History of American Religion, 1865 to Present will consider the varieties of American religious experience while keeping in mind the importance of pluralism in the U.S. context.
In section two, Holiness, Marsden presents an analysis of the etiology of the fundalmentalist movement in the latter part of the 19th century. At that time, Holiness, Pentecostal and Fundamentalist belief systems emerged and dominated American evangelism. Each movement contained a common thread; interest in the work of the Holy Spirit in evangelistic effort. Dispensationalism, [...]
In Section Four of Fundamentalism and American Culture, George Marsden analyzes the phenomenon of fundamentalism in its early-20th-century heyday from several different angles. He begins with a discussion of the dominant social perspective of fundamentalism as expressed mid-century, as the “offshoot of a social adjustment” (199). This view assumed that fundamentalism was an [...]
I must confess that my bias at the onset. I am completely fascinated at how any group of Christians, who are divided, can ignore a given theological work, then when the “time is ripe” that document can bring together those Christians, who in the end decide to remain theologically diverse; hence The Fundamentals. [...]
In today’s culture, people still struggle to reconcile science and religion. Evangelical Christians in many cases still cling to the idea that true science will continue to find evidence and support for a Creator who brought the world into being, while others would probably argue that science actually argues against the idea of a [...]
As have Winston, Wacker, and Marsden, I am compelled to disclose my relationship to the subject about which I am writing. I was raised in a fundamentalist church environment. Unlike Marsden, I have serious intellectual, moral and theological issues with fundamentalism. That said; I approached this book on the basis of trying to understand how [...]