The Transformation of American Religion: The Story of a Late-Twentieth-Century Awakening - Hardcover

Porterfield, Amanda

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0195131371 ISBN 13: 9780195131376

Publisher: Oxford University Press, 2001

Synopsis

As recently as a few decades ago, most people would have described America as a predominantly Protestant nation. Today, we are home to a colorful mix of religious faiths and practices, from a resurgent Catholic Church and a rapidly growing Islam to all forms of Buddhism and many other non-Christian religions. How did this startling transformation take place?
A great many factors contributed to this transformation, writes Amanda Porterfield in this engaging look at religion in contemporary America. Religious activism, disillusionment with American culture stemming from the Vietnam war, the influx of Buddhist ideas, a heightened consciousness of gender, and the vastly broadened awareness of non-Christian religions arising from the growth of religious studies programs--all have served to undermine Protestant hegemony in the United States. But the single most important factor, says Porterfield, was the very success of Protestant ways of thinking: emphasis on the individual's relationship with God, tension between spiritual life and religious institutions, egalitarian ideas about spiritual life, and belief in the practical benefits of spirituality. Distrust of religious institutions, for instance, helped fuel a religious counterculture--the tendency to define spiritual truth against the dangers or inadequacies of the surrounding culture--and Protestantism's pragmatic view of spirituality played into the tendency to see the main function of religion as therapeutic.
For anyone interested in how and why the American religious landscape has been so dramatically altered in the last forty years, The Transformation of Religion in America offers a coherent and persuasive analysis.

About this title

About the Author:

Amanda Porterfield is Professor of Religious Studies at the University of Wyoming and president-elect of the American Society of Church History. She lives in Laramie, Wyoming.

From Publishers Weekly:

Porterfield, professor of religious studies at the University of Wyoming and president-elect of the American Society of Church History, capably argues that a transformation has occurred in American religion in the late 20th century, and that this transformation is analogous to other periodic awakenings of religious enthusiasm. Porterfield uses intellectual history to illustrate a chain of thought through the American past, tracing developments from Puritan theology in the 17th and 18th centuries to the birth and growth of Transcendentalism in the 19th century. From there, she identifies a constellation of ideas and movements that changed evangelical Protestant dominance in American culture into a more pluralistic and nuanced understanding of religion. Specifically, Porterfield points to 20th-century developments such as the liberalization and redefinition of the Protestant missionary endeavor; the growth of American Catholicism and its increased acceptance by the Protestant mainstream; the Vietnam War and an attendant questioning of traditional religion; the blossoming of Buddhism in America; the raising of gender consciousness through feminism; and--most significantly--the explosion of religious studies programs at secular universities. If this transformation constitutes another awakening, Porterfield argues that it moves far beyond the horizons of earlier awakenings by bringing religious ideas and values from outside traditional Christianity into the lives of modern Americans. The book offers solid, though not earth-shattering, scholarship; Porterfield may be overstating the case for religious pluralism as a spiritual awakening. While a thorough knowledge of American history and religion would be helpful to readers, Porterfield's argument is clear enough to follow without it.

Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

About this edition

• Publisher: Oxford University Press
• Publication date: 2001
• ISBN 10: 0195131371
• ISBN 13: 9780195131376
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 272