Protestant Press Relations in the United States, 1900–1930

1993 ◽  
Vol 62 (4) ◽  
pp. 514-527 ◽  
Author(s):  
John P. Ferré

Protestant churches in the early twentieth century were vexed by dwindling attendance, a clear sign of their declining social authority. The Reverend William C. Skeath complained about “the masses of the passively religious who have closed their ears to the sermon subject and their doors to pastoral visitation.” Likewise, inHow to Fill the Pews, Ernest Eugene Elliott said that because no more than two-fifths of church members went to church on any given Sunday, the church had ceased to be the chief forum in American public life.


2018 ◽  
Vol 17 (1) ◽  
pp. 249-277 ◽  
Author(s):  
DAVID SEHAT

The United States is a deeply Christian country, but over the last sixty years American public culture has become increasingly detached from religious concerns. Christian activists, when not speaking within the Republican Party, have had to assert their privilege in a way that they never had to do in the past. In spite of their efforts, the role of Christianity in culture and politics has seen a more or less continuous decline. This essay examines how and why that process occurred. It puts forward a schematic narrative that relies on the concepts of public reason, the avant-garde, and an overlapping consensus to explain how different people came together in the mid-twentieth century to secularize and liberalize American public life.



2014 ◽  
Vol 3 ◽  
pp. 98-116
Author(s):  
Diana Greenwold

Allen Eaton’s Arts and Crafts of the Homelands exhibition premiered in Buffalo, New York in 1919, where it drew record crowds to the Albright Gallery. Iterations of the display soon opened in Albany, Rochester, and then in several other cities across the United States. Arts and Crafts of the Homelands showcased European craftwork of local immigrant groups to celebrate a model of early twentieth-century American pluralism. This article examines the aims of exhibit organizers, immigrant presenters, and native-born visitors to these exhibitions. The structure of the displays—which highlighted domestic tableaux of old-world objects—obfuscated the contemporary contributions of immigrant groups to American cultural and economic forums. I argue, however, that local groups took advantage of the exhibit’s performance spaces to assert their active presence in American public life. 



Author(s):  
Alderí Souza De Matos

Latin America is a significant part of the so-called two-thirds world. During the twentieth century, the region witnessed the vigorous growth of the Protestant churches. One of them is the Presbyterian communion, whose first congregations were established in the 1850s. For more than a century, Presbyterian denominations in the United States and Scotland made an enormous investment in the evangelization of Latin America. Nevertheless, despite their significant presence in Mexico and Brazil, Presbyterian churches represent a small percentage of the region’s total Protestant constituency. They have, however, made contributions to society that are out of proportion to their numbers. Besides their important spiritual and ethical emphases, they have impacted countless individuals, families, and communities through their educational and medical efforts. Their greatest challenge today is to establish clear priorities and devote their energies to strengthening Presbyterian work in the countries they have already reached and implanting their faith in the areas where it is absent. Latin American Presbyterians are convinced that the Reformed faith can greatly benefit their part of the world.



2007 ◽  
Vol 1 (3) ◽  
pp. 247-271 ◽  
Author(s):  
Douglas Schuurman

AbstractIn this article I reflect upon the implications of Christendom for Christian vocation. It begins by describing the condition of Christendom in the United States. Then it traces John Howard Yoder's critique of Christendom. Finally, it assesses Yoder's critique with a view to a revised understanding of the public vocation of the Christian in a post-Christendom USA. Part of that assessment involves distinguishing three forms of Christendom: state-enforced Christendom, voluntary cultural Christendom, and Christian culture within the church as minority community of obedient witness. I propose that Reformed vocation should join embrace Yoder's rejection of state-enforced Christendom and affirm his call to develop Christian culture as a minority community. But unlike Yoder Reformed vocation requires Christians, where possible, to work toward voluntary Christendom in the broader society.



2008 ◽  
pp. 31-38
Author(s):  
K.I. Shvalagina

Secularization theory is one of those intellectual products that determine the understanding of religion, its status in society, and the changes that take place between faith and unbelief, between church and state, for quite some time. Constituted in the United States in the mid-twentieth century, this theory has found many followers both in America and in Europe, even in the USSR. Its validity and integrity, evidentiality and obviousness did not cause any doubt either to scholars or to religious and statesmen. It was clear that society is liberated from the influence of religion and the church, is rapidly secularized, which will inevitably lead to the transformation of religion into a marginal phenomenon, and eventually - to its extinction. But the predictions that were made with unqualified certainty did not come true, as the development of the religious environment at the end of the XX and the beginning of the XXI century showed. Not only has religion not lost its significance for the modern man, but he is also actively returning to the public sphere. In line with such objective changes, secularization theory undergoes significant transformations, evolving from a monopoly that it has had for almost half a century, to a crisis, and eventually to its antipode, a theory of desecularization.



