![]() America is formless, has no ter rible and no beautiful condensation." That was in June 1847, when the American sage was still angry about our famous engagement in the Mexican War, Mexico being the Iraq of that American movement. Of America, Emerson observed: "Great country, diminutive minds. Sydney Ahlstrom emphasized that there was no distinctive American theology, even though he (and Tolstoy before him) spoke of "the American religion." If that religion had a theologian, according to Ahlstrom, it was Emerson. I will ventu re, in this book, that while Judaism and traditional Christianity are not biblical religions (despite all their assertions), the American Religion indeed is biblical, though its Bible may be confined largely to Saint Paul (the Southern Baptists) or be an American set of replacement Scriptures (the Mormons, Seventh-day Adventists, Ch ri stian Scientists, among others). Appearing, Bible perpetually in hand, at the President's side, Graham implicitly certified the war as having biblical sanction. President George Bush, generally not considered over devout, followed President Reagan and other pre-cursors (Nixon, Ford, Carter) by summoning Billy Graham as an emblem of the American Religion. Democracy is not at issue here, and even private property is not at the center. Invocation was the war of the American Religion (and of the American Religion abroad, even among our Arab allies) against whatever denies the selfs status and function as the true standard of being and of value.Our first war against Iraq was a true religious war, but not one in which Islam was involved spiritually, on either side. No American pragmatically feels free if she is not alone, and no American ultimately concedes that she is part of nature. Whatever the social and political consequences of this vision, its imaginative strength is extraordinary. Higher and earlier than the angels, this true Adam is as old as God, older than the Bible, and is free of time, unstained by mortality. The American self is not the Adam of Genesis but is a more primordial Adam, a Man before there were men or women. What makes it possible for the self and God to commune so freely is that the self already is of God unlike body and even soul, the American self is no part of the Creation, or of evolution through the ages. ![]() The soul stands apa rt, and something deeper than the soul, the Real Me or self or spark, thus is made free to be utterly alone with a God who is also quite separate and solitary, that is, a free God or God of freedom. In social reality, this translates as solitude, at least in the inmost sense. Soren Kierkegaard, Journals (edited by Alexander Oru)įREEDOM, IN THE CONTEXT OF THE American Religion, means being alone with God or with Jesus, the American God or the American Ch ri st. The Religion of Our Climate 283 CODA: SO GREAT A CLOUD OF WITNESSES POST-CODA: 2006ĮVEN NOW, IN 1848, IT CERTAINLY LOOKS AS THOUGH POLITICS WERE EVERYTHING BUT IT WILL BE SEEN THAT THE CATASTROPHE (THE REVOLUTION) CORRESPONDS TO US AND IS THE OBVERsE OF THE REFORMATION: THEN EVERYTHING POINTED TO A RELIGIOUS MOVEMENT AND PROVED TO BE POLITICAL NOW EVERYTHING POINTS TO A POLITICAL MOVEMENT, BUT WILL BECOME RELIGIOUS. African-American Re li gion as Paradigm 261ġ6. The Enigma: What Do Southern Baptists Believe? 217 14. Pentecostalism: Swaggart Slain in the Spirit 18i 1I.ġ2. Jehovah's Witnesses: Against the American Religionġ0. Seventh-Day Adventism: Health, Prophecy, and Ellen Harmon White 1.53ĩ. Ch ri stian Science: The Fortunate Fall in Lynn, Massachusetts 133 8. Baptism for the Dead, Spirits for the Unbornħ. The Religion-Making Imagination of Joseph Smith 6. A Religion Becomes a People: The Kingdom of God 69 5. The Library of Congress originally cataloged this book as follows: Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Bloom, Harold. Printed in the United States of America Designed by Kim Llewellyn This book was first published in 1992 by Simon & Schuster, Inc. For more information contact Chu Hartley Publishers, 116 West 14th Street, iith Floor, New York, NY tom 1-7305. No part of this book may be used or reproduced without the written permission of the publisher. Copyright © 1992, 2nd edition © 2006 by Harold Bloom.
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