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As recently as a few decades ago, most people would have described America as a predominantly Protestant nation. Today, we are home to a colorful mix of religious faiths and practices, from a resurgent Catholic Church and a rapidly growing Islam to all forms of Buddhism and many other non-Christian religions. How did this startling transformation take place? A great many factors contributed to this transformation, writes Amanda Porterfield in this engaging look at religion in contemporary America. Religious activism, disillusionment with American culture stemming from the Vietnam war, the influx of Buddhist ideas, a heightened consciousness of gender, and the vastly broadened awareness of non-Christian religions arising from the growth of religious studies programs--all have served to undermine Protestant hegemony in the United States. But the single most important factor, says Porterfield, was the very success of Protestant ways of thinking: emphasis on the individual's relationship with God, tension between spiritual life and religious institutions, egalitarian ideas about spiritual life, and belief in the practical benefits of spirituality. Distrust of religious institutions, for instance, helped fuel a religious counterculture--the tendency to define spiritual truth against the dangers or inadequacies of the surrounding culture--and Protestantism's pragmatic view of spirituality played into the tendency to see the main function of religion as therapeutic. For anyone interested in how and why the American religious landscape has been so dramatically altered in the last forty years, The Transformation of Religion in America offers a coherent and persuasive analysis.
E-Book Content
The Transformation of American Religion: The Story of a Late-Twentieth-century Awakening
Amanda Porterfield
OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS
c The Transformation of American Religion c
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The Transformation of American Religion the story of a late-twentiethcentury awakening
Amanda Porterfield
c
1 2001
1 Oxford New York Athens Auckland Bangkok Bogota´ Bombay Buenos Aires Calcutta Cape Town Chennai Dar es Salaam Delhi Florence Hong Kong Istanbul Karachi Kuala Lumpur Madras Madrid Melbourne Mexico City Nairobi Paris Singapore Taipei Tokyo Toronto and associated companies in Berlin Ibadan Copyright 䉷 2001 by Amanda Porterfield Published by Oxford University Press, Inc. 198 Madison Avenue, New York, New York 10016 Oxford is a registered trademark of Oxford University Press All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of Oxford University Press. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Porterfield, Amanda, 1947– The transformation of American religion : the story of a latetwentieth-century awakening / Amanda Porterfield. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-19-513137-1 1. United States—Religion—1960– I. Title. BL2525 .P669 2000 200'.973'09045—dc21 00-036758
2 4 6 8 9 7 5 3 1 Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper
To my excellent colleagues at the University of Wyoming, with gratefulness for their inspiration and support.
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Table of Contents
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Acknowledgments
ix
introduction Post-Protestant America
1
1 23
The Liberation of Missionary Evangelicalism
2 The Catholicity of American Spirituality
58
3 Vietnam and the Ethics of Disenchantment
88
4 Buddhism and the Deconstruction of Selfhood vii
125
Table of Contents
5 Gender Con