LEADER 04484nam 2200553 a 450 001 9910460001103321 005 20200520144314.0 010 $a0-674-05884-4 035 $a(CKB)2670000000079236 035 $a(OCoLC)733332640 035 $a(CaPaEBR)ebrary10456075 035 $a(SSID)ssj0000484681 035 $a(PQKBManifestationID)12196507 035 $a(PQKBTitleCode)TC0000484681 035 $a(PQKBWorkID)10594954 035 $a(PQKB)10173733 035 $a(MiAaPQ)EBC3300908 035 $a(Au-PeEL)EBL3300908 035 $a(CaPaEBR)ebr10456075 035 $a(EXLCZ)992670000000079236 100 $a20100611d2010 uy 0 101 0 $aeng 135 $aurcn||||||||| 181 $ctxt 182 $cc 183 $acr 200 10$aGod-fearing and free$b[electronic resource] $ea spiritual history of America's Cold War /$fJason W. Stevens 210 $aCambridge, Mass. $cHarvard University Press$d2010 215 $a1 online resource (449 p.) 300 $aBibliographic Level Mode of Issuance: Monograph 311 $a0-674-05555-1 320 $aIncludes bibliographical references and index. 327 $aIntroduction: 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. 330 $aReligion 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. 606 $aCold War$xReligious aspects$xChristianity 606 $aChristianity and politics$zUnited States$xHistory$y20th century 607 $aUnited States$xChurch history$y20th century 608 $aElectronic books. 615 0$aCold War$xReligious aspects$xChristianity. 615 0$aChristianity and politics$xHistory 676 $a277.3/082 700 $aStevens$b Jason W.$f1975-$0890029 801 0$bMiAaPQ 801 1$bMiAaPQ 801 2$bMiAaPQ 906 $aBOOK 912 $a9910460001103321 996 $aGod-fearing and free$91988476 997 $aUNINA