MARC Record from marc_columbia

LEADER: 02891cam a2200349Ii 4500
001 13810325
005 20190329102034.0
008 170619r20192019inu 000 0 eng d
024 $a40028981342
035 $a(OCoLC)ocn990288672
040 $aBTCTA$beng$erda$cBTCTA$dYDX$dBDX$dOCLCQ$dYDXIT$dTXI
020 $a9781587316654$qhardcover
020 $a158731665X$qhardcover
035 $a(OCoLC)990288672
043 $an-us---
050 4 $aBR516$b.B4713 2019
082 04 $a322.10973$223
100 1 $aBesançon, Alain,$eauthor.
245 10 $aProtestant nation :$bthe fragile Christian roots of America's greatness /$cAlain Besançon ; translated by Ralph C. Hancock.
264 1 $aSouth Bend, Indiana :$bSt. Augustine's Press,$c[2019]
264 4 $c©2019.
300 $a156 pages ;$c24 cm
336 $atext$btxt$2rdacontent
337 $aunmediated$bn$2rdamedia
338 $avolume$bnc$2rdacarrier
520 $aAlain Besançon’s studies, over decades, on Russia, France, Islam, and art have convinced him that “that nothing is comprehensible if one neglects the religious choices that determine a historical destiny.” His aim is to comprehend the most powerful nation on the earth, and he was convinced that Protestantism was the key to America. The question of Protestantism and its origins implicated, in turn, the origins of the Reformation and thus the problem of the moral and political meaning of Christianity itself. And Besançon traces theological dynamic that was to stamp the Reformation, behind Luther’s break with Rome, to the late medieval nominalists’ failure to maintain the fragile communion that Thomas Aquinas had articulated between love and intellect. This then is the ambition of this elegant and magisterial essay: to explore the question of the spirit of America as bound up with the most fundamental and most problematic promise of Christianity: the union of heart and mind. This exploration leads the reader, after a deft analysis of Nominalism, through a luminous tour of the sources of modern Christianity that includes the revival of speculative mysticism in authors such as Meister Eckhart and Tauler, the devotion moderna, the main figures and movements of the Reformation proper, a brilliant digest of Anglicanism, and a survey of Puritanism in England and America. This uniquely synoptic exploration concludes with the emergence of a democratic religion of humanity, a faith whose future is as uncertain as its grasp of the modern spirit’s Christian sources that Alain Besançon has so judiciously laid bare.
650 0 $aReligion and state$zUnited States$xHistory.
650 0 $aChristianity$zUnited States$xHistory.
650 0 $aProtestantism$zUnited States$xHistory.
650 0 $aProtestantism$xPolitical aspects$zUnited States.
700 1 $aHancock, Ralph C.,$d1951-$etranslator.
852 00 $buts$hBR516$i.B4713 2019