Jesus and Gin
Evangelicalism, the Roaring Twenties and Today's Culture Wars
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4.0 • 1 Rating
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- $11.99
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- $11.99
Publisher Description
Jesus and Gin is a rollicking tour of the roaring twenties and the barn- burning preachers who led the temperance movement—the anti-abortion crusade of the Jazz Age. Along the way, we meet a host of colorful characters: a Baptist minister who commits adultery in the White House; media star preachers caught in massive scandals; a presidential election hinging on a religious issue; and fundamentalists and liberals slugging it out in the culture war of the day. The religious roar of that decade was a prologue to the last three decades. With the religious right in disarray today after its long ascendancy, Jesus and Gin is a timely look at a parallel age when preachers held sway and politicians answered to the pulpit.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Although the Scopes Trial of 1925 often looms large as the defining moment in early 20th-century debates between religion and culture, historian Hankins's entertaining history of American religion in the 20s reminds us otherwise. Covering a number of events and personalities of the era, from Prohibition and Modernism to Billy Sunday, J. Frank Norris, Aimee Semple McPherson, and Father Divine, Hankins demonstrates that the debate over the nature of religion (is it a private expression of faith or a value supporting the common good?) had its foundation in the 20s. The sex and legal scandals involving Norris and McPherson, for example, became media fodder, helping to keep religion center stage in American culture. Hankins's lively retelling of a key chapter in American religious history is a must for anyone who wants to better understand the warp and woof of contemporary American religion.
