Strange Jeremiah
Subtitle: civil religion and the literary imaginations of Jonathan Edwards, Herman Melville, and W. E. B. Du Bois
By: Carole Lynn Stewart.
Series: Religions of the Americas series
Publisher: University of New Mexico Press
Published: 2010
Place of publication: Albuquerque
Language: eng
Number of pages: 375
ISBN-13: 9780826346797
Subjects: Edwards, Jonathan, -- 1703-1758 -- Criticism and interpretation; Melville, Herman, -- 1819-1891 -- Criticism and interpretation; Du Bois, W. E. B. -- 1868-1963 -- Criticism and interpretation; Civil religion -- United States -- History; United States -- History; United States -- Politics and government -- History
Description: Over the last few decades the notion of civil religion has gained parlance as a way of making sense of American culture and religion. The term civil religion, often used simply to mean patriotism, refers in this text to the religious styles and rhetoric that emerge from the act of founding of the American Republic as a democratic nation. The author examines the work of three major American authors whose lives span 250 years and who, in spite of their different heritages, all expressed themselves through the tradition of the jeremiad, or prophetic judgment of a people for backsliding from their destiny. Jonathan Edwards, the eighteenth-century theologian whose work defined the Great Awakening, made use of the jeremiad through a theological discourse that defined conversion as a performative act --

Stewart demonstrates how Herman Melville, the author of Moby-Dick, questioned the ideology of American optimism; her focus here falls upon his lesser known and often overlooked novel, Pierre, or, The Ambiguities. W.E.B. Du Bois, the preeminent African American intellectual and activist, took up the jeremiad from the implications of the Reconstruction. --

Stewart grounds her study in the meaning and act of America's revolutionary founding, the Civil War, and in Reconstruction, which represents a refounding. These contexts along with the cultural meaning of Puritanism set forth the meaning of civil religion within the orders of a revolutionary beginning. Highlighting the promise and failure of the American Revolution, her study offers new resources for understanding American history and culture. --Book Jacket.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references and index.