The Book of Jerry Falwell
Subtitle: Fundamentalist Language and Politics.
Publisher: Princeton University Press
Published: March 6, 2000
Language: eng
Format: Hardcover
Number of pages: 352
ISBN-13: 9780691059891
Subjects: Religion; Social Science; Language; English Language (Specific Aspects); Fundamentalism; Religion - Denominations - Religions; Religious aspects; Language and languages; Christianity - Christian Life - Political Issues; Christianity - History - Protestant; American History; American Language and Literature; Anthropology; Christian spiritual & Church leaders; English; Political Science and International Relations; Social Science / Sociology of Religion; Sociology of Religion; Christianity; Falwell, Jerry
Description: "Susan Harding, a cultural anthropologist, set out in the 1980s to understand the significance of Christian fundamentalism to date. Falwell and his co-pastors were the pivotal figures in the movement. It is on them that Harding focuses, and, in particular, their use of the Bible's language. She argues that this language is the medium through which born-again Christians, individual and collective, come to understand themselves as Christians.

And it is inside this language that much of the born-again movement took place. Preachers like Falwell command a Bible-based poetics of great complexity, variety, creativity, and force, and, with it, attempt to mold their churches into living testaments of the Bible. Harding focuses on the words - sermons, speeches, books, audiotapes, and television broadcasts - of individual preachers, particularly Falwell, as they rewrote their Bible-based tradition to include, rather than exclude, intense worldly engagement.

As a result of these efforts, born-again Christians recast themselves as a people not separated from but engaged in making history."--BOOK JACKET.