Jorstad has written the first comprehensive history of American religion in the past decade. Drawing on many contemporary sources, he divides religion in the Eighties into three sections, each characterized by its own struggle. Mainline churches are largely involved in identity crises and social issues. Evangelicals are confronting scandals, politics, and the pressures of the mass media. Private seekers, which the author sees as the wave of the future, swing between quietistic New Age philosophies and the desire for world transformation. Everywhere the tension is between the conservatives holding fast and the liberals pressing on. While Jorstad clearly sympathizes with the latter, he presents a balanced picture of recent religious history. An excellent work of social and historical analysis with insights for the future. Recommended for academic and public libraries. Library Journal During the 1980s, some of the most far-reaching and dramatic changes in American life were those occurring in religious life. Battles over abortion, televangelist morality scandals, responding to AIDS, gender issues, and American political policy toward South Africa are just a few of the major issues that made front-page news. This comprehensive history of American religion in the 1980s explores these and other issues, beginning with their historical background in the great awakening of the 1960s counterculture. It proceeds to trace the contours of the holders fast/pressers on battle (conservatives vs. moderates and liberals) in three areas: mainline struggles over denominational identity, social gospel outreach, and gender issues; evangelical struggles over involvement in office-seeking politics, televangelist morality, and popularization of traditional teaching; and privatized seeking of fulfillment through personal relationships, inner spiritual growth, and pursuit of the promises of New Age transformations of self and society. Using contemporary writings, interviews, reports, and other primary documents of the times as well as drawing on the interpretations of specialists in contemporary religious life, Jorstad throroughly explores every aspect of the themes covered. In Part I, the book focuses on mainliners, documenting the decline of ecumenical energy and the sources and results of the fierce internal battles within mainline denominations over holding to older identities at the expense of extensive involvement in the major social crises of the day. Within the evangelical/fundamental section, the book examines the effects of the Falwells, Robertsons, and others in elective national politics and to what extent this movement depended on the leadership in the White House. Evangelism's expression through and use of mass media is also addressed. The third major trend, privatization (largely New Age), is examined with attention to how seekers sought fulfillment through improving the quality of their relationships with partner, spouse, family, friends, and local community. The leadership of such interpreters as Scott Peck, James Dobson, Charles Swindoll, and Robert Schuller is also examined in detail. The final chapter explores the history, spread, and impact of New Age faith on the religious expression of the 1980s. Holding Fast/Pressing On is the first full-length account of the major developments of religion during the decade. It breaks new ground in using sociological theory to interpret the importance of the search for the self and will be of interest to students of American religious history and life, contemporary social trends and problems, and mass media, politics and religion.

Davidson explores classic themes in historical materialism as he explains: the moments of transition from the dominance of one mode of production to another; the process of social revolution which accompany these transitions; and the problem of nationalism, both as a theoretical challenge to Marxism's capacity for historical explanation and as a practical obstacle to socialist consciousness.

An education leader relates how his experiences with the civil rights movement led him to develop programs promoting educational success in science and technology for African Americans and others. In Holding Fast to Dreams, 2018 American Council on Education (ACE) Lifetime Achievement Award winner Freeman Hrabowski recounts his journey as an educator, a university president, and a pioneer in developing successful, holistic programs for high-achieving students of all races. When Hrabowski was twelve years old, a civil rights leader visited his Birmingham, Alabama, church and spoke about a children’s march for civil rights and opportunity. That leader was the Reverend Martin Luther King Jr., and that march changed Hrabowski’s life. Until then, Freeman was a kid who loved school and solving math problems. Although his family had always stressed the importance of education, he never expected that the world might change and that black and white students would one day study together. But hearing King speak changed everything for Hrabowski, who convinced his parents that he needed to answer King’s call to stand up for equality. While participating in the famed Children’s Crusade, he spent five terrifying nights in jail—during which Freeman became a leader for the younger kids, as he learned about the risk and sacrifice that it would take to fight for justice. Hrabowski went on to fuse his passion for education and for equality, as he made his life’s work inspiring high academic achievement among students of all races in science and engineering. It also brought him from Birmingham to Baltimore, where he has been president of the University of Maryland, Baltimore County for more than two decades. While at UMBC, he co-founded the Meyerhoff Scholars Program, which has been one of the most successful programs for educating African Americans who go on to earn doctorates in the STEM disciplines.

