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A Critique Of The Historiographical Construal Of America As A Christian Nation, John David Wilsey Sep 2010

A Critique Of The Historiographical Construal Of America As A Christian Nation, John David Wilsey

SOR Faculty Publications and Presentations

The Christian America thesis has grown in popularity over the past thirty years. This essay will critique the Christian America thesis, and instead offer the assertion that America was founded as a nation with religious liberty. Six lines of critique of the Christian America thesis will be presented, and the essay will attempt to show the significance of religious freedom in the founding. America‘s history points to a mixture of sacred and secular ideas. The nation is defined more realistically by religious freedom rather than a Christian identity. Evangelicals can approach those who do not share their faith commitment in …


Nearer Neighbors: Unitarian Universalism, Liberal Protestantism, And Eclectic Faith-Assembly, Garrett M. Rapp Apr 2010

Nearer Neighbors: Unitarian Universalism, Liberal Protestantism, And Eclectic Faith-Assembly, Garrett M. Rapp

Honors Projects

Unitarian Universalism (UUism), the product of unification between the sects of Unitarianism and Universalism in the 1960s, owes much to its nineteenth-century provenance among various increasingly liberal groups of Protestantism. In my paper I describe Unitarianism’s differences and similarities with nineteenth-century Protestantism by means of the common trends and developments of secularization. I will argue that the mode of eclecticism that modern UUism employs to differentiate itself from its liberal Protestant progenitors preserves Christian preconceptions of the nature of fulfillment and religious truth. Additionally, I will discuss some of the assumptions inherent in UU’s eclectic process of faith-construction, and argue …


Introduction To A New History Of The Sermon : The Nineteenth Century, Robert Ellison Jan 2010

Introduction To A New History Of The Sermon : The Nineteenth Century, Robert Ellison

English Faculty Research

This is the introduction to A New History of the Sermon:The Nineteenth Century, a collection of essays I edited for Brill Academic Publishers. It discusses the concept and history of "rhetorical criticism," and seeks to lay a foundation for the rhetorical study of the Anglo-American pulpit.