The Divided Heart: Essays on Protestantism and the Enlightenment in America

by Henry F. May

Overview

Bringing together essays by a leading intellectual and religious historian, The Divided Heart is a collection of recent reflections, sometimes with a considerable autobiographical element, by Henry F. May on the conflict between Protestantism and the Enlightenment that runs throughout the history of American culture. Summarizing May's opinions on recent historiographical arguments, the introduction to The Divided Heart tells of his own development as a historian, major influences upon his thinking, and how his practicing assumptions grew. Covering religion, there are essays on early American history, Jonathan Edwards, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Reinhold Niebuhr, and "reflections on the uneasy relation" between religion and American intellectual history. Relating to the Enlightenment, there are essays on the Constitution and the "Jeffersonian Moment." Suggesting a new and interdisciplinary approach, May's last essay deals with the end of the Enlightenment and the beginning of Romanticism, an area of history with which he has never before dealt.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780195363173
Publisher:	Oxford University Press
Publication date:	03/07/1991
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Lexile:	1370L (what's this?)
File size:	275 KB

About the Author

University of California, Berkeley (Emeritus)

Table of Contents

	Introduction: Faith in History	3
I	Allegiances
1.	Religion and American Intellectual History, 1945-1985: Reflections on an Uneasy Relationship	17
2.	The Rough Road to Virgin Land	33
3.	The Prophet and the Establishment	61
II	Edwards and After
4.	Harriet Beecher Stowe's Oldtown Folks: An Introduction	75
5.	Jonathan Edwards and America	125
III	The Enlightenment and After
6.	The Constitution and the Enlightened Consensus	147
7.	The Jeffersonian Moment	161
8.	After the Enlightenment: A Prospectus	179
	Notes	197
	Index	215

Editorial Reviews

"Few historians have written for as long or as well about the American mind of Henry May."—Church History

From the Publisher