2nd Edition

In Gods We Trust New Patterns of Religious Pluralism in America

By Thomas Robbins Copyright 1990
    558 Pages
    by Routledge

    558 Pages
    by Routledge

    Much has changed since publication of the first edition of this established text in the sociology of religion. Revised and expanded, this edition emphasizes new patterns of religious change and conflict emerging in the United States in the latter part of the twentieth century. Leading scholars describe and analyze developments in five main areas: The fundamentalist and evangelical revival; challenge and renewal in mainline churches; spiritual innovation and the so-called New Age; women's movements and issues and their impact; and politics and civil religion.

    Chapters include an examination of religious movements' responses to AIDS; Christian schools; quasi-religions; healing rites and goddess worship; recruitment of women to charismatic and Hassidic groups,; televangelists and the Christian Right; racist rural populism; contemporary Mormonism and its growth; cults and brainwashing; Jonestown; dissidence in the Catholic church; and trance-channeling, among other topics.

    A new introductory chapter by the editors establishes an integrating framework in terms of three themes: increasing conflict and controversy associated with American religion; increasing focus on various forms of power in American religion; and challenges to models of secularization and modernization inherent in religious revival, innovation, and politicization. A concluding chapter by the editors looks at new trends and assesses their possible impact in coming years.

    Like its predecessor, this outstanding collection is a significant contribution to the literature as well as a valuable resource for the classroom.

    LIST OF TABLES AND FIGURES, ACKNOWLEDGMENTS, I. INTRODUCTORY, Introduction: Conflict and Change in American Religions, 1. Religion and Power, II. MILITANT TRADITIONALIST RESURGENCE, 2. The Limits of Modernity, 3. Fundamentalism Revisited, 4. Gender, Education, and the New Christian Right, 5. Rural Ideology and the Future of Rural America, 6. Virus as Metaphor: Religious Responses to AIDS, III. CHALLENGE AND RENEWAL IN MAINLINE GROUPS, 7. The Great Protestant Puzzle: Retreat, Renewal, or Reshuffle?, 8. Liberal Protestantism’s Struggle to Recapture the Heartland, 9. Why Catholics Stay in the Church, 10. The Jews: Schism or Division, IV. SPIRITUAL INNOVATION AND THE NEW AGE, 11. Modernization, Secularization, and Mormon Success, 12. On the Margins of the Sacred, 13. Rebottling the Elixir: The Gospel of Prosperity in America’s Religioeconomic Corporations, 14. Channels to Elsewhere, 15. The Apocalypse at Jonestown (with Afterward), 16. Religious Movements and Brainwashing Litigation: Evaluating Key Testimony, V. RELIGIOUS FERMENT AND THE ASPIRATIONS OF WOMEN, 17. Women-Church: Catholic Women Produce an Alternative Spirituality, 18. In Goddess We Trust, 19. Women-Centered Healing Rites: A Study of Alienation and Reintegration, 20. Women’s Search for Family and Roots: A Jewish Religious Solution to a Modern Dilemma, VI. RELIGION, POLITICS, AND CIVIL RELIGION, 21. Religion and Legitimation in the American Republic, 22. Religion and Power in the American Experience, 23. Citizens and Believers: Always Strangers?, 24. Conservative Christians, Televangelism, and Politics: Taking Stock a Decade after the Founding of the Moral Majority, VII. CONCLUSION, 25. Civil Religion and Recent American Religious Ferment, BIBLIOGRAPHY, CONTRIBUTORS, INDEX

    Biography

    Thomas Robbins