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John Calvin's American Legacy

Thomas Davis author

Format:Paperback

Publisher:Oxford University Press Inc

Published:8th Apr '10

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John Calvin's American Legacy cover

John Calvin's American Legacy explores the ways Calvin and the Calvinist tradition have influenced American life. Though there are books that trace the role Calvin and Calvinism have played in the national narrative, they tend to focus, as books, on particular topics and time periods. This work, divided into three sections, is the first to present studies that, taken together, represent the breadth of Calvinism's impact in the United States. In addition, each section moves chronologically, ranging from colonial times to the twenty-first century. After a brief introduction focused on the life of Calvin and some of the problems involved in how he is viewed and studied, the volume moves into the first section - ¨Calvin, Calvinism, and American Society¨ - which looks at the economics of the Colonial period, Calvin and the American identity, and the evidence for Calvin's influence on American democracy. The book's second section examines theology, addressing the relationship between Jonathan Edwards's church practice and Calvin's, the Calvinist theological tradition in the nineteenth century, how Calvin came to be understood in the historiography of Williston Walker and Perry Miller, and Calvin's influence on some of the theologies of the twentieth century. The third section, ¨John Calvin, Calvinism, and American Letters,¨ looks at Calvinism's influence on such writers as Samson Occom, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Max Weber, Mark Twain, and John Updike. Altogether, this volume demonstrates the wide-ranging impact of Calvin's thinking throughout American history and society.

The authors of these provocative and insightful essays are prone neither to grandiose claims nor to cavalier dismissals. Instead, they skillfully explore ambiguities. Ranging in their scope from politics and economics to religious practice, ethics, and fiction, they reveal the persisting relevance of a sixteenth-century Genevan theologian for anyone who hopes to understand American culture. They also prove that reading about Calvin can be genuinely entertaining. * E. Brooks Holifield, author of God's Ambassadors: A History of the Christian Clergy in America *

ISBN: 9780195390988

Dimensions: 155mm x 231mm x 18mm

Weight: 431g

304 pages