Bible Culture And Authority In The Early United States

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Bible Culture and Authority in the Early United States

Author : Seth Perry
Publisher : Princeton University Press
ISBN 13 : 1400889405
Total Pages : 217 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (8 download)

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Book Synopsis Bible Culture and Authority in the Early United States by : Seth Perry

Download or read book Bible Culture and Authority in the Early United States written by Seth Perry and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2018-06-05 with total page 217 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Early Americans claimed that they looked to "the Bible alone" for authority, but the Bible was never, ever alone. Bible Culture and Authority in the Early United States is a wide-ranging exploration of the place of the Christian Bible in America in the decades after the Revolution. Attending to both theoretical concerns about the nature of scriptures and to the precise historical circumstances of a formative period in American history, Seth Perry argues that the Bible was not a "source" of authority in early America, as is often said, but rather a site of authority: a cultural space for editors, commentators, publishers, preachers, and readers to cultivate authoritative relationships. While paying careful attention to early national bibles as material objects, Perry shows that "the Bible" is both a text and a set of relationships sustained by a universe of cultural practices and assumptions. Moreover, he demonstrates that Bible culture underwent rapid and fundamental changes in the early nineteenth century as a result of developments in technology, politics, and religious life. At the heart of the book are typical Bible readers, otherwise unknown today, and better-known figures such as Zilpha Elaw, Joseph Smith, Denmark Vesey, and Ellen White, a group that includes men and women, enslaved and free, Baptists, Catholics, Episcopalians, Methodists, Mormons, Presbyterians, and Quakers. What they shared were practices of biblical citation in writing, speech, and the performance of their daily lives. While such citation contributed to the Bible's authority, it also meant that the meaning of the Bible constantly evolved as Americans applied it to new circumstances and identities.

An American Bible

Author : Paul C. Gutjahr
Publisher : Stanford University Press
ISBN 13 : 9780804743396
Total Pages : 292 pages
Book Rating : 4.7/5 (433 download)

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Book Synopsis An American Bible by : Paul C. Gutjahr

Download or read book An American Bible written by Paul C. Gutjahr and published by Stanford University Press. This book was released on 1999 with total page 292 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "An American Bible is an extremely compelling piece of cultural history that succeeds in making rich rather than schematic sense of the major dramas that lay behind the production of over 1,700 different American editions of the Bible in the century after the American Revolution. Gutjahr's book is especially powerful in demonstrating how nineteenth-century efforts to purge the Bible of textual and translational impurities in search of an 'authentic' text led ironically to the emergence of entirely new gospels like the Book of Mormon and the massive fictionalized literature dealing with the life of Christ." --Jay Fliegelman, Stanford University During the first three-quarters of the nineteenth century, American publishing experienced unprecedented, exponential growth. An emerging market economy, widespread religious revival, educational reforms, and innovations in print technology worked together to create a culture increasingly formed and framed by the power of print. At the center of this new culture was the Bible, the book that has been called "the best seller" in American publishing history. Yet it is important to realize that the Bible in America was not a simple, uniform entity. First printed in the United States during the American Revolution, the Bible underwent many revisions, translations, and changes in format as different editors and publishers appropriated it to meet a wide range of changing ideological and economic demands. This book examines how many different constituencies (both secular and religious) fought to keep the Bible the preeminent text in the United States as the country's print marketplace experienced explosive growth. The author shows how these heated battles had profound consequences for many American cultural practices and forms of printed material. By exploring how publishers, clergymen, politicians, educators, and lay persons met the threat that new printed material posed to the dominance of the Bible by changing both its form and its contents, the author reveals the causes and consequences of mutating God's supposedly immutable Word.

