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Getting Religion
- Faith, Culture, and Politics from the Age of Eisenhower to the Era of Obama
- Narrated by: Peter Altschuler
- Length: 17 hrs and 57 mins
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Publisher's summary
Impeccably researched, thought challenging, and leavened by wit, Getting Religion, the highly anticipated new book from Kenneth L. Woodward, is ideal for listeners looking to understand how religion came to be a contentious element in 21st-century public life.
Here the award-winning author blends memoir (especially of the postwar era) with copious reporting and shrewd historical analysis to tell the story of how American religion, culture, and politics influenced each other in the second half of the 20th century. There are few people writing today who could tell this important story with such authority and insight. A scholar as well as one of the nation's most respected journalists, Woodward served as Newsweek's religion editor for nearly 40 years, reporting from five continents and contributing over 700 articles, including nearly 100 cover stories, on a wide range of social issues, ideas, and movements.
Beginning with a bold reassessment of the '50s, Woodward's narrative weaves through the civil rights era and the movements that followed in its wake: the anti-Vietnam movement, liberation theology in Latin America, the rise of Evangelicalism and decline of mainline Protestantism, women's liberation and the Bible, the turn to Asian spirituality, the transformation of the family and emergence of religious cults, and the embrace of righteous politics by both the Republican and Democratic Parties.
Along the way Woodward provides riveting portraits of many of the era's major figures: preachers like Billy Graham and Jerry Falwell; politicians Mario Cuomo and Hillary Clinton; movement leaders Daniel Berrigan, Abraham Joshua Heschel, and Richard John Neuhaus; influential thinkers ranging from Erik Erikson to Elizabeth Kubler-Ross; feminist theologians Rosemary Reuther and Elizabeth Schussler-Fiorenza; and est impresario Werner Erhardt, plus the author's longtime friend the Dalai Lama.
For listeners interested in how religion, economics, family life, and politics influence each other, Woodward introduces a fresh vocabulary of terms such as embedded religion, movement religion, and entrepreneurial religion to illuminate the interweaving of the secular and sacred in American public life.
This is one of those rare books that changes the way Americans think about belief, behavior, and belonging.
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Moral Combat
- How Sex Divided American Christians and Fractured American Politics
- By: R. Marie Griffith
- Narrated by: Jo Anna Perrin
- Length: 13 hrs and 13 mins
- Unabridged
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Gay marriage, transgender rights, birth control - sex is at the heart of many of the most divisive political issues of our age. The origins of these conflicts, historian R. Marie Griffith argues, lie in sharp disagreements that emerged among American Christians a century ago. From the 1920s onward, a once-solid Christian consensus regarding gender roles and sexual morality began to crumble, as liberal Protestants sparred with fundamentalists and Catholics over questions of obscenity, sex education, and abortion.
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Very thorough
- By Ellen Gilmartin on 10-12-19
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One Nation Under God
- How Corporate America Invented Christian America
- By: Kevin M. Kruse
- Narrated by: Jeff Cummings
- Length: 12 hrs and 58 mins
- Unabridged
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Conventional wisdom holds that America has been a Christian nation since the Founding Fathers. But in One Nation Under God, historian Kevin M. Kruse argues that the idea of "Christian America" is nothing more than a myth - and a relatively recent one at that.
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RELIGION, PATRIOTISM, & MAMMON: A TOXIC DANCE
- By James on 05-01-15
By: Kevin M. Kruse
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Strange Gods
- A Secular History of Conversion
- By: Susan Jacoby
- Narrated by: Elizabeth Wiley
- Length: 19 hrs and 33 mins
- Unabridged
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In this original and riveting exploration, Susan Jacoby argues that conversion - especially in the free American "religious marketplace" - is too often viewed only within the conventional and simplistic narrative of personal reinvention and divine grace. Instead, the author places conversions within a secular social context that has, at various times, included the force of a unified church and state, desire for upward economic mobility, and interreligious marriage.
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Our own fabrications
- By David E. Felker on 01-03-17
By: Susan Jacoby
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Reclaiming Hope
- By: Michael Wear
- Narrated by: Stu Gray
- Length: 6 hrs and 31 mins
- Unabridged
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Before he had turned 21, Michael Wear found himself deep inside the halls of power in the Obama administration as one of the youngest-ever White House staffers. Appointed by the president in 2008 to the Office of Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships, and later directing faith outreach for the president's 2012 reelection campaign, Wear threw himself wholeheartedly into transforming hope into change, experiencing firsthand the highs and lows of working as a Christian in government.
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Part memoir, part political theology
- By Adam Shields on 03-23-17
By: Michael Wear
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Baptists in America
- A History
- By: Thomas S. Kidd, Barry Hankins
- Narrated by: Jonathan Walker
- Length: 11 hrs and 59 mins
- Unabridged
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In Baptists in America, Thomas S. Kidd and Barry Hankins explore the long-running tensions between church, state, and culture that Baptists have shaped and navigated. Despite the moment of unity that their early persecution provided, their history has been marked by internal battles and schisms that were microcosms of national events, from the conflict over slavery that divided North from South to the conservative revolution of the 1970s and '80s.
