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American Christianities
Penguin
October 2007
On Sale: October 4, 2007
640 pages
ISBN: 1594201463
EAN: 9781594201462
Hardcover
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Non-Fiction
A landmark examination of Christianity's place in American
life across the broad sweep of this country's history, from
the Puritans to the presidential administration of George W.
Bush. The struggle within American Christianity, Garry Wills
argues, now and throughout our country's history, is between
the head and the heart: between reason and emotion,
Enlightenment and Evangelism. Why has this been so? How has
the tension between the two poles played out, and with what
consequences, over the past 400 years? How "Christian" is
America, after all? Garry Wills brings a lifetime's worth of
thought about these questions to bear on a magnificent
historical reckoning that offers much needed perspective on
some of the most contentious issues of our time. A religious revolution occurred in America in the 18th
century, one that saw the emergence of an Enlightenment
religious culture whose hallmarks were tolerance for other
faiths and a belief that religion was a matter best divorced
from political institutions-the proverbial "separation of
church and state." Wills shows us just how incredibly
radical a departure this separation was: there was simply no
precedent for it. To put this leap in perspective, Wills
provides a grounding in the pre-Enlightenment religion that
preceded it, beginning with the early Puritans. He then
provides a thrillingly clear unpacking of the steps,
particularly Madison's and Jefferson's, by which
church-state separation was enshrined in the Constitution,
and reveals the great irony of the efforts of today's
Religious Right to blur the lines between the two. In fact,
it is precisely that separation that has allowed religion in
America to flourish since the disestablishment of religion
created a free market, as it were, and competition for souls
led to the profusion of denominations across the length and
breadth of the land. As Wills examines the key movements and personalities that
have transformed America's religious landscape, we see again
and again the same pattern emerge: a cooling of popular
religious fervor followed by a grassroots explosion in
evangelical activity, generally at a time of great social
transformation and anxiety. But such forces inevitably go
too far, provoking a backlash as is happening right now with
the forces of Creationism and the anti-abortion fundamentalists. Garry Wills closes with a penetrating dissection of the
Religious Right's current machinations and the threat they
pose to the enlightened religion that has proved to be such
a fertile and enduring force throughout American history.
But in the end, Wills's abiding message is to be vigilant
against the triumph of emotions over reason, but to know
that the tension between the two is in fact necessary,
inevitable, and unending.
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