In Defense of the Bible

Author : Steven B. Cowan
Publisher : B&H Publishing Group
ISBN 13 : 1535965436
Total Pages : 508 pages
Book Rating : 4.5/5 (359 download)

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Book Synopsis In Defense of the Bible by : Steven B. Cowan

Download or read book In Defense of the Bible written by Steven B. Cowan and published by B&H Publishing Group. This book was released on 2018-11-26 with total page 508 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Defense of the Bible gathers exceptional articles by accomplished scholars (Paul Copan, William A. Dembski, Mary Jo Sharp, Darrell L. Bock, etc.), addressing and responding to all of the major contemporary challenges to the divine inspiration and authority of Scripture. The book begins by looking at philosophical and methodological challenges to the Bible—questions about whether or not it is logically possible for God to communicate verbally with human beings; what it means to say the Bible is true in response to postmodern concerns about the nature of truth; defending the clarity of Scripture against historical skepticism and relativism. Contributors also explore textual and historical challenges—charges made by Muslims, Mormons, and skeptics that the Bible has been corrupted beyond repair; questions about the authorship of certain biblical books; allegations that the Bible borrows from pagan myths; the historical reliability of the Old and New Testaments. Final chapters take on ethical, scientific, and theological challenges— demonstrating the Bible’s moral integrity regarding the topics of slavery and sexism; harmonizing exegetical and theological conclusions with the findings of science; addressing accusations that the Christian canon is the result of political and theological manipulation; ultimately defending the Bible as not simply historically reliable and consistent, but in fact the Word of God.

Bible Culture and Authority in the Early United States

Author : Seth Perry
Publisher : Princeton University Press
ISBN 13 : 0691179131
Total Pages : 216 pages
Book Rating : 4.6/5 (911 download)

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Book Synopsis Bible Culture and Authority in the Early United States by : Seth Perry

Download or read book Bible Culture and Authority in the Early United States written by Seth Perry and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2018-06-05 with total page 216 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Early Americans claimed that they looked to "the Bible alone" for authority, but the Bible was never, ever alone. Bible Culture and Authority in the Early United States is a wide-ranging exploration of the place of the Christian Bible in America in the decades after the Revolution. Attending to both theoretical concerns about the nature of scriptures and to the precise historical circumstances of a formative period in American history, Seth Perry argues that the Bible was not a "source" of authority in early America, as is often said, but rather a site of authority: a cultural space for editors, commentators, publishers, preachers, and readers to cultivate authoritative relationships. While paying careful attention to early national bibles as material objects, Perry shows that "the Bible" is both a text and a set of relationships sustained by a universe of cultural practices and assumptions. Moreover, he demonstrates that Bible culture underwent rapid and fundamental changes in the early nineteenth century as a result of developments in technology, politics, and religious life. At the heart of the book are typical Bible readers, otherwise unknown today, and better-known figures such as Zilpha Elaw, Joseph Smith, Denmark Vesey, and Ellen White, a group that includes men and women, enslaved and free, Baptists, Catholics, Episcopalians, Methodists, Mormons, Presbyterians, and Quakers. What they shared were practices of biblical citation in writing, speech, and the performance of their daily lives. While such citation contributed to the Bible's authority, it also meant that the meaning of the Bible constantly evolved as Americans applied it to new circumstances and identities.

Reading the Bible with the Founding Fathers

Author : Daniel L. Dreisbach
Publisher : Oxford University Press
ISBN 13 : 0199987955
Total Pages : 345 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (999 download)

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Book Synopsis Reading the Bible with the Founding Fathers by : Daniel L. Dreisbach

Download or read book Reading the Bible with the Founding Fathers written by Daniel L. Dreisbach and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2016-11-01 with total page 345 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: No book was more accessible or familiar to the American founders than the Bible, and no book was more frequently alluded to or quoted from in the political discourse of the age. How and for what purposes did the founding generation use the Bible? How did the Bible influence their political culture? Shedding new light on some of the most familiar rhetoric of the founding era, Daniel Dreisbach analyzes the founders' diverse use of scripture, ranging from the literary to the theological. He shows that they looked to the Bible for insights on human nature, civic virtue, political authority, and the rights and duties of citizens, as well as for political and legal models to emulate. They quoted scripture to authorize civil resistance, to invoke divine blessings for righteous nations, and to provide the language of liberty that would be appropriated by patriotic Americans. Reading the Bible with the Founding Fathers broaches the perennial question of whether the American founding was, to some extent, informed by religious--specifically Christian--ideas. In the sense that the founding generation were members of a biblically literate society that placed the Bible at the center of culture and discourse, the answer to that question is clearly "yes." Ignoring the Bible's influence on the founders, Dreisbach warns, produces a distorted image of the American political experiment, and of the concept of self-government on which America is built.