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Baptist critics
- By Paul on 11-27-16
By: Thomas S. Kidd, and others
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A History of the Amish
- Third Edition
- By: Steven M. Nolt
- Narrated by: Bronson Pinchot
- Length: 9 hrs and 11 mins
- Unabridged
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The Amish, one of America's most intriguingly private, unique, and often misunderstood religious communities, have survived for 300 years! How has that happened? While much has been written on the Amish, little has been revealed about their history. This book brings together in one volume a thorough history of the Amish people. From their beginnings in Europe through their settlement in North America, the Amish have struggled to maintain their beliefs and traditions in often hostile settings.
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Very interesting
- By Jeffrey on 08-06-18
By: Steven M. Nolt
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God and Ronald Reagan
- A Spiritual Life
- By: Paul Kengor
- Narrated by: Bob Souer
- Length: 9 hrs and 38 mins
- Unabridged
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Ronald Reagan is hailed today for a presidency that restored optimism to America, engendered years of economic prosperity, and helped bring about the fall of the Soviet Union. Yet until now little attention has been paid to the role Reagan's personal spirituality played in his political career, shaping his ideas, bolstering his resolve, and ultimately compelling him to confront the brutal - and, not coincidentally, atheistic - Soviet empire.
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Depth of info
- By Jan Waldrep on 09-01-24
By: Paul Kengor
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The Big Sort
- Why the Clustering of Like-Minded America Is Tearing Us Apart
- By: Bill Bishop, Robert G. Cushing
- Narrated by: Paul Brion
- Length: 12 hrs and 20 mins
- Unabridged
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In 2004, journalist Bill Bishop coined the term "the big sort". Armed with startling new demographic data, he made national news in a series of articles showing how Americans have been sorting themselves into alarmingly homogeneous communities - not by region or by state but by city and even neighborhood. Over the past three decades, we have been choosing the neighborhoods (and churches and news shows) compatible with our lifestyles and beliefs.
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Build the Wall?
- By Amazon Customer on 01-23-19
By: Bill Bishop, and others
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It's Dangerous to Believe
- Religious Freedom and Its Enemies
- By: Mary Eberstadt
- Narrated by: Margaret Winston
- Length: 5 hrs and 20 mins
- Unabridged
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In It's Dangerous to Believe, Mary Eberstadt documents how people of faith - especially Christians who adhere to traditional religious beliefs - face widespread discrimination in today's increasingly secular society. Eberstadt details how recent laws, court decisions, and intimidation on campuses and elsewhere threaten believers who fear losing their jobs, their communities, and their basic freedoms solely because of their convictions.
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Not about Freedom of Religion
- By A. A. Gunnarsdóttir on 01-29-19
By: Mary Eberstadt
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Malcolm X
- A Life of Reinvention
- By: Manning Marable
- Narrated by: G. Valmont Thomas
- Length: 22 hrs and 4 mins
- Unabridged
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Of the great figure in 20th-century American history perhaps none is more complex and controversial than Malcolm X. Constantly rewriting his own story, he became a criminal, a minister, a leader, and an icon, all before being felled by assassins' bullets at age 39. Through his tireless work and countless speeches he empowered hundreds of thousands of black Americans to create better lives and stronger communities while establishing the template for the self-actualized, independent African American man.
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invites further reading on Malcolm X
- By connie on 05-14-11
By: Manning Marable
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The Chosen Wars
- By: Steven R. Weisman
- Narrated by: Grover Gardner
- Length: 12 hrs and 7 mins
- Unabridged
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The Chosen Wars tells the dramatic story of how Judaism redefined itself in America in the 18th and 19th centuries - the personalities that fought each other and shaped its evolution and, importantly, the force of the American dynamic that prevailed over an ancient religion. Determined to take their places as equals in the young nation, American Jews rejected identity as a separate nation and embraced a secular America. Judaism became an American religion.
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A History of the Reform Movement
- By E. B. Weinberg on 08-24-18
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Heretic
- By: Ayaan Hirsi Ali
- Narrated by: Ayaan Hirsi Ali
- Length: 8 hrs and 56 mins
- Unabridged
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What happened to Islamic reform? Why have al Qaeda and Boko Haram become the faces of contemporary Islam? Why has the Arab Spring devolved into a battle over sharia law? Continuing her personal journey from a deeply religious Islamic upbringing to a post at Harvard and American citizenship, the New York Times best-selling author of Infidel and Nomad crafts a powerful call for an Islamic reformation as the only way to end the current wave of global violence and repression of women.
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And They Revoked Her Honorary University Degree!
- By Russell on 04-14-15
By: Ayaan Hirsi Ali