The Rhetoric Of Purity

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The Rhetoric of Purity

Author : Mark A. Cheetham
Publisher : Cambridge University Press
ISBN 13 : 9780521385466
Total Pages : 216 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (854 download)

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Book Synopsis The Rhetoric of Purity by : Mark A. Cheetham

Download or read book The Rhetoric of Purity written by Mark A. Cheetham and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 1991-03-29 with total page 216 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In The Rhetoric of Purity, Mark Cheetham explores the historical and theoretical relations between early abstract painting in Europe and the notion of purity. For Gauguin, Serusier, Mondrian and Kandinsky - the pioneering abstractionists whose written and visual works Cheetham discusses in detail - purity is the crucial quality that painting must possess. Purity, however, was itself only a password for what Cheetham defines as an 'essentialist' philosophy inaugurated by Plato's vision of a perfect, non-mimetic art form and practised by the founders of abstraction. The essentialism of late nineteenth-century French discussion of 'abstraction', Cheetham argues, also infects the work of Mondrian and Kandinsky. These visions of abstraction are central to the development of Modernism and are closely tied to the philosophical traditions of Plato, Hegel and Schopenhauer. As a conclusion, Cheetham provides a postmodern reading of Klee's rejection of the rhetoric of purity and claims that Klee's refusal speaks to contemporary concerns in visual theory and culture. By acting as an antidote to the seductive appeal of purity in art and society, Cheetham's final critique of the trope of purity seeks to preserve the possibility of visual discourse itself.

Baseball and Rhetorics of Purity

Author : Michael L. Butterworth
Publisher : University of Alabama Press
ISBN 13 : 0817317104
Total Pages : 248 pages
Book Rating : 4.8/5 (173 download)

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Book Synopsis Baseball and Rhetorics of Purity by : Michael L. Butterworth

Download or read book Baseball and Rhetorics of Purity written by Michael L. Butterworth and published by University of Alabama Press. This book was released on 2010-08-13 with total page 248 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Butterworth argues that baseball cannot be viewed as an innocent diversion or escape and that by promoting myths of citizenship and purity, post-9/11 discourse concerning baseball ironically threatens the health of the democratic system. Instead, he highlights how the game on the field reflects a more complex and diverse worldview, and he makes a plea for the game's recovery, both as a national pastime and as a site for celebrating the best of who we are and who we can be. --Book Jacket.

Cosmologies of Pure Realms and the Rhetoric of Pollution

Author : Yohan Yoo
Publisher : Routledge
ISBN 13 : 100039283X
Total Pages : 178 pages
Book Rating : 4.0/5 (3 download)

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Book Synopsis Cosmologies of Pure Realms and the Rhetoric of Pollution by : Yohan Yoo

Download or read book Cosmologies of Pure Realms and the Rhetoric of Pollution written by Yohan Yoo and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2021-05-31 with total page 178 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This collaboration between two scholars from different fields of religious studies draws on three comparative data sets to develop a new theory of purity and pollution in religion, arguing that a culture’s beliefs about cosmological realms shapes its pollution ideas and its purification practices. The authors of this study refine Mary Douglas’ foundational theory of pollution as "matter out of place," using a comparative approach to make the case that a culture’s cosmology designates which materials in which places constitute pollution. By bringing together a historical comparison of Ancient Near Eastern and Mediterranean religions, an ethnographic study of indigenous shamanism on Jeju Island, Korea, and the reception history of biblical rhetoric about pollution in Jewish and Christian cultures, the authors show that a cosmological account of purity works effectively across multiple disparate religious and cultural contexts. They conclude that cosmologies reinforce fears of pollution, and also that embodied experiences of purification help generate cosmological ideas. Providing an innovative insight into a key topic of ritual studies, this book will be of vital interest to scholars and graduate students in religion, biblical studies, and anthropology.

