A01=Susan Friend Harding
Author_Susan Friend Harding
Baptists
Bible
Bible prophecy
Bible story
Bill Gothard
Carl F. H. Henry
Carl McIntire
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Christian Church
Christian right
Christianity
Creation science
Dispensationalism
Dominion Theology
Ed Dobson
Ed Hindson
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Evangelicalism
Exegesis
Francis Schaeffer
Frank Schaeffer
George McCready Price
God
Godparent
H. L. Mencken
Hal Lindsey
Harold Lindsell
Harold Ockenga
Harry Emerson Fosdick
Henry M. Morris
J. Frank Norris
J. Vernon McGee
Jack Coe
Jacob and Esau
Jacobus Arminius
Jeremiad
Jerry Falwell
Jim Bakker
Jimmy Swaggart
John Ankerberg
John Calvin
John Nelson Darby
John R. Rice
John Roach Straton
John Walvoord
Kenneth Burke
Matthew 26
Modernity
Moral Majority
Old Testament
Pastor
Pat Robertson
Pentecostalism
Preacher
Protestantism
Proverbs 31
Puritans
Religion
Revival meeting
Rhetoric
Richard John Neuhaus
Robert H. Schuller
Robert Wuthnow
Scopes Trial
Sermon
Sussman
The Fundamentalism Project
Theology
Tim LaHaye
Tithe
W. A. Criswell
Wilbur Smith
Product details
- ISBN 9780691089584
- Weight: 482g
- Dimensions: 152 x 235mm
- Publication Date: 22 Jul 2001
- Publisher: Princeton University Press
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Paperback
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National polls show that approximately 50 million adult Americans are born-again Christians. Yet most Americans see their culture as secular, and the United States is viewed around the world as a secular nation. Further, intellectuals and journalists often portray born-again Christians, despite their numbers, as outsiders who endanger public life. But is American culture really so neatly split between the religious and the secular? Is America as "modern" and is born-again Christian religious belief as "pre-modern" as many think? In the 1980s, born-again Christians burst into the political arena with stunning force. Gone was the image of "old-fashioned" fundamentalism and its anti-worldly, separatist philosophy. Under the leadership of the Reverend Jerry Falwell and allied preachers, millions broke taboos in place since the Scopes trial constraining their interaction with the public world. They claimed new cultural territory and refashioned themselves in the public arena. Here was a dynamic body of activists with an evangelical vision of social justice, organized under the rubric of the "Moral Majority."
Susan Harding, a cultural anthropologist, set out in the 1980s to understand the significance of this new cultural movement. The result, this long-awaited book, presents the most original and thorough examination of Christian fundamentalism to date. Falwell and his co-pastors were the pivotal figures in the movement. It is on them that Harding focuses, and, in particular, their use of the Bible's language. She argues that this language is the medium through which born-again Christians, individual and collective, come to understand themselves as Christians. And it is inside this language that much of the born-again movement took place. Preachers like Falwell command a Bible-based poetics of great complexity, variety, creativity, and force, and, with it, attempt to mold their churches into living testaments of the Bible. Harding focuses on the words--sermons, speeches, books, audiotapes, and television broadcasts--of individual preachers, particularly Falwell, as they rewrote their Bible-based tradition to include, rather than exclude, intense worldly engagement.
As a result of these efforts, born-again Christians recast themselves as a people not separated from but engaged in making history. The Book of Jerry Falwell is a fascinating work of cultural analysis, a rare account that takes fundamentalist Christianity on its own terms and deepens our understanding of both religion and the modern world.
Susan Friend Harding is Professor of Anthropology at the University of California, Santa Cruz. She has published widely on fundamentalist Christianity, social movements, and culture reform, and she served as an adviser to the PBS series With God on our Side.
