Surge of Piety: Norman Vincent Peale and the Remaking of American Religious Life
The dramatic, untold story of how Norman Vincent Peale and a handful of conservative allies fueled the massive rise of religiosity in the United States during the 1950s

Near the height of Cold War hysteria, when the threat of all-out nuclear war felt real and perilous, Presbyterian minister Norman Vincent Peale published The Power of Positive Thinking. Selling millions of copies worldwide, the book offered a gospel of self-assurance in an age of mass anxiety.
 
Despite Peale’s success and his ties to powerful conservatives such as Dwight D. Eisenhower, J. Edgar Hoover, and Joseph McCarthy, the full story of his movement has never been told. Christopher Lane shows how the famed minister’s brand of Christian psychology inflamed the nation’s religious revival by promoting the concept that belief in God was essential to the health and harmony of all Americans. We learn in vivid detail how Peale and his powerful supporters orchestrated major changes in a nation newly defined as living “under God.” This blurring of the lines between religion and medicine would reshape religion as we know it in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.
1123644267
Surge of Piety: Norman Vincent Peale and the Remaking of American Religious Life
The dramatic, untold story of how Norman Vincent Peale and a handful of conservative allies fueled the massive rise of religiosity in the United States during the 1950s

Near the height of Cold War hysteria, when the threat of all-out nuclear war felt real and perilous, Presbyterian minister Norman Vincent Peale published The Power of Positive Thinking. Selling millions of copies worldwide, the book offered a gospel of self-assurance in an age of mass anxiety.
 
Despite Peale’s success and his ties to powerful conservatives such as Dwight D. Eisenhower, J. Edgar Hoover, and Joseph McCarthy, the full story of his movement has never been told. Christopher Lane shows how the famed minister’s brand of Christian psychology inflamed the nation’s religious revival by promoting the concept that belief in God was essential to the health and harmony of all Americans. We learn in vivid detail how Peale and his powerful supporters orchestrated major changes in a nation newly defined as living “under God.” This blurring of the lines between religion and medicine would reshape religion as we know it in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.
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Surge of Piety: Norman Vincent Peale and the Remaking of American Religious Life

Surge of Piety: Norman Vincent Peale and the Remaking of American Religious Life

by Christopher Lane
Surge of Piety: Norman Vincent Peale and the Remaking of American Religious Life

Surge of Piety: Norman Vincent Peale and the Remaking of American Religious Life

by Christopher Lane

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Overview

The dramatic, untold story of how Norman Vincent Peale and a handful of conservative allies fueled the massive rise of religiosity in the United States during the 1950s

Near the height of Cold War hysteria, when the threat of all-out nuclear war felt real and perilous, Presbyterian minister Norman Vincent Peale published The Power of Positive Thinking. Selling millions of copies worldwide, the book offered a gospel of self-assurance in an age of mass anxiety.
 
Despite Peale’s success and his ties to powerful conservatives such as Dwight D. Eisenhower, J. Edgar Hoover, and Joseph McCarthy, the full story of his movement has never been told. Christopher Lane shows how the famed minister’s brand of Christian psychology inflamed the nation’s religious revival by promoting the concept that belief in God was essential to the health and harmony of all Americans. We learn in vivid detail how Peale and his powerful supporters orchestrated major changes in a nation newly defined as living “under God.” This blurring of the lines between religion and medicine would reshape religion as we know it in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.

Product Details

ISBN-13: 9780300225273
Publisher: Yale University Press
Publication date: 11/15/2016
Sold by: Barnes & Noble
Format: eBook
Pages: 192
File size: 4 MB

About the Author

A professor of English at Northwestern University, Christopher Lane has received fellowships from the Guggenheim and Mellon Foundations. His writing has appeared in numerous national publications, including the New York Times. His books include Shyness and The Age of Doubt.

Table of Contents

Introduction 1

1 Religio-Psychiatry Arrives in New York 19

2 On the Couch with Freud 38

3 From Acute Shyness to "World Conquest" 58

4 The Peale-Hoover-Eisenhower Empire 81

5 Psychiatry Goes to Church 102

6 Religion and Mental Health Rebalanced 125

Coda. Faith as an Ongoing Force 146

Notes 159

Acknowledgments 197

Index 201

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