After Cloven Tongues of Fire: Protestant Liberalism in Modern American History, by David A. Hollinger
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After Cloven Tongues of Fire: Protestant Liberalism in Modern American History, by David A. Hollinger
Best Ebook PDF After Cloven Tongues of Fire: Protestant Liberalism in Modern American History, by David A. Hollinger
The role of liberalized, ecumenical Protestantism in American history has too often been obscured by the more flamboyant and orthodox versions of the faith that oppose evolution, embrace narrow conceptions of family values, and continue to insist that the United States should be understood as a Christian nation. In this book, one of our preeminent scholars of American intellectual history examines how liberal Protestant thinkers struggled to embrace modernity, even at the cost of yielding much of the symbolic capital of Christianity to more conservative, evangelical communities of faith.
If religion is not simply a private concern, but a potential basis for public policy and a national culture, does this mean that religious ideas can be subject to the same kind of robust public debate normally given to ideas about race, gender, and the economy? Or is there something special about religious ideas that invites a suspension of critical discussion? These essays, collected here for the first time, demonstrate that the critical discussion of religious ideas has been central to the process by which Protestantism has been liberalized throughout the history of the United States, and shed light on the complex relationship between religion and politics in contemporary American life.
After Cloven Tongues of Fire brings together in one volume David Hollinger's most influential writings on ecumenical Protestantism. The book features an informative general introduction as well as concise introductions to each essay.
After Cloven Tongues of Fire: Protestant Liberalism in Modern American History, by David A. Hollinger - Amazon Sales Rank: #217191 in Books
- Published on: 2015-06-23
- Original language: English
- Number of items: 1
- Dimensions: 9.21" h x .56" w x 6.14" l, .0 pounds
- Binding: Paperback
- 248 pages
After Cloven Tongues of Fire: Protestant Liberalism in Modern American History, by David A. Hollinger Review "The intensely autobiographical essays of this book add luster but also complexity to David Hollinger's reputation as one of the most noteworthy historical essayists of his generation. The luster comes from the coruscating flow of insight he communicates about the larger meaning of liberal or mainline Protestantism in recent American history. The complexity arises from the book's tight interweaving of personal biography and historical analysis."--Mark Noll, Intellectual History Review"In these tightly argued, elegantly written interlocking essays, Hollinger, one of America's premier historians, examines the career of liberal Protestantism in the United States."--Philip Jenkins, Christian Century"The erudition, insight, range, and quality of these essays cannot be captured in brief summary, but the contribution can. Simply put, no scholar of American religion, American intellectual life, or American politics can afford to ignore After Cloven Tongues of Fire. More than a book on liberal Protestantism, the essays here reshape our understanding of the very nature of modernity in America and what makes it unique."--Matthew S. Hedstrom, Journal of the American Academy of Religion
From the Back Cover
"Liberal Protestantism is not appreciated enough, not studied enough, and keeps getting written off as a movement destined to fade away. David Hollinger, one of our finest and most provocative intellectual historians, reminds us how important liberal Protestant ideas have been in advancing movements for social reform and in shaping our current self-understandings. And his account of the struggle of Christians with the Enlightenment is hugely instructive at a moment when all our faith traditions continue to confront the effects of the acids of modernity. In bringing together some of Hollinger's most important work, After Cloven Tongues of Fire is an exciting book that challenges many of the assumptions lurking behind our debates over religion's role in American public life."--E. J. Dionne Jr., author of Our Divided Political Heart and Souled Out
"This book by America's leading intellectual historian is essential reading for anyone who cares to understand the rise, decline, and enduring legacy of what was once our dominant religious tradition. David Hollinger's essays, always empathetic but never uncritical, treat the 'worldly' Protestants with the moral rigor they deserve."--Michael Kazin, author of American Dreamers: How the Left Changed a Nation
"Hollinger's book will take its place as one of the most important works in modern American intellectual history published in recent decades. It shows this exemplary scholar practicing his craft at the highest level of scholarly excellence and deliberately and self-critically reflecting on his practice."--James T. Kloppenberg, Harvard University
"A splendid book. Hollinger's trenchant, sweeping, and at times jolting essays pose critical questions about central issues in American religion, philosophy, and history with depth, insight, and understanding. After Cloven Tongues of Fire will attract a wide spectrum of readers."--Jon Butler, Yale University
About the Author David A. Hollinger is the Preston Hotchkis Professor of History at the University of California, Berkeley, and a former president of the Organization of American Historians. His books include Science, Jews, and Secular Culture: Studies in Mid-Twentieth-Century American Intellectual History (Princeton) and Postethnic America: Beyond Multiculturalism.
