Sky God: Remaking the Heavens and Divinity in the Nineteenth-Century United States

IF 0.3 3区 哲学 Q2 HISTORY RELIGION AND AMERICAN CULTURE-A JOURNAL OF INTERPRETATION Pub Date : 2022-01-01 DOI:10.1017/rac.2022.2
Trent MacNamara
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Abstract

ABSTRACT In the early nineteenth century, the “cosmological revolution” reached Americans with no special education or astronomical expertise. New ideas about the scale and nature of the cosmos, some of which had been gestating among elites for centuries, forced ordinary people to reevaluate traditional associations between higher places, higher beings, and higher meaning. As the old “heavens” became more like the modern “space”—larger, emptier, less morally alive—God and his kingdom became more abstract. This trend often mattered to people in ways that esoteric doctrine did not. It divided Americans. A placeless God and “state of being” afterlife found readier acceptance among educated people accustomed to thinking in abstract, immaterial terms and pursuing abstract, immaterial goods. Among nonintellectuals, the new heavens caused unsettling debates between people, and within them, about the locality and reality of higher things. Well before better-remembered disputes over Darwinism and geology, these cosmological debates opened foundational divisions in popular ideas, as some laypeople reluctantly accommodated the new heavens while others turned to defiant cosmic conservatism. On balance, Americans moved toward reformed conceptions of God and heaven, rebuilding divinity in the image of the new cosmos.
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《天神:重塑19世纪美国的天堂与神性》
19世纪初,“宇宙学革命”席卷了没有受过特殊教育或天文专业知识的美国人。关于宇宙的规模和本质的新想法,其中一些已经在精英中酝酿了几个世纪,迫使普通人重新评估更高的地方、更高的存在和更高的意义之间的传统联系。当旧的“天堂”变得更像现代的“空间”——更大,更空,更缺乏道德活力——上帝和他的国度变得更加抽象。这种趋势对人们的影响往往是深奥教义所没有的。它分裂了美国人。无所不在的上帝和来世的“存在状态”更容易被那些习惯于用抽象、非物质的术语思考和追求抽象、非物质的东西的受过教育的人所接受。在非知识分子中,新天论引起了人与人之间以及人与人内部关于更高事物的局部性和现实性的令人不安的争论。早在人们记忆更为深刻的达尔文主义和地质学之争之前,这些宇宙论辩论就在流行观念中开启了根本性的分歧,一些外行不情愿地接受了新天论,而另一些人则转向了不服的宇宙保守主义。总的来说,美国人对上帝和天堂的观念进行了改革,以新宇宙的形象重建了神性。
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来源期刊
CiteScore
0.40
自引率
25.00%
发文量
7
期刊介绍: Religion and American Culture is devoted to promoting the ongoing scholarly discussion of the nature, terms, and dynamics of religion in America. Embracing a diversity of methodological approaches and theoretical perspectives, this semiannual publication explores the interplay between religion and other spheres of American culture. Although concentrated on specific topics, articles illuminate larger patterns, implications, or contexts of American life. Edited by Philip Goff, Stephen Stein, and Peter Thuesen.
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