Front cover image for Head and heart : American Christianities

Head and heart : American Christianities

Garry Wills (Author)
An examination of Christianity's place in American life through history, from the Puritans to the administration of George W. Bush. The struggle within American Christianity, historian Wills argues, has been between the head and the heart: reason and emotion, Enlightenment and Evangelism. 18th century America saw a religious revolution--an Enlightenment culture emerged whose hallmarks were tolerance for other faiths and a belief that religion was best divorced from political institutions. Wills shows the steps by which church-state separation was enshrined in the Constitution. He shows a repeating pattern in our history: a cooling of popular religious fervor, followed by an explosion in evangelical activity, and then a backlash. --From publisher description
Print Book, English, 2007
Penguin Press, New York, 2007
Church history
626 pages : illustrations ; 25 cm
9781594201462, 1594201463
122309283
Puritans. Mary Dyer must die ; The Puritan psyche ; The Puritan conscience ; The Puritan intellect
Preludes to Enlightenment. Precursors : Samuel Sewall, Roger Williams ; Spur to Enlightenment : the Great Awakening
Unitarians. Against the awakening ; Quakers ; Deists
Disestablishment. Beyond tolerance ; Jefferson's statute ; Madison's Remonstrance ; First Amendment ; Madisonian separation
Transcendentalism. Schism in New England ; Emersonians
Religion of the heart. The second Great Awakening ; Schisms over slavery ; God of battles ; Religion in the Gilded Age
Doomsday or progress? Second-coming theology ; Second-coming politics ; The social gospel
Reversals. Evangelicals riding high ; Evangelicals brought low ; Religion in a radical time
Euphoria. Great religious truce ; The rights revolution ; Evangelicals counterattack
The Karl Rove era. Faith-based government ; Ecumenical Karl ; Life after Rove
Epilogue : Separation not suppression
Appendix I : Jefferson's Virginia statute for religious freedom
Appendix II : Madison's Memorial and remonstrance against religious assessments