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From State Church to Pluralism: A Protestant Interpretation of Religion in American History
by Franklin H. Littell
Product Group: Book
Publisher: Macmillan Pub Co (1971-06)
ISBN: 0020870906
EAN: 9780020870906
Dewey Decimal #: 270
Paperback
SKU: 5AA1-028-6-1207
Condition: VG-
Comments: Clean copy, no markings by previous owners; Covers slightly rubbed and creased, with significant edgewear; Spine slightly creased; Corners and ends of spine bumped; Pages bright and tight. *International Buyers Welcome!* (except for prohibitively heavy items, as noted) - Satisfied customers in over 40 countries! We ship quickly and guarantee satisfaction. Your purchase helps support a U. Chicago student
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Editorial Reviews
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Product Description
For most of our history, American religious life has been dominated by a view of church history in which we appear as mere deposits of European religious culture. In fact, however, the freedom of Americans to choose without penalty to join any religious body or none at all is new in human history. This book is an effort to understand and interpret how we arrived at our present situation and, in doing so, to clarify many cultural, social and political issues. How will American Protestants respond to the historical shift from Protestant dominance to more fluid conditions, in which Catholicism and Judaism also have great force and influence? By the anxiety expressed in anti-Semitism and anti-Catholicism? By reaffirming "the American tradition"? In answer, the author explores the very categories that have shaped our study of American church history. Without false ideals of the past, he can perceive the uniqueness of the situation today. The true Golden Age, he argues, lies, if anywhere, in the years just ahead; and through his realistic analysis he encourages that honest "consciousness of calling" that will determine whether religion in America is to be vital or effete.
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Customer Reviews
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A civil voice for true religious pluralism
Rating  (5)
Date: 2006-12-01
This book was first published in 1961. It describes the religious situation of the United States as Littell saw it then. He was very much troubled about 'Protestant nativism' a kind of view that a certain kind of Protestanism was the original and pure form of American religion, and that it belonged to the society as a whole. Littell denies this claim and points to a colonial America far less formally religious than it is today. He too is concerned that a more genuine kind of religious connection apply rather than the 'cultural religiousness' of nativism.
Littrell champions an America in which Protestants, Catholics, and Jews each in their own way develop their own religious institutions and promote authentic religious faith.
Reading this work today forty - five years later I could not help being struck by how the whole tone of discourse, and in fact 'religious street' has changed in this time. Littell writes with civility and understanding of others.
An Evangelical himself I wonder what he would make of the increasing influence of Evangelicals on American politics. I also wonder what he would make of the entrance of other religions into the American mix in a more prominent way, primarily Islam.
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