Modern American Religion, Volume 3: Under God, Indivisible, 1941-1960 - Hardcover

Marty, Martin E.

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0226508986 ISBN 13: 9780226508986

Publisher: University of Chicago Press, 1996

Synopsis

In this third volume of his acclaimed chronicle of faith in twentieth-century America, Martin E. Marty presents the first authoritative account of American religious culture from the entry of the United States into World War II through the Eisenhower years.

Under God, Indivisible, 1941-1960 is the first book to systematically address religion and the roles it played in shaping the social and political life of mid-century America. A work of exceptional clarity and historical depth, it will interest general readers as well as historians of American and church history.

"The series will become a standard account of the nation's variegated religious culture during the current century. The four volumes, the fruition of decades of research, may rank as much honored Marty's most significant contribution to U.S. studies."—Richard N. Ostling, Time

"When America needs some advice or commentary on the state of modern theology, the person it turns to is Martin Marty."—Publishers Weekly

About this title

Review:

In volume three of this outstanding series on the history of religion in the modern United States, Marty turns a critical eye to the behavior of Christian churches during WWII. He points to the major Christian churches' failure to address significant moral issues arising from the war: the defense of Jews and other refugees, the internment of Japanese civilians, racial segregation, the military tactic of saturation bombing of civilians, and the use of the atomic bomb. Immediately after the war, Protestant leaders returned to their inglorious preoccupation with the threat to religious freedom posed by Roman Catholicism. Only with the social prosperity of the late 1950s did American religious life take on a more forgiving role that embraced ecumenism.

From Kirkus Reviews:

An excellent history by one of the most distinguished American religious scholars of our time. Marty is a professor at the University of Chicago and editor of the Christian Century. In this third installment in his Modern American Religion series, he explores the volatile wartime and postwar years, when American Protestantism enjoyed its renaissance and the Eisenhower administration saw fit to insert ``under God'' in the nation's Pledge of Allegiance. Marty calls recent revisionist scholarship to task by reminding us that while there were important dissenting groups during the 1950s, there was also a predominant WASP cultural landscape that dissenters were reacting against. Protestant hegemony was still very real, especially as Americans tried to unite themselves spiritually in the face of two historical crises: WW II and the Cold War. To achieve this unity, ecumenism was the spirit of the age, resulting in the rise of the World Council of Churches and other cooperative institutions. This study is impressively researched and the writing is free of jargon, though at times a bit dry. Scholars will appreciate the depth of detail that Marty offers here; not content to provide surface explanations for persons or events, he may have bent too far in the other direction by providing readers with a thorough background of every organization, theological position, and pivotal figure in the book. However, such thoroughness makes the volume a useful reference and will provoke important discussions on this oft-neglected period in American religious history. As Marty notes, it is often more difficult for Americans to understand their recent history than to grasp the more distant past. His volume will be an important link to retrieving the elusive America of McCarthy, the Cold War, and the Niebuhrs. (illustrations, not seen) -- Copyright ©1996, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

About this edition

• Publisher: University of Chicago Press
• Publication date: 1996
• ISBN 10: 0226508986
• ISBN 13: 9780226508986
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 555