New World Metaphysics: Readings on the Religious Meaning of the American Experience

Front Cover
Giles Gunn
Oxford University Press, Jun 4, 1981 - Religion - 482 pages
From the days of discovery, when America was for Europeans more dream than reality, to our own days of disillusionment and faltering hope, poets, philosophers, historians, novelists, and theologians have drawn on religious themes and images to express the meaning of their encounter with America. Here, in more than one hundred selections, is the record of their quest for a New World metaphysics -- a spiritual vision or ultimate idea of order expressive of the American experience.
 

Contents

PREPARATIONS 16071740
39
LOOMINGS 17401830
87
REALIZATIONS 18301915
167
REJECTIONS AND REVISIONS 19151950
337
RECOVERIES 19501980
403
Copyright

Other editions - View all

Common terms and phrases

Popular passages

Page xxiii - The land was ours before we were the land's. She was our land more than a hundred years Before we were her people. She was ours In Massachusetts, in Virginia, But we were England's, still colonials, Possessing what we still were unpossessed by, Possessed by what we now no more possessed.

Bibliographic information