Overview

In this cultural and intellectual history, David Burns contends that the influence of biblical criticism in America was more widespread than has been thought. Burns proves this point by uncovering the hidden history of the radical historical Jesus, a construct created and sustained by freethinkers, feminists, socialists, and anarchists during the Gilded Age and Progressive Era. The result of this exploration is a new narrative revealing that Cyrenus Ward, Caroline Bartlett, George Herron, Bouck White, and other radical religionists had an impact on the history of religion in America rivaling that of recognized religious intellectuals such as Shailer Mathews, Charles Briggs, Francis Peabody, and Walter Rauschenbusch. The methods utilized by radical religionists were different from those employed by elite liberal divines, however, and part of a larger struggle over the relationship between religion and civilization. There were numerous reasons for this conflict, but Burns argues that the primary cause was that key radical religionists used Ernest Renan's The Life of Jesus to create an imaginative brand of biblical criticism that struck a balance between the demands of reason and the doctrines of religion. And this measured approach allowed Robert Ingersoll, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Eugene Debs, and other secular-minded thinkers who sought to purge Christianity of its supernatural dimensions to still find something wonderful in the religious imagination and make common cause with an ancient peasant from Galilee. This provocative blend of reason and religion produced a vibrant countercultural movement that spanned communities, classes, and creeds and makes The Life and Death of the Radical Historical Jesus a book that deserves a wide readership in an era when public intellectuals and politicians on both the left and right draw rigid lines between the secular and the sacred.

Full Product Details

9780199929504

Table of Contents

Reviews

This book is a valuable contribution to the literature on American constructions of Jesus. It foregrounds a neglected intellectual and spiritual tradition, situating it carefully in its cultural context, and it offers a fine-grained study of an important period in radical history. Church History

[T]his book is a valuable contribution to the literature on American constructions of Jesus. It foregrounds a neglected intellectual and spiritual tradition, situating it carefully in its cultural context, and it offers a fine-grained study of an important period in radical history. --ChurchHistory Burns's focus allows him to contribute to the current scholarly conversation about American secularity... Burns deserves our deepest thanks for starting the conversation [about the radical historical Jesus] with this fascinating and ably executed study. --American Historical Review A notable social and cultural labor history of the US working-class movement of the late 19th and early 20th centuries... Labor historians will gain much from Burns. --CHOICE A fresh and vital contribution --The Journal of American History In this superb book, David Burns reclaims one of our nation's most important, but also most neglected, radical traditions. In rediscovering the democratic, and socialist, and feminist, Jesuses of late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century America, Burns offers a significant intervention into how we view the Gilded Age and Progressive Era. He also provides a creative new way for us to think about the connection between secularism, religious thought, and politics throughout our nation's past. --Robert D. Johnston, author of The Radical Middle Class: Populist Democracy and the Question ofCapitalism in Progressive Era Portland, Oregon David Burns examines a fascinating intellectual movement that viewed Jesus as mortal, and held that Jesus' contribution lay with his example of human solidarity, not with the supernatural actions attributed to him. Now mainly forgotten, this movement had a profound impact on late nineteenth-century American thought. By excavating this worldly Jesus, Burns challenges the standard narrative that overstates the role of Protestant and Evangelical belief in Gilded Age intellectual life. --C

<br> In this superb book, David Burns reclaims one of our nation's most important, but also most neglected, radical traditions. In rediscovering the democratic, and socialist, and feminist, Jesuses of late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century America, Burns offers a significant intervention into how we view the Gilded Age and Progressive Era. He also provides a creative new way for us to think about the connection between secularism, religious thought, and politics throughout our nation's past. --Robert D. Johnston, author of The Radical Middle Class: Populist Democracy and the Question ofCapitalism in Progressive Era Portland, Oregon<p><br> David Burns examines a fascinating intellectual movement that viewed Jesus as mortal, and held that Jesus' contribution lay with his example of human solidarity, not with the supernatural actions attributed to him. Now mainly forgotten, this movement had a profound impact on late nineteenth-century American thought. By excavating this worldly Jesus, Burns challenges the standard narrative that overstates the role of Protestant and Evangelical belief in Gilded Age intellectual life. --Charles Postel, author of The Populist Vision<p><br> This book's fascinating story is set in the America of 1870 to 1920 and focuses on a 'Christ constructed by radicals who denied the divine, scorned the supernatural and secularized the sacred.' Its opening pages, for example, cite debate in the Machinists' Monthly Journal of 1906 about whether the economic face of Christianity can be (no!) or must be (yes!) Socialism. This is a powerful and persuasive, timely and timeless, account of how those in positions of religious power and political privilege can cloak Jesus in layers of glorious irrelevance but how his economic radicalism surfaces again and again among those of kindred conscience. --John Dominic Crossan, Professor Emeritus, DePaul<p><br>

Author Information

David Burns is a graduate of Ball State University and Northern Illinois University. He lives in Marion, Ohio with his wife and son.

Tab Content 6

Customer Reviews

Recent Reviews

Countries Available