Power and Purity

Author : Mark T. Mitchell
Publisher : Gateway Editions
ISBN 13 : 1684510112
Total Pages : 162 pages
Book Rating : 4.6/5 (845 download)

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Book Synopsis Power and Purity by : Mark T. Mitchell

Download or read book Power and Purity written by Mark T. Mitchell and published by Gateway Editions. This book was released on 2020-02-11 with total page 162 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A Marriage Made in Hell Where did they come from, these furiously self-righteous “social justice warriors”? The growing radicalism and intolerance on the American left is the result of the strange union of Nietzsche’s “will to power” and a secularized Puritan moralism. In this penetrating study, Mark T. Mitchell explains how this marriage made in hell gave birth to a powerful and destructive political and social movement. Having declared that “God is dead,” Friedrich Nietzsche identified the “will to power” as the fundamental force of human life. There is no good or evil in a Nietzschean world—only the interests of the strong. Reason and the common good have no place there. The Puritan, by contrast, is morally rigorous, zealous to promote virtue and punish vice. America’s Puritan tradition, now thoroughly de-Christianized, has been reduced to a self-righteous moral absolutism that focuses on the faults of others, intent on avenging the sins of society, institutions, and the past in pursuit of the secularized ideals of equality, diversity, and social justice. As Nietzsche’s ideas have permeated our culture, a new generation of radicals has embraced the rhetoric and tactics of the will to power. But the strength of America’s residual Puritanism keeps them only half-baked Nietzscheans. More Christian than they care to admit, they cling to a moralism that Nietzsche would despise. The incoherence of their mixed creed dooms social justice warriors to perpetual frustration. Their identity politics generates ever more radical demands that can never be satisfied, further fracturing a society in desperate need of a unifying myth. We seem to be left with only two options, Mitchell concludes—Nietzsche or Christ, the will to power or the will to truth. The choice is bracingly simple.

Cosmologies of Pure Realms and the Rhetoric of Pollution

Author : Yohan Yoo
Publisher : Taylor & Francis
ISBN 13 : 1000392848
Total Pages : 175 pages
Book Rating : 4.0/5 (3 download)

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Book Synopsis Cosmologies of Pure Realms and the Rhetoric of Pollution by : Yohan Yoo

Download or read book Cosmologies of Pure Realms and the Rhetoric of Pollution written by Yohan Yoo and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2021-05-30 with total page 175 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This collaboration between two scholars from different fields of religious studies draws on three comparative data sets to develop a new theory of purity and pollution in religion, arguing that a culture’s beliefs about cosmological realms shapes its pollution ideas and its purification practices. The authors of this study refine Mary Douglas’ foundational theory of pollution as "matter out of place," using a comparative approach to make the case that a culture’s cosmology designates which materials in which places constitute pollution. By bringing together a historical comparison of Ancient Near Eastern and Mediterranean religions, an ethnographic study of indigenous shamanism on Jeju Island, Korea, and the reception history of biblical rhetoric about pollution in Jewish and Christian cultures, the authors show that a cosmological account of purity works effectively across multiple disparate religious and cultural contexts. They conclude that cosmologies reinforce fears of pollution, and also that embodied experiences of purification help generate cosmological ideas. Providing an innovative insight into a key topic of ritual studies, this book will be of vital interest to scholars and graduate students in religion, biblical studies, and anthropology.

Abstinence Cinema

Author : Casey Ryan Kelly
Publisher : Rutgers University Press
ISBN 13 : 0813575133
Total Pages : 211 pages
Book Rating : 4.8/5 (135 download)

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Book Synopsis Abstinence Cinema by : Casey Ryan Kelly

Download or read book Abstinence Cinema written by Casey Ryan Kelly and published by Rutgers University Press. This book was released on 2016-03-08 with total page 211 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the perspective of cultural conservatives, Hollywood movies are cesspools of vice, exposing impressionable viewers to pernicious sexually-permissive messages. Offering a groundbreaking study of Hollywood films produced since 2000, Abstinence Cinema comes to a very different conclusion, finding echoes of the evangelical movement’s abstinence-only rhetoric in everything from Easy A to Taken. Casey Ryan Kelly tracks the surprising sex-negative turn that Hollywood films have taken, associating premarital sex with shame and degradation, while romanticizing traditional nuclear families, courtship rituals, and gender roles. As he demonstrates, these movies are particularly disempowering for young women, concocting plots in which the decision to refrain from sex until marriage is the young woman’s primary source of agency and arbiter of moral worth. Locating these regressive sexual politics not only in expected sites, like the Twilight films, but surprising ones, like the raunchy comedies of Judd Apatow, Kelly makes a compelling case that Hollywood films have taken a significant step backward in recent years. Abstinence Cinema offers close readings of movies from a wide spectrum of genres, and it puts these films into conversation with rhetoric that has emerged in other arenas of American culture. Challenging assumptions that we are living in a more liberated era, the book sounds a warning bell about the powerful cultural forces that seek to demonize sexuality and curtail female sexual agency.

