Encountering the Bible from Subaltern Sources
Mark A. Noll's insightful and comprehensive survey of the Bible as foundational to American history skillfully nuances this contested topic. While some might describe the United States as a Bible republic, Noll, in stunningly dense detail and documentation, correctly calls the nation a Bible ci...
| Main Author: | |
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| Format: | Electronic Review |
| Language: | English |
| Check availability: | HBZ Gateway |
| Journals Online & Print: | Drawer...
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| Fernleihe: | Fernleihe für die Fachinformationsdienste |
| Published: |
2023
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| In: |
Church history
Year: 2023, Volume: 92, Issue: 2, Pages: 384-387 |
| Further subjects: | B
Book review
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| Online Access: |
Volltext (kostenfrei) Volltext (kostenfrei) |
| Summary: | Mark A. Noll's insightful and comprehensive survey of the Bible as foundational to American history skillfully nuances this contested topic. While some might describe the United States as a Bible republic, Noll, in stunningly dense detail and documentation, correctly calls the nation a Bible civilization. In drawing this crucial distinction, Noll demonstrates that the Bible and Biblical literacy underlay discourse about politics, culture, and citizenship while at the same time he shows that religious neutrality was enshrined as a national norm in not privileging in the civic sphere one religion over another. After the "proprietary" churches that once exercised disproportionate influence in the public square yielded to a competitive religious marketplace, Methodists emerged in buttressing the body politic through the power of private piety. This disengagement from overt public involvements—a signature attribute of Wesleyan whites—paralleled what the American Bible Society designed in maintaining Biblical primacy in the life of the nation. Distribution of scriptures, especially on the expanding frontier, without doctrinal note or denominational advocacy would sustain the Bible as a glue holding together the American polis and sustaining this body of scriptures as "America's book." |
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| ISSN: | 1755-2613 |
| Contains: | Enthalten in: Church history
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| Persistent identifiers: | DOI: 10.1017/S0009640723001348 |