Author(s):  
Patrick W. Carey

This chapter demonstrates how a few Catholic seminary professors in the first two decades of the twentieth century began to reconsider and critique the nineteenth-century Catholic understanding of the history of confession in light of Henry Charles Lea’s history of auricular confession and John Henry Newman’s theory of the development of doctrine. That re-examination of the early church’s history of penance met strong resistance from Pope Pius X’s anti-modernist campaign because the new approach clashed with Trent’s understanding of the divine origin of the early church’s practice of auricular confession. The pope, however, also promoted a liturgical revival in the Church that focused on active participation in the Eucharist that had consequences for American Catholic emphases on frequent confession for children as well as adults in preparation for communion. By 1920 that Pian revival in the United States reinforced the nineteenth-century promotion of frequent and devotional confessions.



1981 ◽  
Vol 50 (4) ◽  
pp. 450-464
Author(s):  
James L. Ash

An enormous change in the academic study of religion has occurred in the United States during the last half-century as the center of the enterprise has moved from the church-supported college and the seminary to the secular university and the graduate school. Some of this change has been caused by the rise of state-supported higher education, some by the secularizing trend that has shaped all modern American universities, both public and private. The change clearly has resulted in a discipline (if the term may be loosely used) in which not only has the number of practicing religion scholars greatly multiplied, but the scholarship itself also has grown in academic stature, becoming less eulogistic, more critical, and more methodologically congruent with other humanities disciplines.1



2007 ◽  
Vol 52 (S15) ◽  
pp. 35-58 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael Cohen

During the first two decades of the twentieth century, a mass culture of popular radicalism – consisting of various socialist, industrial unionist, anarchist, Progressive, feminist, black radical and other movements – arose to challenge the legitimacy of corporate capitalism in the United States. This article considers the role of radical cartoonists in propagandizing for, and forging unity within, this culture of popular radicalism. By articulating a common set of anti-capitalist values and providing a recognizable series of icons and enemies, radical cartoonists worked to generate a class politics of laugher that was at once entertaining and didactic. Through a discussion of the works of Art Young for The Masses, Ryan Walker's cartoons for the socialist newspaper, Appeal to Reason, and the proletarian humor of Joe Hill and the IWW, this article argues that radical cartooning did not merely provide comic relief for the movements, but was an active force in framing socialist ideology and goals in a revolutionary age.



2003 ◽  
Vol 24 (1) ◽  
pp. 53-76
Author(s):  
David M. O’Brien

The modem libertarian conception of religious freedom did not emerge in the United States until the early twentieth century. It was the result of the straggles of religious minorities like the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (Mormons), the Jehovah’s Witnesses, Orthodox Jews, the Church of the Lukumi Babalu Aye, among others. It took decades and a series of (not always successful) lawsuits to persuade the Supreme Court and the country of the value of protecting individuals’ free exercise of religion.



2020 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
pp. 77-92
Author(s):  
Rotimi Williams Omotoye

Pentecostalism as a new wave of Christianity became more pronounced in 1970's and beyond in Nigeria. Since then scholars of Religion, History, Sociology and Political Science have shown keen interest in the study of the Churches known as Pentecostals because of the impact they have made on the society. The Redeemed Christian Church of God (RCCG) was established by Pastor Josiah Akindayomi in Lagos,Nigeria in 1952. After his demise, he was succeeded by Pastor Adeboye Adejare Enock. The problem of study of this research was an examination of the expansion of the Redeemed Christian Church of God to North America, Caribbean and Canada. The missionary activities of the church could be regarded as a reversed mission in the propagation of Christianity by Africans in the Diaspora. The methodology adopted was historical. The primary and secondary sources of information were also germane in the research. The findings of the research indicated that the Redeemed Christian Church of God was founded in North America by Immigrants from Nigeria. Pastor Adeboye Enock Adejare had much influence on the Church within and outside the country because of his charisma. The Church has become a place of refuge for many immigrants. They are also contributing to the economy of the United States of America. However, the members of the Church were faced with some challenges, such as security scrutiny by the security agencies. In conclusion, the RCCGNA was a denomination that had been accepted and embraced by Nigerians and African immigrants in the United States of America.



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