Against Purity

Author : Alexis Shotwell
Publisher : U of Minnesota Press
ISBN 13 : 145295304X
Total Pages : 350 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (529 download)

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Book Synopsis Against Purity by : Alexis Shotwell

Download or read book Against Purity written by Alexis Shotwell and published by U of Minnesota Press. This book was released on 2016-12-06 with total page 350 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The world is in a terrible mess. It is toxic, irradiated, and full of injustice. Aiming to stand aside from the mess can produce a seemingly satisfying self-righteousness in the scant moments we achieve it, but since it is ultimately impossible, individual purity will always disappoint. Might it be better to understand complexity and, indeed, our own complicity in much of what we think of as bad, as fundamental to our lives? Against Purity argues that the only answer—if we are to have any hope of tackling the past, present, and future of colonialism, disease, pollution, and climate change—is a resounding yes. Proposing a powerful new conception of social movements as custodians for the past and incubators for liberated futures, Against Purity undertakes an analysis that draws on theories of race, disability, gender, and animal ethics as a foundation for an innovative approach to the politics and ethics of responding to systemic problems. Being against purity means that there is no primordial state we can recover, no Eden we have desecrated, no pretoxic body we might uncover through enough chia seeds and kombucha. There is no preracial state we could access, no erasing histories of slavery, forced labor, colonialism, genocide, and their concomitant responsibilities and requirements. There is no food we can eat, clothes we can buy, or energy we can use without deepening our ties to complex webbings of suffering. So, what happens if we start from there? Alexis Shotwell shows the importance of critical memory practices to addressing the full implications of living on colonized land; how activism led to the official reclassification of AIDS; why we might worry about studying amphibians when we try to fight industrial contamination; and that we are all affected by nuclear reactor meltdowns. The slate has never been clean, she reminds us, and we can’t wipe off the surface to start fresh—there’s no fresh to start. But, Shotwell argues, hope found in a kind of distributed ethics, in collective activist work, and in speculative fiction writing for gender and disability liberation that opens new futures.

Talking Back to Purity Culture

Author : Rachel Joy Welcher
Publisher : InterVarsity Press
ISBN 13 : 0830848177
Total Pages : 217 pages
Book Rating : 4.8/5 (38 download)

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Book Synopsis Talking Back to Purity Culture by : Rachel Joy Welcher

Download or read book Talking Back to Purity Culture written by Rachel Joy Welcher and published by InterVarsity Press. This book was released on 2020-11-10 with total page 217 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: It's time to talk back. The generation born into evangelical purity culture has grown up, and many have started families of their own. But as time goes on, it's becoming more evident that many still struggle with purity culture's complicated legacy—its idolization of virginity, its mixed messages about modesty and lust, and its promise of a healthy marriage and great sex for those who follow the rules. In Talking Back to Purity Culture, Rachel Joy Welcher reviews the movement carefully, examining its teachings through the lens of Scripture. Compassionate, faithful, and wise, she charts a path forward for Christians in the ongoing debates about sexuality—one that rejects legalism and license alike, steering us back instead to the good news of Jesus. It's time to talk back to purity culture—and this book is ready to jump-start the conversation.