The Committee on Public Information, the major American propaganda agency during World War I, attracted a wide range of reform-oriented men and women who tried to generate enthusiasm for Wilson's international and domestic ideals. Vaughn shows that the CPI encouraged an imperial presidency, urged limits on free speech and called for an almost mystical attachment to the nation, but it also tried to present dispassionately the causes of American intervention in the war. Originally published in 1980. A UNC Press Enduring Edition -- UNC Press Enduring Editions use the latest in digital technology to make available again books from our distinguished backlist that were previously out of print. These editions are published unaltered from the original, and are presented in affordable paperback formats, bringing readers both historical and cultural value.

Managing the Press re-examines the emergence of the twentieth century media President, whose authority to govern depends largely on his ability to generate public support by appealing to the citizenry through the news media. From 1897 to 1933, White House successes and failures with the press established a foundation for modern executive leadership and helped to shape patterns of media practices and technologies through which Americans have viewed the presidency during most of the twentieth century. Author Stephen Ponder shows how these findings suggest a new context for contemporary questions about mediated public opinion and the foundations of presidential power, the challenge to the presidency by an increasingly adversarial press, the emergence of 'new media' formats and technologies, and the shaping of presidential leadership for the twenty-first century. Managing the Press explores the rise of the media presidency through the lens of the late-twentieth century, when the relationship between the President and the press is relevant to more important issues than ever before in the context of American politics.

Few presidents have sparked as much interest in recent years as Ronald Reagan, already the subject of a large number of biographies and specialized subjects. This biography, based on recent research into the Reagan archives and synthesis of the large memoir literature, explores the shaping of his values and beliefs during his childhood in the American heartland, his leadership of the American conservative movement, and his successful political career culminating in the first two-term presidency since Dwight Eisenhower. Pemberton finds Reagan's personal career and ability to understand and communicate with the American people admirable, but finds many of the long-term effects of his presidency harmful.

Originally published in hardcover by Oxford University Press, 2009.

Beginning in 1760, this comprehensive history charts the growth and development of the Methodist and Evangelical United Brethren church family up and through the year 2000. Extraordinarily well-documented study with elaborate notes that will guide the reader to recent and standard literature on the numerous topics, figures, developments, and events covered. The volume is a companion to and designed to be used with THE METHODIST EXPERIENCE IN AMERICA: A SOURCEBOOK, for which it provides background, context and interpretation. Contents include: Launching the Methodist Movements 1760-1768 Structuring the Immigrant Initiatives 1769-1778 Making Church 1777-1784 Constituting Methodism 1784-1792 Spreaking Scriptural Holiness 1792-1816 Snapshot I- Methodism in 1816: Baltimore 1816 Building for Ministry and Nuture 1816-1850s Dividing by Mission, Ethnicity, Gender, and Vision 1816-1850s Dividing over Slavery, Region, Authority, and Race 1830-1860s Embracing the War Cause(s) 1860-1865 Reconstructing Methodism(s) 1866-1884 Snapshot II- Methodism in 1884: Wilker-Barre, PA 1884 Reshaping the Church for Mission 1884-1939 Taking on the World 1884-1939 Warring for World Order and Against Worldliness Within 1930-1968 Snapshot III- Methodism in 1968: Denver 1968 Merging and Reappraising 1968-1984 Holding Fast/Pressing On 1984-2000 A wide-angled narrative that attends to religious life at the local level, to missions and missionary societies , to justice struggles, to camp and quarterly meetings, to the Sunday school and catechisms, to architecture and worship, to higher education, to hospitals and homes, to temperance, to deaconesses and to Methodist experiences in war and in peace-making A volume that attends critically to Methodism’s dilemmas over and initiatives with regard to race, gender, ethnicity, sexual orientation and relation to culture A documentation and display of the rich diversity of the Methodist experience A retelling of the contests over and evolution of Methodist/EUB organization, authority, ministerial orders and ethical/doctrinal emphases