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17 of 18 people found the following review helpful. Where Do We (Americans, Protestants, others) Go From Here? By gary alan chamberlain The issue is epistemology--how (or if) we know anything about anything. We can map the journey one way, from the medieval Catholic schools through the Renaissance and humanism, and see the next stop as the Protestant Reformation; both Philip Melanchthon and John Calvin walked that path in their own lifetimes. Or (it makes no difference today) we can see the next stop as Catholicism's reforming Council of Trent, completing its work in 1563 (the year before Calvin died and Shakespeare was born). Let's call the subsequent stop, conventionally enough, the Enlightenment. Brilliant Catholics (Renee Descartes, Blaise Pascal) and Protestants (Francis Bacon, Melanchthon's student Johannes Kepler, Isaac Newton) pursued simultaneous studies in theology and philosophy, ancient languages and (Biblical and classical) texts, and science and mathematics, hoping (often convinced) that in discerning quantifiable laws of nature they were seeing into the mind of the one true (Christian) God. These great Enlightenment figures seldom doubted that the Bible, Christian doctrine, meticulous philological and historical studies, and scientific method, all would surely and harmoniously converge in one grand vision of The Truth. Catholic persecution of their contemporary Galileo seemed a sham and a waste of time; when in 1705 Edmond Halley claimed a comet (observed by Kepler in 1607) as the same one to have been observed roughly every 76 years for two millenia and correctly predicted its return for 1758, epistemology seemed like a done deal.Hollinger's book concerns what happens next. The title refers to the story of Pentecost in Acts 2; where does religion in general go after a mystical/ecstatic "Great Experience", as we carry on in the gritty factual ordinariness of life? The contents, a collection of essays written over the last fifteen years, address the specific question of how American Judaism and Christianity have (or have not) adapted to the post-Enlightenment consensus that real knowledge comes through inductive reasoning based on experience and careful detailed observation--not through deductive reasoning based on self-evident (by whatever criterion) postulates and axioms.Hollinger documents and weighs the following observations, which I take the liberty to express in my own terms: First, of course, the Bible and Christian doctrine notably failed as sources of scientific and historical data consistent with other knowledge emerging from Enlightenment methodology. Second, many western Christians (and Jews) took refuge in some alternate epistemic authority (scripture, historic teaching, traditional orthodoxy) in defiance of modern science and critical historical study. Third, that defiance for not a few Christians grew to include aspects of the persistently expanding Enlightenment perception that "all men are created equal". Especially as that consensus embraced peoples of other cultures, other races, and (however belatedly) both genders with our varied potentialities for sexual and gender orientation, some religious conservatives appealed to their epistemic alternatives in defense of slavery, discrimination, and contempt for other people. Hollinger notably links the Enlightenment universalism (which Christians too often denied on a "Biblical" basis) with the Acts story of "cloven tongues of fire" speaking to Jews and others from all over the Roman world; Enlightenment values did after all have their roots and find their cultivation in Christian (and Jewish) European civilization. For a great many people around the world, however, the choice became increasingly stark (as it had been for Spinoza)--either empirical and inductive epistemology, or traditional religion. Fourth, what he calls "ecumenical" Protestantism (often termed "liberal", "mainline", or, more recently "old-line")--the Methodists, Presbyterians, Episcopalians, and others who dominated American cultural and political discourse for about two centuries--did make a concerted effort to represent Christianity to and in the world in modern epistemic modes; his essays on William James and Reinhold Niebuhr masterfully assess both the power and the shortcomings of a century of post-Darwinian effort in this regard.Now (finally) to three core arguments. One: Despite severe institutional decline, ecumenical Protestants cannot be said simply to have failed--if only because the modern world looks so much more like what they envisioned than like the world conservative Christians are still struggling (and failing) to construct. Two: Given their numbers, we have profoundly underappreciated the disproportionate roles of Jews and Judaism in this process; exhibit A--the influence of Jews in civil rights and even more in the women's liberation movement, and exhibit B:--the representation in American universities of Jews, who won inclusion not on the basis of "diversity" to represent a "Jewish viewpoint" or "culture" but precisely on the basis of the epistemic consensus through which they have excelled in fields from physics to finance to psychology to (as I well know) critical Biblical studies. And last: The importance of ecumenical Protestants' engagement with "strangers" in American culture and church missions globally; working with other people empirically undermined assumptions that Christian teaching and values were obviously superior, while the ecumenical Protestant capacity for self-critical reflection testifies to their openness to inductive learning which subverted their own expectations and prejudices.Hollinger and I followed somewhat similar life-paths (from small-town backgrounds with fathers trained as pastors to our own religion-related Ph.D.'s), except that he (like so many offspring of ecumenical Protestant parents) has left his religious heritage behind. He is articulate and insightful about why this happened, but perhaps the experiment is not done. Conservative Christians politicians, Hollinger says, whatever "revelation" they may claim, must present their case for policy not on the basis of "eternal truth" or "divine will" but on the basis of empirical and inductive arguments concerning what will best promote the interests of everyone in our diverse democratic culture. I'll go farther; I think that's true of anything we say today about Christianity or any other religion. Christians in particular will struggle to drop all a priori claims to "truth" (maybe that's why so many disaffected Jewish or Christian Americans who want workable disciplines of prayer or meditation turn to Zen), and the Enlightenment heritage has its own difficulties (as the Romantics already knew). But at the very least we can learn to talk about religion in terms of empirical practice and observation on the one hand and inductive assessment of our human condition and its dilemmas on the other. What if Christianity (or any other religion) isn't actually a "belief system" in any case? As Catholics have said for fifteen centuries, Lex orandi lex credendi The rule of how we pray provides the rule of what we believe. "Chamberlain's Wager" is that epistemic authoritarianism misrepresents the historic dynamic of the Jewish and Christian traditions; in the Bible and in subsequent history, I say, Judaism and Christianity have kept on learning (empirically and inductively) and surrendering even some once-central postulates--much like Bayesian probability, not at all like Euclidean geometry.
