring issues of minority rights to the fore.Less

Epilogue

Jerome Tharaud

in Apocalyptic Geographies: Religion, Media, and the American Landscape

This chapter looks beyond the American Civil War to consider the ways evangelical space continued to shape how Americans saw the landscape and themselves in literary realism to the conservation ... More

This chapter looks beyond the American Civil War to consider the ways evangelical space continued to shape how Americans saw the landscape and themselves in literary realism to the conservation movement. It mentions how Mark Twain became a representative figure of how a secularizing America remained haunted by a sense of sacred presence rooted in the soil itself. It reviews the story about the rise of white Protestant evangelicals within U.S. national culture and how their form of evangelical space became American space by the eve of the Civil War. The chapter explores the ironic story about how evangelical space escaped control as writers and artists from other traditions reconfigured the relationship between landscape representation, media, and the sacred to produce their own apocalyptic geographies. It recounts how William Apess, Frederick Douglass, Phillis Wheatley, Robert S. Duncanson, and Henry Obookiah appropriated and adapted evangelical space.Less