How the Bible Became a Book

Author : William M. Schniedewind
Publisher : Cambridge University Press
ISBN 13 : 0521829461
Total Pages : 275 pages
Book Rating : 4.5/5 (218 download)

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Book Synopsis How the Bible Became a Book by : William M. Schniedewind

Download or read book How the Bible Became a Book written by William M. Schniedewind and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2004-05-10 with total page 275 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: For the past two hundred years biblical scholars have increasingly assumed that the Hebrew Bible was largely written and edited in the Persian and Hellenistic periods. As a result, the written Bible has dwelled in an historical vacuum. Recent archaeological evidence and insights from linguistic anthropology, however, point to the earlier era of the late-Iron Age as the formative period for the writing of biblical literature. How the Bible Became a Book combines these recent archaeological discoveries in the Middle East with insights culled from the history of writing to address how the Bible first came to be written down and then became sacred Scripture. This book provides rich insight into why these texts came to have authority as Scripture and explores why Ancient Israel, an oral culture, began to write literature, challenging the assertion that widespread literacy first arose in Greece during the fifth century BCE.

In the Beginning was the Word

Author : Mark A. Noll
Publisher : Oxford University Press, USA
ISBN 13 : 0190263989
Total Pages : 446 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (92 download)

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Book Synopsis In the Beginning was the Word by : Mark A. Noll

Download or read book In the Beginning was the Word written by Mark A. Noll and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 2016 with total page 446 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the Beginning Was the Word provides a sweeping, engaging, and insightful survey of the relationship between the Bible and public issues from the beginning of European settlement through the American Revolution. It focuses throughout on how people negotiated between the Bible and other social authorities, such as ecclesiastical tradition, national and imperial politics, and economic mandates.

Victorian Testaments

Author : Sue Zemka
Publisher : Stanford University Press
ISBN 13 : 9780804728485
Total Pages : 310 pages
Book Rating : 4.7/5 (284 download)

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Book Synopsis Victorian Testaments by : Sue Zemka

Download or read book Victorian Testaments written by Sue Zemka and published by Stanford University Press. This book was released on 1997 with total page 310 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Victorian Testaments examines the changing nature of biblical and religious authority during the first half of the Victorian period. The book argues that these changes had a profound impact on concepts of cultural authority in general. Among the figures discussed are Coleridge, Thomas Arnold, Ruskin, Dickens, Florence Nightingale, and the missionaries of the British and Foreign Bible Society. In developing its picture of Victorian religious ideology, the book analyzes major works of the period, as well as works and documents that have received little critical attention. Its methods are interdisciplinary, building upon recent ideas in literary theory, cultural criticism, and gender studies. The book proposes that changes in religious faith and Bible reading tended in two directions, the one a celebration of spiritual individualism, the other of the nuclear family. As the credibility of a supernatural source for the scriptures diminished, the need for certainty in moral and religious matters was increasingly filled by the importance attached to individual character. Those Victorians who nurtured their individual character on Bible reading were understood to reveal the perfect spirit of the scripturesjust as the scriptures themselves, it seemed, could no longer do so. However, the desire for religious heroes was counterpoised by another and highly sentimentalized model of the spiritual life, one where religious authority was decentered across a social spectrum of fathers, mothers, and children. In this second direction explored by the book, a complex economy of spiritual power and authority is created by the distribution of sexual, intellectual, and affective attributes to figures who together constitute the nuclear familyone might say the secular holy family. By tracing these two narrative patternsthe intellectual drama of the spiritual hero and the sentimental saga of the nuclear familythe author demonstrates that the spirituality of many nineteenth-century texts was not an allegory of transcendence so much as a by-product of the narratives themselves. A large-scale cultural confrontation with the disappearance of God was, to a certain extent, deferred by narratives that picked up the slack in faith, creating performances of sacred power with characters who demonstrated either an awesome religious interiority or a recognizably sentimental display of idealized femininity or childhood innocence.