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful. Protestant liberalism in modern America--its evolution and possible demise By David J. Wilson Hollinger's collection of essays makes very interesting reading to one who is outside the Christian tradition. I've been baffled and concerned by the intensely bitter split between those Hollinger styles as ecumenical or mainstream Christians and those he labels evangelical Christians, who are of a much more fundamental persuasion and whose star has been in the ascendancy in recent decades as the ecumenicals have been dwindling markedly in numbers. Hollinger notes that one of the problems for the ecumenicals is that their attempts to rationalize their religious beliefs with the findings of science and the results of modern biblical scholarship often shake their faith to the point where it simply fades away. Justification becomes by verification (evidence, reasoning), rather than by faith. A second problem is that, as we have become more cosmopolitan, more aware of other, non-Christian cultures and their contributions, it has been more and more difficult to dismiss them as of little merit and significance. This certainly must shake one's faith in the absolute truth and superiority of one's own beliefs. As a result of these two factors a significant number of ecumenicals wind up leaving Christianity and joining the camp of the unbelievers. Hollinger devotes a good bit of space to examining the struggles of William James, one of America's best-known thinkers, as he tries to find justification for his deeply felt faith in the face of modern science. The faith James is left with bears very little resemblance to either ecumenical or evangelical Christianity.Hollinger expresses concern over the attempts to introduce more Christianity into our universities, to desecularize them. Our universities have worked hard over the years to become more cosmopolitan, less provincial, more driven by verification, less driven by faith and tradition, more willing to consider the new and different. Evangelical Christians would reverse this trend, as illustrated most spectacularly by recent developments at our own U.S. Air Force Academy. Having seen a whole biology department fired for heresy (they accepted evolution) at a school in the city where I taught for many years, I share Hollinger's concern.The "new atheists" come in for mention, and are criticized for their harsh, abrasive, take-no-prisoners style. These folks (Dawkins, Harris, Hitchens, Stenger, and others) have certainly put atheism on the map, but they certainly "do not play nicely with other children." I, also an atheist, find their arguments convincing--in fact they are my own as well. But I find it unwise to deliberately alienate and reject the liberal Christians with whom I have much in common in terms of social values and practical ethics. Over the years I have shared too much friendship and too much work with these people to want to slap them in the face.The last of Hollinger's points I'd like to discuss is the place of religion in American politics. If a politician, such as G.W. Bush, uses an economic, social, or military justification for some action or proposed action, we feel quite comfortable about examining his reasoning closely and critically--that's the way the game is played in a democratic society. If, however, that politician uses as justification the argument that God told him to do it, our society pretty much gives him a free pass. His decision is accepted as is, and it would be regarded as extremely disrespectful of his religion to do otherwise. A free pass like this is OK in a game like, say, Monopoly, but it is extremely imprudent when one is running a powerful country. In closing this section on Christianity in politics, I note that, as an unbeliever, there is probably not a single public office at any level in this country to which I could be elected. Crooked management of campaign funds? OK. Shady business dealings? OK. Cheating on your wife? OK. Atheist? Absolutely not. Interesting.Several other interesting essays are included in Hollinger's book--interesting, but only peripherally connected to Protestant Liberalism in Modern America.An excellent read.
4 of 8 people found the following review helpful. GTruly fine book By Warren Ilchman The book is a true eye-opener, The decline of the ecumenical liberals churches will now be understood more fully.I have now bought several copies and sent them to colleagues.
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