The Rhetoric of Fiction

Author : Wayne C. Booth
Publisher : University of Chicago Press
ISBN 13 : 0226065596
Total Pages : 573 pages
Book Rating : 4.2/5 (26 download)

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Book Synopsis The Rhetoric of Fiction by : Wayne C. Booth

Download or read book The Rhetoric of Fiction written by Wayne C. Booth and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2010-05-15 with total page 573 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The first edition of The Rhetoric of Fiction transformed the criticism of fiction and soon became a classic in the field. One of the most widely used texts in fiction courses, it is a standard reference point in advanced discussions of how fictional form works, how authors make novels accessible, and how readers recreate texts, and its concepts and terms—such as "the implied author," "the postulated reader," and "the unreliable narrator"—have become part of the standard critical lexicon. For this new edition, Wayne C. Booth has written an extensive Afterword in which he clarifies misunderstandings, corrects what he now views as errors, and sets forth his own recent thinking about the rhetoric of fiction. The other new feature is a Supplementary Bibliography, prepared by James Phelan in consultation with the author, which lists the important critical works of the past twenty years—two decades that Booth describes as "the richest in the history of the subject."

Rhetoric and the Dead Sea Scrolls

Author : Bruce McComiskey
Publisher : Penn State Press
ISBN 13 : 0271090529
Total Pages : 242 pages
Book Rating : 4.2/5 (71 download)

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Book Synopsis Rhetoric and the Dead Sea Scrolls by : Bruce McComiskey

Download or read book Rhetoric and the Dead Sea Scrolls written by Bruce McComiskey and published by Penn State Press. This book was released on 2021-05-20 with total page 242 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Discovered in 1947, the Dead Sea Scrolls are a collection of ancient Israelite documents, many of which were written by a Jewish sectarian community at Qumran living in self-exile from the priesthood of the Second Temple. This first book-length study of the rhetoric of these texts illustrates how the Essenes employed different rhetorics over time as they struggled to understand God’s word and their mission to their people, who seemed to have turned away from God and his purposes. Applying methods of rhetorical analysis to six substantive texts—Miqṣat Maʿaśeh ha-Torah, Rule of the Community, Damascus Document, Purification Rules, Temple Scroll, and Habakkuk Pesher—Bruce McComiskey traces the Essenes’ use of rhetorical strategies based on identification, dissociation, entitlement, and interpretation. Through his analysis, McComiskey uncovers a unique, fascinating story of an ancient religious community that had sought to reintegrate into Temple life but, dejected, instead established itself as the new covenant people of God for this world, only to turn ultimately to a trust in a metaphysical afterlife. Presenting forms of ancient Jewish rhetoric largely uninfluenced by classical rhetoric, this book broadens our understanding of human and religious rhetorical practice, even as it provides new insight into the events that led to the emergence of the Talmudic period. Rhetoric and the Dead Sea Scrolls will be useful to scholars working in the fields of religious rhetoric, Jewish studies, and early Christianity.

Spiritual Modalities

Author : William FitzGerald
Publisher : Penn State Press
ISBN 13 : 0271056223
Total Pages : 170 pages
Book Rating : 4.2/5 (71 download)

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Book Synopsis Spiritual Modalities by : William FitzGerald

Download or read book Spiritual Modalities written by William FitzGerald and published by Penn State Press. This book was released on 2012 with total page 170 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Explores prayer as a rhetorical art, examining situations, strategies, and performative modes of discourse directed to the divine"--Provided by publisher.

Making Chastity Sexy

Author : Christine J. Gardner
Publisher : Univ of California Press
ISBN 13 : 0520950550
Total Pages : 262 pages
Book Rating : 4.5/5 (29 download)

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Book Synopsis Making Chastity Sexy by : Christine J. Gardner

Download or read book Making Chastity Sexy written by Christine J. Gardner and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 2011-07-28 with total page 262 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Even though they are immersed in sex-saturated society, millions of teens are pledging to remain virgins until their wedding night. How are evangelical Christians persuading young people to wait until marriage? Christine J. Gardner looks closely at the language of the chastity movement and discovers a savvy campaign that uses sex to "sell" abstinence. Drawing from interviews with evangelical leaders and teenagers, she examines the strategy to shift from a negative "just say no" approach to a positive one: "just say yes" to great sex within marriage. Making Chastity Sexy sheds new light on an abstinence campaign that has successfully recast a traditionally feminist idea—"my body, my choice"—into a powerful message, but one that Gardner suggests may ultimately reduce evangelicalism’s transformative power. Focusing on the United States, her study also includes a comparative dimension by examining the export of this evangelical agenda to sub-Saharan Africa.

