Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Contributors
- Editor's Introduction
- SECTION I BACKGROUND ON RELIGIOUS TRADITIONS – PRE-1500S
- SECTION II RELIGIONS IN THE POST-COLUMBIAN NEW WORLD – 1500–1680S
- SECTION III RELIGIOUS PATTERNS IN COLONIAL AMERICA – 1680S–1730S
- SECTION IV RELIGIOUS DIVERSITY IN BRITISH AMERICA – 1730S–1790
- SECTION V AMERICAN RELIGIONS IN THE EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY INTERNATIONAL CONTEXT
- SECTION VI THEMATIC ESSAYS
- 32 Religious Thought: The Pre-Columbian Era to 1790
- 33 Piety and Practice in North America to 1800
- 34 Sacred Music in Colonial America
- 35 Religious Architecture
- 36 Religion and Visuality in America: Material Economies of the Sacred
- 37 Religion and Race
- 38 Religions and Families in America: Historical Traditions and Present Positions
- 39 Religious History
- Index
- References
39 - Religious History
from SECTION VI - THEMATIC ESSAYS
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 28 July 2012
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Contributors
- Editor's Introduction
- SECTION I BACKGROUND ON RELIGIOUS TRADITIONS – PRE-1500S
- SECTION II RELIGIONS IN THE POST-COLUMBIAN NEW WORLD – 1500–1680S
- SECTION III RELIGIOUS PATTERNS IN COLONIAL AMERICA – 1680S–1730S
- SECTION IV RELIGIOUS DIVERSITY IN BRITISH AMERICA – 1730S–1790
- SECTION V AMERICAN RELIGIONS IN THE EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY INTERNATIONAL CONTEXT
- SECTION VI THEMATIC ESSAYS
- 32 Religious Thought: The Pre-Columbian Era to 1790
- 33 Piety and Practice in North America to 1800
- 34 Sacred Music in Colonial America
- 35 Religious Architecture
- 36 Religion and Visuality in America: Material Economies of the Sacred
- 37 Religion and Race
- 38 Religions and Families in America: Historical Traditions and Present Positions
- 39 Religious History
- Index
- References
Summary
Christianity is a religion rooted in historical claims and historical narratives, as is the Judaism from which it emerged and whose scriptures it shares. On the one hand, their linear narratives of salvation history locate cosmic and essential significance in particular highly specific events, people, places, and times. Yet on the other hand, Christianity has been from its earliest centuries a highly philosophical system. Great weight has been attached to metaphysical propositions about the relationship of the divine and the human that are claimed to be absolute and timeless. The history of religion, therefore, embraces both the history of peoples and the history of beliefs and teachings – teachings that, to some extent, claim to defy the flow of historical change. The business of doing religious history intrinsically threatens some aspects of traditional belief. It challenges the claim of certain doctrines to be timeless, or to be rooted in the universal consent of the faithful. It illuminates the context-driven character of so many of the church's decisions and pronouncements. Finally, it analyzes the often highly mixed and often discreditable motives and behaviors of key players in the messy business of religious politics.
Like its subject matter, religious history has evolved considerably across two millennia. In part, the evolution simply reflects the changing intellectual cultures of different epochs, the constant and inevitable dialogue between a world faith and the particular cultural matrices in which it grows and finds expression.
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- Information
- The Cambridge History of Religions in America , pp. 825 - 850Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2000