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A City Upon a Hill: How Sermons Changed the Course of American History |
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You Are Here: Home > History Books > Holland History > Item 562
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A City Upon a Hill: How Sermons Changed the Course of American History
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by Larry Witham
Sales Rank: 966716
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List Price: $15.95
$10.85
At Amazon
on 11-17-2008.
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Features
Cover Type: Paperback with 336 pages
Published by: HarperOne; Reprint edition July 1, 2008
Written in: English
ISBN 10 Number: 0061338125
ISBN 13 Number: 978-0061338120
Book Dimensions:
8.9 x 6 x 1 inches
Weighs: 11.2 ounces
From Publishers Weekly
It takes a nonspecialist to write this sort of history nowadays. Journalist Witham has most recently been writing popular studies of science, Darwinism and creationism in the U.S. Here he narrates the history of preaching in America, taking as his title John Winthrop's famous sermonic description to his fellow Puritans on their way to New England. Except, as Witham points out, no Puritan thought it remarkable to describe the desired commonwealth in biblical terms at the time. Witham knows when to pick up the narrative pace and when to slow down for delicious detail: for example, evangelist George Whitefield was the colonies' first celebrity, and the last few decades have been marked by activist preaching across the ideological spectrum. Historians and theologians will find points with which to quibble. Yet Witham succeeds in lifting up Roman Catholic, women, evangelical and black preachers alongside the mainstay white males. He also resists the temptation to sermonize himself until the last few pages, where he asks whether American preachers' longstanding comfort with assigning good to our motives and evil to others' is more dualistic and Manichaean than Christian. But by then he's done the good historical work necessary for the one hard question to linger with the reader. (Aug.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
--This text refers to the
Hardcover
edition.
From Booklist
Witham's highly readable history of the American sermon strongly bolsters the contention that words change minds and alter the course of events. He discusses the great sermons, from John Winthrop's "city on a hill" homily to the Gettysburg Address to Martin Luther King Jr.'s "I have a dream" speech. He persuasively argues that sermons and religious rhetoric have accompanied turning points in American history and that the Bible is fundamental to understanding American culture. He discusses great preachers through the ages—Jonathan Edwards, George Whitefield, Henry Ward Beecher, Dwight L. Moody, Billy Graham—and their impact on America; the Great Awakening and subsequent religious revivals; presidential addresses; radio and TV preachers, such as Charles Coughlin, Fulton J. Sheen, and Norman Vincent Peale; and the present-day role of the sermon as a vehicle of American civil religion. Although church and state have gone their separate ways in the modern era, Witham asserts that the sermon continues to resonate with and to shape the nation today. Sawyers, June
--This text refers to the
Hardcover
edition.
Reader Reviews
This review is from: A City Upon a Hill: How Sermons Changed the Course of American History (Hardcover)
I thought this would be a anthology of American preaching, but it is much more than that. It is an engaging and very readable history of the Christianity in the United States. I wish I had had it in seminary!
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A City Upon a Hill: How Sermons Changed the Course of American History
Available from Amazon
Price: $10.85
Updated on 11-17-2008.
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