The Art of Joaquín Torres-García

Author : Aarnoud Rommens
Publisher : Routledge
ISBN 13 : 1315527553
Total Pages : 192 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (155 download)

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Book Synopsis The Art of Joaquín Torres-García by : Aarnoud Rommens

Download or read book The Art of Joaquín Torres-García written by Aarnoud Rommens and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2016-08-05 with total page 192 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Intertwining art history, aesthetic theory, and Latin American studies, Aarnoud Rommens challenges contemporary Eurocentric revisions of the history of abstraction through this study of the Uruguayan artist Joaquín Torres-García. After studying and painting (for decades) in Europe, Torres-García returned in 1934 to his native home, Montevideo, with the dream of reawakening and revitalizing what he considered the true indigenous essence of Latin American art: "Abstract Spirit." Rommens rigorously analyses the paradoxes of the painter's aesthetic-philosophical doctrine of Constructive Universalism as it sought to adapt European geometric abstraction to the Americas. Whereas previous scholarship has dismissed Torres-García's theories as self-contradictory, Rommens seeks to recover their creative potential as well as their role in tracing the transatlantic routes of the avant-garde. Through the highly original method of reading Torres-García's artworks as a critique on the artist's own writings, Rommens reveals how Torres-García appropriates the colonial language of primitivism to construct the artificial image of "pure" pre-Columbian abstraction. Torres-García thereby inverts the history of art: this book teases out the important lessons of this gesture and the implications for our understanding of abstraction today.

Honor, Patronage, Kinship, & Purity

Author : David A. deSilva
Publisher : InterVarsity Press
ISBN 13 : 1514003864
Total Pages : 328 pages
Book Rating : 4.5/5 (14 download)

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Book Synopsis Honor, Patronage, Kinship, & Purity by : David A. deSilva

Download or read book Honor, Patronage, Kinship, & Purity written by David A. deSilva and published by InterVarsity Press. This book was released on 2022-10-04 with total page 328 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: For contemporary Western readers, it can be easy to miss or misread cultural nuances in the New Testament. To hear the text correctly we must be attuned to its original context. As David deSilva demonstrates, keys to interpretation are found in paying attention to four essential cultural themes: honor and shame, patronage and reciprocity, kinship and family, and purity and pollution. Through our understanding of honor and shame in the Mediterranean world, we gain new appreciation for how early Christians sustained commitment to a distinctive Christian identity and practice. By examining the protocols of patronage and reciprocity, we grasp more firmly the connections between God’s grace and our response. In exploring kinship and household relations, we grasp more fully the ethos of the early Christian communities as a new family brought together by God. And by investigating the notions of purity and pollution along with their associated practices, we realize how the ancient map of society and the world was revised by the power of the gospel. This new edition is thoroughly revised and expanded with up-to-date scholarship. A milestone work in the study of New Testament cultural backgrounds, Honor, Patronage, Kinship, and Purity offers a deeper appreciation of the New Testament, the gospel, and Christian discipleship.

Seeing Things John's Way

Author : David A. deSilva
Publisher : Westminster John Knox Press
ISBN 13 : 9780664224493
Total Pages : 0 pages
Book Rating : 4.2/5 (244 download)

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Book Synopsis Seeing Things John's Way by : David A. deSilva

Download or read book Seeing Things John's Way written by David A. deSilva and published by Westminster John Knox Press. This book was released on 2009-06-29 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The emotionally evocative power of the book of Revelation has been often noted and experienced by interpreters, but until now it has never been systematically explored. The strange visions of the book of Revelation provide some of the most difficult passages of the New Testament, yet Christians have long been fascinated by its power and provocative pronouncements. David deSilva analyzes how the book argues and persuades us to see the world through the eyes of John, and suggests that the study of ancient rhetoric is particularly valuable in understanding the book of Revelation. deSilva interprets the book of Revelation as a rhetorical and communicative strategy to persuade a particular audience for specific goals. Throughout this analysis, he pursues John's construction of his own authority, John's use of emotion and logic, and his attempt to shape the formation of the reader. Despite the complexities of Revelation, deSilva has produced a remarkably clear text sure to cause readers to rethink their view of Revelation.