A History of the Bible

Author : John Barton
Publisher : Penguin
ISBN 13 : 0143111205
Total Pages : 642 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (431 download)

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Book Synopsis A History of the Bible by : John Barton

Download or read book A History of the Bible written by John Barton and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2020-08-04 with total page 642 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A literary history of our most influential book of all time, by an Oxford scholar and Anglican priest In our culture, the Bible is monolithic: It is a collection of books that has been unchanged and unchallenged since the earliest days of the Christian church. The idea of the Bible as "Holy Scripture," a non-negotiable authority straight from God, has prevailed in Western society for some time. And while it provides a firm foundation for centuries of Christian teaching, it denies the depth, variety, and richness of this fascinating text. In A History of the Bible, John Barton argues that the Bible is not a prescription to a complete, fixed religious system, but rather a product of a long and intriguing process, which has inspired Judaism and Christianity, but still does not describe the whole of either religion. Barton shows how the Bible is indeed an important source of religious insight for Jews and Christians alike, yet argues that it must be read in its historical context--from its beginnings in myth and folklore to its many interpretations throughout the centuries. It is a book full of narratives, laws, proverbs, prophecies, poems, and letters, each with their own character and origin stories. Barton explains how and by whom these disparate pieces were written, how they were canonized (and which ones weren't), and how they were assembled, disseminated, and interpreted around the world--and, importantly, to what effect. Ultimately, A History of the Bible argues that a thorough understanding of the history and context of its writing encourages religious communities to move away from the Bible's literal wording--which is impossible to determine--and focus instead on the broader meanings of scripture.

The Bible in American Law and Politics

Author : John R. Vile
Publisher : Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN 13 : 1538141671
Total Pages : 679 pages
Book Rating : 4.5/5 (381 download)

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Book Synopsis The Bible in American Law and Politics by : John R. Vile

Download or read book The Bible in American Law and Politics written by John R. Vile and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2020-09-19 with total page 679 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: While scholars increasingly recognize the importance of religion throughout American history, The Bible in American Law and Politics is the first reference book to focus on the key role that the Bible has played in American public life. In considering revolting from Great Britain, Americans contemplated whether this was consistent with scripture. Americans subsequently sought to apply Biblical passages to such issues as slavery, women’s rights, national alcoholic prohibition, issues of war and peace, and the like. American presidents continue to take their oath on the Bible. Some of America’s greatest speeches, for example, Lincoln’s Second Inaugural and William Jennings Bryan’s Cross of Gold speech, have been grounded on Biblical texts or analogies. Today, Americans continue to cite the Bible for positions as diverse as LGBTQ rights, abortion, immigration, welfare, health care, and other contemporary issues. By providing essays on key speeches, books, documents, legal decisions, and other writings throughout American history that have sought to buttress arguments through citations to Scriptures or to Biblical figures, John Vile provides an indispensable guide for scholars and students in religion, American history, law, and political science to understand how Americans throughout its history have interpreted and applied the Bible to legal and political issues.

Making Sense of the Bible [Leader Guide]

Author : Adam Hamilton
Publisher : Abingdon Press
ISBN 13 : 1501801325
Total Pages : 76 pages
Book Rating : 4.5/5 (18 download)

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Book Synopsis Making Sense of the Bible [Leader Guide] by : Adam Hamilton

Download or read book Making Sense of the Bible [Leader Guide] written by Adam Hamilton and published by Abingdon Press. This book was released on 2014-09-15 with total page 76 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this six week video study, Adam Hamilton explores the key points in his new book, Making Sense of the Bible. With the help of this Leader Guide, groups learn from Hamilton as his video presentations lead groups through the book, focusing on the most important questions we ask about the Bible, its origins and meaning.

