Tuesday, November 25, 2014

The Origins of Aggressive Atheism - The Atlantic

The Origins of Aggressive Atheism - The Atlantic:



American faith has gone through many awakenings. Depending on how you count, there have been three or four distinctive surges of Protestant religiosity in the United States, marked by tent revivals, missionary work, widespread conversions, and, often, intense rhetoric about the consequences of sin. These "Great Awakenings" have been memorialized through texts like "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God," a sermon delivered by the preacher Jonathan Edwards in 1741, who warned of the "fire of wrath" in hell.

So it's provocative to title your book Atheist Awakening. Oxford University Press's newest release on non-belief, by researchers Richard Cimino and Christopher Smith, claims to be the "first sociological exploration of organized secularism in America," tracing the evolution of the atheist community over the past several decades.

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