Head and Heart: American Christianities

· Tantor Media Inc · 朗讀者:Mel Foster
有聲書
19 小時 31 分鐘
完整版
符合資格
想要免費試聽 2 小時 1 分鐘嗎?無論是否有網路連線,都能隨時聆聽。 
新增

關於本有聲書

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? 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 eighteenth 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. 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.

關於作者

Garry Wills is an adjunct professor and cultural historian in the Department of History at Northwestern University and the author of Lincoln at Gettysburg, for which he won a Pulitzer Prize.

Mel Foster, an audiobook narrator since 2002, won an Audie Award for Finding God in Unexpected Places by Philip Yancey. He has also won several AudioFile Earphones Awards. Best known for mysteries, Mel has also narrated classic authors such as Thoreau, Nabokov, and Whitman.

為這本有聲書評分

歡迎提供意見。

聆聽資訊

智慧型手機與平板電腦
只要安裝 Google Play 圖書應用程式 Android 版iPad/iPhone 版,不僅應用程式內容會自動與你的帳戶保持同步,還能讓你隨時隨地上網或離線閱讀。
筆記型電腦和電腦
您可以使用電腦的網頁瀏覽器閱讀從 Google Play 購買的書籍。

Garry Wills的其他著作

同類型有聲書

朗讀者:Mel Foster