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Secular Devotion to Jesus in Nineteenth-Century America
by
Richard Wightman Fox
(University of Southern California)
Thursday, November 30, 2000, at 4:30 p.m.
Elmarion Room, Goddard-Daniels House
190 Salisbury Street, Worcester, Massachusetts
PRÉCIS:
In the early nineteenth century Jesus became the American cultural icon
that he has remained. Today three-fourths of American adults say he is God
or the Son of God. How did this happen? Evangelization efforts north and
south produced mass conversions in antebellum America. But in the midst of
the spreading religious commitment there was also an emerging secular
piety. A small number of Americans gave up on the church, but when they
left it they did not give up on Jesus. Jefferson and Emerson led the way,
articulating two types of secular devotion to Jesus that persisted through
the century. Jesus was essential to the secularization as well as the
evangelization of the modern United States.
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