From Christian Science to Jewish Science

From Christian Science to Jewish Science PDF

Author: Ellen M. Umansky

Publisher: Oxford University Press on Demand

Published: 2005

Total Pages: 262

ISBN-13: 0195044002

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During the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, thousands of American Jews were drawn to the teachings of Christian Science. Viewing such attraction with alarm, American Reform Rabbis sought to counter Christian Science's appeal by formulating a Jewish vision of happiness and health. Unlike Christian Science, it acknowledged the benefits of modern medicine yet, sharing the belief in God as the true source of healing, similarly emphasized the power of visualization and affirmative prayer. Though the numbers of those formally affiliated with Jewish would remain small, its emphasis on the connection between mind and body influenced scores of rabbis and thousands if not hundreds of thousands of American Jews, predating contemporary Jewish interest in spiritual healing by more than seventy years. Examining an important and previously unwritten chapter in the story of American Judaism, this book sheds light on religious and social concerns of twentieth-century American Jewry, including ways in which adherence to Jewish Science helped thousands bridge the perceived gap between Judaism and modernity.

Southern Civil Religions

Southern Civil Religions PDF

Author: Arthur Remillard

Publisher: University of Georgia Press

Published: 2011

Total Pages: 249

ISBN-13: 0820336858

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In the aftermath of the Civil War, the Lost Cause gave white southerners a new collective identity anchored in the stories, symbols, and rituals of the defeated Confederacy. Historians have used the idea of civil religion to explain how this powerful memory gave the white South a unique sense of national meaning, purpose, and destiny. The civil religious perspectives of everyone else, meanwhile, have gone unnoticed. Arthur Remillard fills this void by investigating the civil religious dis­courses of a wide array of people and groups—blacks and whites, men and women, northerners and southerners, Democrats and Republicans, as well as Catholics, Protestants, and Jews. Focusing on the Wiregrass Gulf South region—an area covering north Florida, southwest Georgia, and southeast Alabama—Remillard argues that the Lost Cause was but one civil religious topic among many. Even within the white majority, civil religious language influenced a range of issues, such as progress, race, gender, and religious tolerance. Moreover, minority groups developed sacred values and beliefs that competed for space in the civil religious landscape.

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