The Making of the Bible

Author : Konrad Schmid
Publisher : Harvard University Press
ISBN 13 : 0674248384
Total Pages : 449 pages
Book Rating : 4.6/5 (742 download)

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Book Synopsis The Making of the Bible by : Konrad Schmid

Download or read book The Making of the Bible written by Konrad Schmid and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2021-10-29 with total page 449 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The authoritative new account of the BibleÕs origins, illuminating the 1,600-year tradition that shaped the Christian and Jewish holy books as millions know them today. The Bible as we know it today is best understood as a process, one that begins in the tenth century BCE. In this revelatory account, a world-renowned scholar of Hebrew scripture joins a foremost authority on the New Testament to write a new biography of the Book of Books, reconstructing Jewish and Christian scriptural histories, as well as the underappreciated contest between them, from which the Bible arose. Recent scholarship has overturned popular assumptions about IsraelÕs past, suggesting, for instance, that the five books of the Torah were written not by Moses but during the reign of Josiah centuries later. The sources of the Gospels are also under scrutiny. Konrad Schmid and Jens Schrter reveal the long, transformative journeys of these and other texts en route to inclusion in the holy books. The New Testament, the authors show, did not develop in the wake of an Old Testament set in stone. Rather the two evolved in parallel, in conversation with each other, ensuring a continuing mutual influence of Jewish and Christian traditions. Indeed, Schmid and Schrter argue that Judaism may not have survived had it not been reshaped in competition with early Christianity. A remarkable synthesis of the latest Old and New Testament scholarship, The Making of the Bible is the most comprehensive history yet told of the worldÕs best-known literature, revealing its buried lessons and secrets.

Envisioning Scripture: Joseph Smith's Revelations in Their Early American Contexts

Author : Colby Townsend
Publisher :
ISBN 13 : 9781560854470
Total Pages : 280 pages
Book Rating : 4.8/5 (544 download)

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Book Synopsis Envisioning Scripture: Joseph Smith's Revelations in Their Early American Contexts by : Colby Townsend

Download or read book Envisioning Scripture: Joseph Smith's Revelations in Their Early American Contexts written by Colby Townsend and published by . This book was released on 2022-05-16 with total page 280 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The first fifty years of United States history was a period of seemingly endless possibility. With the birth of a new country during the age of revolutions came new religions, new literary genres, new political parties, temperance and abolitionist societies, and the expansion of print and marketing networks that would dramatically change the course of the century. Envisioning Scripture: Joseph Smith's Revelations in Their Early American Contexts brings together ten essays from leading scholars on the history of early American religion and print culture. Covering issues of gender, race, prophecy, education, scripture, real and narrative time, authority and power, and apocalypticism, the essays invite the reader--scholar, student, etc.--to expand their knowledge of early Mormon history by grasping more fully the American contexts that Mormonism grew out of. Contributors include Catherine A. Brekus, William Davis, Elizabeth Fenton, Kathleen Flake, Paul Gutjahr, Jared Hickman, Susan Juster, Seth Perry, Laura Thiemann Scales, and Roberto A. Valdeón.

White Men's Magic

Author : Vincent L. Wimbush
Publisher : Oxford University Press
ISBN 13 : 0199344396
Total Pages : 307 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (993 download)

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Book Synopsis White Men's Magic by : Vincent L. Wimbush

Download or read book White Men's Magic written by Vincent L. Wimbush and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2014 with total page 307 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Characterizing Olaudah Equiano's eighteenth-century narrative of his life as a type of "scriptural story" that connects the Bible with identity formation, Vincent L. Wimbush's White Men's Magic probes not only how the Bible and its reading played a crucial role in the first colonial contacts between black and white persons in the North Atlantic but also the process and meaning of what he terms "scripturalization." By this term, Wimbush means a social-psychological-political discursive structure or "semiosphere" that creates a reality and organizes a society in terms of relations and communications. Because it is based on the particularities of Equiano's narrative, Wimbush's theoretical work is not only grounded but inductive, and shows that scripturalization is bigger than either the historical or the literary Equiano. Scripturalization was not invented by Equiano, he says, but it is not quite the same after Equiano.

