George M. Marsden's work profoundly explores the intricate relationship between Christianity and American culture. He meticulously examines how religious beliefs have shaped the fabric of American society, offering deep insights into the complex interplay between faith and civilization. His scholarly approach and extensive research illuminate the historical currents that have defined the nation's cultural landscape. Readers will appreciate the depth and erudition of his contributions to understanding this vital intersection.
Drawing on deep expertise, George Marsden sets Jonathan Edwards within his historical context and sets forth his key points, unpacking the competing impulses that have shaped our times. By offering a contrasting view of God's beauty and love, Marsden shows how Edwards's insights can renew our own vision of creation, the divine, and ourselves.
How has the work of C. S. Lewis transformed the American religious landscape? With fresh research and analysis, this volume by noted historian Mark A. Noll considers the surprising reception of Lewis among Roman Catholic, mainline Protestant, and evangelical readers to see how early readings of the Oxford don shaped his later influence.
This new edition of a bestselling textbook isolates key events that provide a framework for understanding the history of Christianity.
Winner of the Christianity Today Book of the Year Award "The scandal of the evangelical mind is that there is not much of an evangelical mind." So begins this award-winning intellectual history and critique of the evangelical movement by one of evangelicalism's most respected historians. Unsparing in his indictment, Mark Noll asks why the largest single group of religious Americans--who enjoy increasing wealth, status, and political influence--have contributed so little to rigorous intellectual scholarship. While nourishing believers in the simple truths of the gospel, why have so many evangelicals failed to sustain a serious intellectual life and abandoned the universities, the arts, and other realms of "high" culture? Over twenty-five years since its original publication, The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind has turned out to be prescient and perennially relevant. In a new preface, Noll lays out his ongoing personal frustrations with this situation, and in a new afterword he assesses the state of the scandal--showing how white evangelicals' embrace of Trumpism, their deepening distrust of science, and their frequent forays into conspiratorial thinking have coexisted with surprisingly robust scholarship from many with strong evangelical connections.
America's Book shows how the Bible decisively shaped American national history even as that history decisively influenced the use of Scripture.
An illuminating Look at who evangelicals are, how evangelicalism has changed over time, and How Evangelicalism Continues to Develop in surprising ways Book jacket.
A best-selling text thoroughly updated, including new chapters on the last 30 years "An excellent study that will help historians appreciate the importance of Christianity in the history of the United States and Canada." - The Journal of American History "Scholars and general readers alike will gain unique insights into the multifaceted character of Christianity in its New World environment. Nothing short of brilliant." - Harry S. Stout, Yale University "A new standard for textbooks on the history of North American Christianity." - James Turner, University of Notre Dame Mark Noll's A History of Christianity in the United States and Canada has been firmly established as the standard text on the Christian experience in North America. Now Noll has thoroughly revised, updated, and expanded his classic text to incorporate new materials and important themes, events, leaders, and changes of the last thirty years. Once again readers will benefit from his insights on the United States and Canada in this superb narrative survey of Christian churches, institutions, and cultural engagements from the colonial period through 2018.
In this thought-provoking book George Marsden, a leading historian of American religion, engagingly tells the story of the paradoxical relationship between religion and American culture. Surveying the historical landscape from colonial America onward up to the present, Marsden here offers the kind of historically and religiously informed scholarship that has made him one of the nation's most respected and decorated historians. Book jacket.
The life and times of C. S. Lewis's modern spiritual classic Mere Christianity, C. S. Lewis's eloquent and winsome defense of the Christian faith, originated as a series of BBC radio talks broadcast during the dark days of World War Two. Here is the story of the extraordinary life and afterlife of this influential and much-beloved book. George Marsden describes how Lewis gradually went from being an atheist to a committed Anglican—famously converting to Christianity in 1931 after conversing into the night with his friends J. R. R. Tolkien and Hugh Dyson—and how Lewis delivered his wartime talks to a traumatized British nation in the midst of an all-out war for survival. Marsden recounts how versions of those talks were collected together in 1952 under the title Mere Christianity, and how the book went on to become one of the most widely read presentations of essential Christianity ever published, particularly among American evangelicals. He examines its role in the conversion experiences of such figures as Charles Colson, who read the book while facing arrest for his role in the Watergate scandal. Marsden explores its relationship with Lewis's Narnia books and other writings, and explains why Lewis's plainspoken case for Christianity continues to have its critics and ardent admirers to this day. With uncommon clarity and grace, Marsden provides invaluable new insights into this modern spiritual classic.
The first in a series of books presenting a connected history of evangelical movements in the English-speaking world spread over nearly three centuries.