05732cam a2200673Ia 4500 ocn733332640 OCoLC 20200709055346.0 m d cr cnu---unuuu 110628s2010 mau ob 001 0 eng d N$T eng pn N$T E7B YDXCP OCLCQ NLGGC OCLCO EBLCP OCLCQ OCLCO OCLCQ AZK AGLDB MOR PIFAG ZCU MERUC OCLCQ JBG OCLCQ WY@ U3W KIJ OCLCF STF WRM VTS NRAMU ICG VT2 TOF OCLCQ WYU TKN DKC OCLCQ JSTOR 715189422 961512778 962697693 9780674058842 (electronic bk.) 0674058844 (electronic bk.) 9780674055551 0674055551 361670 (N$T) (OCoLC)733332640 (OCoLC)715189422 (OCoLC)961512778 (OCoLC)962697693 22573/ctvjntrrc JSTOR n-us--- BR526 .S74 2010eb REL 015000 bisacsh HIS 036060 bisacsh REL 084000 bisacsh 277.3/082 23 MAIN Stevens, Jason W., 1975- God-fearing and free : a spiritual history of America's Cold War / Jason W. Stevens. Cambridge, Mass. : Harvard University Press, 2010. 1 online resource (xiii, 434 pages) text txt rdacontent computer c rdamedia online resource cr rdacarrier Includes bibliographical references (pages 313-408) and index. Introduction: Going beyond modernism from World War I to the Cold War -- pt. 1. How a theologican served the opinion elite, and how an evangelist startled them. Christianity, reason, and the national character -- Origins of an ailing polemic -- pt. 2. Narratives of blindness and insight in an era of confession. Guilt of the thirties, penitence of the fifties -- McCarthyism through sentimental melodrama and film noir -- pt. 3. Cold War cultural politics and the varieties of religious experience. The mass culture critique's implications for American religion -- Jeremiads on the American arcade and its consumption ethic -- pt. 4. Versions of inwardness in Cold War psychology and the neo-Gothic. Controversies over therapeutic religion -- Locating the enigma of Shirley Jackson -- pt. 5. The styles of prophecy. Voices of reform, radicalism, and conservative dissent -- James Baldwin and the wages of innocence -- Epilogue: Putting an end to ending our innocence. Religion has been on the rise in America for decades -- which strikes many as a shocking new development. To the contrary, Jason Stevens asserts, the rumors of the death of God were premature. Americans have always conducted their cultural life through religious symbols, never more so than during the Cold War. In God-Fearing and Free, Stevens discloses how the nation, on top of the world and torn between grandiose self-congratulation and doubt about the future, opened the way for a new master narrative. The book shows how the American public, powered by a national religious revival, was purposefully disillusioned regarding the country's mythical innocence and fortified for an epochal struggle with totalitarianism. Stevens reveals how the Augustinian doctrine of original sin was refurbished and then mobilized in a variety of cultural discourses that aimed to shore up democratic society against threats preying on the nation's internal weaknesses. Suddenly, innocence no longer meant a clear conscience. Instead it became synonymous with totalitarian ideologies of the fascist right or the communist left, whose notions of perfectability were dangerously close to millenarian ideals at the heart of American Protestant tradition. As America became riddled with self-doubt, ruminations on the meaning of power and the future of the globe during the "American Century" renewed the impetus to religion. Covering a wide selection of narrative and cultural forms, Stevens shows how writers, artists, and intellectuals, the devout as well as the nonreligious, disseminated the terms of this cultural dialogue, disputing, refining, and challenging it -- effectively making the conservative case against modernity as liberals floundered. - Publisher. Print version record. Master record variable field(s) change: 072 United States Church history 20th century. Cold War Religious aspects Christianity. Christianity and politics United States History 20th century. RELIGION Christianity History. bisacsh Christianity and politics. fast (OCoLC)fst00859736 United States. fast (OCoLC)fst01204155 HISTORY / United States / 20th Century bisacsh 1900-1999 fast Electronic books. Church history. fast (OCoLC)fst01411629 History. fast (OCoLC)fst01411628 Print version: Stevens, Jason W., 1975- God-fearing and free. Cambridge, Mass. : Harvard University Press, 2010 9780674055551 (DLC) 2010024972 (OCoLC)555658537 EBSCOhost http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&scope=site&db=nlebk&db=nlabk&AN=361670 EBSCOhost http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&scope=site&db=nlebk&AN=361670 EBSCO Academic Comprehensive Collection EBL - Ebook Library EBLB EBL3300908 ebrary EBRY ebr10456075 EBSCOhost EBSC 361670 YBP Library Services YANK 3669840 92 N$T 50313 50313