Moral Purity and Persecution in History

Author : Barrington Moore Jr.
Publisher : Princeton University Press
ISBN 13 : 1400823463
Total Pages : 193 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (8 download)

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Book Synopsis Moral Purity and Persecution in History by : Barrington Moore Jr.

Download or read book Moral Purity and Persecution in History written by Barrington Moore Jr. and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2021-09-14 with total page 193 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The intellectual scope and courage to contend with the largest puzzles of human existence and organization distinguish great social thinkers. Barrington Moore's Social Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy was a foundational work of historical sociology that influenced a generation of social scientists and, decades later, continues to be widely read and taught. Here, Moore takes up the same tools of historical comparison to investigate why groups of people kill and torture each other. His answer is arrestingly simple: people persecute those whom they perceive as polluting due to their "impure" religious, political, or economic ideas. Moore's search begins with the Old Testament's restrictions on sexual behavior, idolatry, diet, and handling unclean objects. He argues that religious authorities seeking to distinguish the ancient Hebrews from competing groups invented, along with monotheism, the association of impure things with moral failure and the violation of God's will. This allowed people to view those holding competing ideas as contaminated and, more important, contaminating. Moore moves next to the French Wars of Religion, in which Protestants and Catholics massacred each other over the control of purity, and the French Revolution, which perfected terror and secularized purity. He then combs the major Asian religions and finds--to his surprise--that violent efforts to eradicate the "impure" were largely absent before substantial Western influence. Moore's provocative conclusion is that monotheism--with its monopoly on virtue and failure to provide supernatural scapegoats--is responsible for some of the most virulent forms of intolerance and is a major cause of human nastiness and suffering. Moore does not say that the monotheist tradition was the primary source of Nazism, Stalinism, Maoism, violent Hindu fundamentalism, or ethnic cleansing in Rwanda and the former Yugoslavia, but he does identify it as an indispensable cause because it justified, encouraged, and spread vindictive persecution throughout the world. Once again, Moore has drawn on his comprehensive understanding of history and talent for speaking directly to readers to address one of the most crucial questions about human past and future. This book is for anyone who has ever heard the word genocide and asked why.

Virgin Nation

Author : Sara Moslener
Publisher : Oxford University Press
ISBN 13 : 0199987785
Total Pages : 240 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (999 download)

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Book Synopsis Virgin Nation by : Sara Moslener

Download or read book Virgin Nation written by Sara Moslener and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2015-06-01 with total page 240 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: First taking hold of the American cultural imagination in the 1990s, the sexual purity movement of contemporary evangelicalism has since received considerable attention from a wide range of media outlets, religious leaders, and feminist critics. Virgin Nation offers a history of this movement that goes beyond the Religious Right, demonstrating a link between sexual purity rhetoric and fears of national decline that has shaped American ideas about morality since the nineteenth century. Concentrating on two of today's best known purity organizations, True Loves Waits and Silver Ring Thing, Sara Moslener's investigation reveals that purity work over the last two centuries has developed in concert with widespread fears of changing traditional gender roles and sexual norms, national decline, and global apocalypse. Moslener highlights a number of points in U.S. history when evangelical beliefs and values have seemed to provide viable explanations for and solutions to widespread cultural crises, resulting in the growth of their cultural and political influence. By asserting a causal relationship between sexual immorality, national decline, and apocalyptic anticipation, leaders have shaped a purity rhetoric that positions Protestant evangelicalism as the salvation of American civilization. From the purity reformers of the nineteenth century to fundamentalist leaders such as Billy Graham and Carl F.H. Henry, Moslener illuminates the evolution of a strain of purity rhetoric that runs throughout Protestant evangelicalism.