Prophesies of Godlessness Predictions of America's Imminent Secularization from the Puritans to the Present Day

by Mathewes, Charles; Nichols, Christopher McKnight

• ISBN13: 9780195342543
• ISBN10: 0195342542
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2008-09-08
• Publisher: Oxford University Press

Summary

Prophesies of Godlessness explores the expectation of moral and religious change that has been voiced in America from the time of the Puritans to today. Predictions sometimes by those fearing it-have a history as old as America. There have been and continue to be patterns-what we call "scripts"-to these prophesies. These scripts have taken a sinuous and at times subterranean route, but they consistently inform the way we think about our future. This book excavates the history of these prophesies, attending in each chapter to a particular era, focal individual, community of thought, and conception of secularization. From the role of prophesies in Thomas Jefferson's thought, to the Civil War, progressivism, the Scopes Trial, the Cold War and beyond, Prophesies of Godlessness argues that expectations about America's future character and piety are not an accidental feature of American thought, but have been, and continue to be, essential to the meaning of the nation itself. Book jacket.

Author Biography

Charles Mathewes is Associate Professor of Religious Studies at the University of Virginia, where he specializes in Christian theology and ethics, comparative religious ethics, and religion, politics, and society.

Christopher McKnight Nichols is a Fellow at the Institute for Advanced Studies in Culture at the University of Virginia. He specializes in United States intellectual, cultural, and political history from the late nineteenth century through the twentieth century.

Table of Contents

Contributors	p. xi
Introduction: Prophesies of Godlessness	p. 3
Puritans and Revolution: Remembering the Origin; Religion and Social Critique in Early New England	p. 21
The Early Republic: Thomas Jefferson's Philosophy of History and the Future of American Christianity	p. 35
The Romantic Era: Emerson's Churches of One	p. 53
The Civil War: Redeemer President and Warrior Prophet: Abraham Lincoln, William T. Sherman, and Evangelical Protestantism	p. 75
After the Civil War: Auguste Comte's Theory of History Crosses the Atlantic	p. 95
The Gilded Age and Progressive Era: Mastery, Modern Doubt, and the Costs of Progress	p. 113
World War I and After: Godlessness and the Scopes Trial	p. 137
The Thirties to the Fifties: Totalitarianism and the Second American Enlightenment	p. 155
The Sixties: Secularization and the Prophesies of Freedom	p. 175
The Seventies and Eighties: A Reversal of Fortunes	p. 191
From 11/9/1989 to 9/11/2001 and Beyond: The Return of Jeremiad and the Specter of Secularization	p. 209
Conclusion: Prophesies, in Retrospect and Prospect	p. 233
Index	p. 241
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