The Civil War as a Theological Crisis

Author : Mark A. Noll
Publisher : Univ of North Carolina Press
ISBN 13 : 0807877204
Total Pages : 212 pages
Book Rating : 4.8/5 (78 download)

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Book Synopsis The Civil War as a Theological Crisis by : Mark A. Noll

Download or read book The Civil War as a Theological Crisis written by Mark A. Noll and published by Univ of North Carolina Press. This book was released on 2006-12-08 with total page 212 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Viewing the Civil War as a major turning point in American religious thought, Mark A. Noll examines writings about slavery and race from Americans both white and black, northern and southern, and includes commentary from Protestants and Catholics in Europe and Canada. Though the Christians on all sides agreed that the Bible was authoritative, their interpretations of slavery in Scripture led to a full-blown theological crisis.

Opening Scripture

Author : Lisa M. Gordis
Publisher : University of Chicago Press
ISBN 13 : 0226304124
Total Pages : 321 pages
Book Rating : 4.2/5 (263 download)

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Book Synopsis Opening Scripture by : Lisa M. Gordis

Download or read book Opening Scripture written by Lisa M. Gordis and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2003-01-15 with total page 321 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Opening Scripture provides a thorough and original account of ministerial and lay strategies for interpreting Scripture in the Massachusetts Bay. Demonstrating an impressive command of the vast literature and history of the period, Lisa Gordis moves deftly through discussions of major figures and events. This is a significant intervention in the study of Puritan New England."—Sandra M. Gustafson, University of Notre Dame What role did the Bible really play in Puritan New England? Many have treated it as a blunt instrument used to cudgel dissenters into submission, but Lisa M. Gordis reveals instead that Puritan readings of the Bible showed great complexity and literary sophistication—so much complexity, in fact, that controversies over biblical interpretation threatened to tear Puritan society apart. Drawing on Puritan preaching manuals and sermons as well as the texts of early religious controversies, Gordis argues that Puritan ministers did not expect to impose their views on their congregations. Instead they believed that interpretive consensus would emerge from the process of reading the Bible, with the Holy Spirit assisting readers to understand God's will. Treating the conflict over Roger Williams, the Antinomian Controversy, and the reluctant compromises of the Halfway Covenant as symptoms of a crisis that was as much literary as it was social or spiritual, Opening Scripture explores the profound consequences of Puritan negotiations over biblical interpretation for New England's literature and history.

The Bible in American Life

Author : Philip Goff
Publisher : Oxford University Press
ISBN 13 : 0190468947
Total Pages : 455 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (94 download)

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Book Synopsis The Bible in American Life by : Philip Goff

Download or read book The Bible in American Life written by Philip Goff and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2017-03-01 with total page 455 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: There is a paradox in American Christianity. According to Gallup, nearly eight in ten Americans regard the Bible as either the literal word of God or inspired by God. At the same time, surveys have revealed gaps in these same Americans' biblical literacy. These discrepancies reveal the complex relationship between American Christians and Holy Writ, a subject that is widely acknowledged but rarely investigated. The Bible in American Life is a sustained, collaborative reflection on the ways Americans use the Bible in their personal lives. It also considers how other influences, including religious communities and the Internet, shape individuals' comprehension of scripture. Employing both quantitative methods (the General Social Survey and the National Congregations Study) and qualitative research (historical studies for context), The Bible in American Life provides an unprecedented perspective on the Bible's role outside of worship, in the lived religion of a broad cross-section of Americans both now and in the past. The Bible has been central to Christian practice, and has functioned as a cultural touchstone From the broadest scale imaginable, national survey data about all Americans, down to the smallest details, such as the portrayal of Noah and his ark in children's Bibles, this book offers insight and illumination from scholars across the intellectual spectrum. It will be useful and informative for scholars seeking to understand changes in American Christianity as well as clergy seeking more effective ways to preach and teach about scripture in a changing environment.