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Our Great Big American God: A Short History of Our Ever-Growing Deity

by Matthew Paul Turner

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5811446,355 (3.67)2
Americans love God. We stamp God on our money, our bumper stickers, and our bodies. With a church on nearly every street, it's hard to deny our country's deep connection with the divine. Whip-smart and provocative, Turner explores the United States' vast influence on God, told through an amazing true history of faith, politics, and evangelical pyrotechnics. From Puritans to Pentecostals, from progressives to mega-pastors, Turner examines how American history and ideals transformed our perception of God. Fearless and funny, this is the definitive guide to the American experience of the Almighty -- a story so bizarre, incredible, and entertaining that it could only be made in the U.S.A. Ultimately, Turner dares to ask: Does God control the future of America -- or is it the other way around?… (more)
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NF
  vorefamily | Feb 22, 2024 |
This review was written for LibraryThing Early Reviewers.
Do we, as Americans, really know God? Our Great Big American God, by Matthew Paul Turner seeks to answer that question. The history of America’s God follows the Man Upstairs through various manifestations and incarnations. Turner, author of such books as Churched, The Christian Culture Survival Guide, and Hear No Evil, explores the history of God in America. At first blush, the book comes across as an accessible popular history, shying away from an academic tone or overly dogmatic perspective. John Calvin, Jonathan Edwards, the Moody Bible Institute, the Social Gospel, and the Prosperity Gospel all preach different aspects of the so-called America’s God.

Despite its aim towards a general readership, the perspective is rather narrow. Turner spends a majority of time on figures and institutions related to Calvinist Protestantism. Lutheranism and Catholicism receive cursory mentions and Mormonism not at all. Early on Turner asks, “How did the Puritans’ God become America’s God? […] [T]he most influential was the Puritans’ love for and dedication to Calvinism.” (For another look at the Puritan’s love for and dedication to Calvinism, read The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood.) When not hanging Quakers and punishing anyone who danced, played cards, drank, swore, or farted, the Calvinists were engaging in the most austerely unpleasant iteration of Christianity. No wonder the English kicked them out after the Monarchy was restored under the sybarite dingbat King Charles II.

While an entertaining read, Our Great Big American God suffers from a cripplingly narrow perspective and a monumental blind spot. America’s God has throughout history embraced slavery and condemned it, embraced capitalism and condemned it, embraced socialism and condemned it. Is America’s God an ever-changing entity, reflective of our culture’s changing mores, or, more realistically, simply an extension of charismatic egos, exploitation, and American gullibility for the latest fad and craze? Is America’s God a site of polysemic meaning-making or simply a meaningless void? If the American God can represent anything and everything (at the same time being against anything and everything), the entire enterprise becomes a useless charade.

https://driftlessareareview.com/2021/03/21/espresso-shots-our-great-big-american... ( )
  kswolff | Mar 21, 2021 |
This review was written for LibraryThing Early Reviewers.
In my youth I bought music with reckless abandon. My CD collection used to be prominently displayed on a hand crafted, wall-covering shelf like some hugely antlered deer. Once we started having children I relinquished the ‘man cave’ and moved my collection into more compact binders. (Which are now displayed next to my bed on a hack-job self crafted shelf.)

Now, thanks to quaint used book stores and never-ending digital book sales my book collection is catching up. I’ve even found space for a hand crafted, wall-covering shelf to display my physical editions in all their glory. (The CDs at least got listened too, but these books keep piling up unread.)

A few months back I decided to get my books in some sort of order. In the process I discovered LibraryThing.com. It wasn’t as flashy as GoodReads, but it was a geek’s dream….data, data, data everywhere! I paid a few bucks to join and got to cataloguing my books. Along the way I applied for a few books in their early reviewer program. I did have great expectations, but lo and behold I got picked for my first entry: Matthew Paul Turner’s ‘Our Great Big American God’. This was particularly exciting because Matthew is somebody I have follow online for some time. A few weeks later, Hachette books mailed me a nice hardbound and shelf displayable copy. I cracked the cover and dug in.

The thing I loved most about this book was Matthew’s wry, cheeky style. History is boring stuff and I’m not a fan of history books, especially religious history. However, this book was anything but dry. His wit and presentation style made even Puritan history seem fresh and exciting.

Our Great Big American God tackles American Christian history. Through each period of American history cleverly presents how those times helped evolve God. He gives a well researched account of God’s ever-changing face from the angry, separatist God that compelled the Puritans to conquer America to the slick corporate God of recent times who has an officially licensed chicken sandwich to sell you.

I was surprised to learn that the modern culture war is just an extension of the religious conflict that birthed this nation. Much of the rhetoric we hear today about ‘returning to God’ is nothing new in our history. And our past is rife with talking heads opining on the nature and desires of God for ‘His chosen people’. At each stage in our nation’s history God has been there, schizophrenically supporting every side of any given the debate, but standing exclusively with the victors.

One prime example of this is during America’s civil war. God joyfully supported slavery. Scripture taught His followers that slaves were to submit to their masters and institution of slavery was biblically accepted and unchallenged. God also vehemently opposed slavery. The overarching story of scripture informed His followers about the liberation of captives and affirmed the dignity of all people. So, God marched into battle wearing blue and waving the stars and bars. He also marched into battle wearing grey and waving a rebel flag. Perhaps it is not surprising that God’s position was more solidified after the bullets stopped flying.

Another frightening development in God’s character happened during America’s Gilded Age. Around 1860 a young man named D.L. Moody sold all of his possessions to work with the poor in Chicago. His willingness to live, eat, and be with the poor endeared him to those he ministered to. Over time D.L.’s ministry began to grow and instead of a few people his bible studies began to draw a few thousand. As his vision changed, so did God. Moody set off on several evangelism tours. To manage the increasing demands of such ventures he his ministry began to run like a business. “He galvanised into religions action church people in cities of millions….He organized his revivals like a corporate CEO, leaving little to chance. There were committees for everything — prayer, finances, Bible study, visitation, music, ushering, tickets, and an executive committee to supervise committees.”

Moody’s relatable style and knack for storytelling attracted poor, working class families. Unfortunately, this audience had no means to support Moody’s evangelistic ministry. Thankfully, their employers were more than willing to foot the bill.

When Moody railed against drunkenness, it positively effected job performance. He also began preaching against unions, shilling for ten-hour work day, and associating hard work with holy living. In one sermon he’s quoted as preaching

“Get something to do. If is for fifteen hours a day, all the better; for while you are at work Satan does not have so much chance to tempt you. If you cannot earn more than a dollar a week, earn that. That is better than nothing, and you can pray to God for more.”

Among Moody’s upper class sponsors were J.P. Morgan, Cornelius Vanderbilt, and Cyrus McCormick. Why were these men so willing to fund Moody message to their workers? As Turner shares that these tycoons concern was their work force’s unrest in the crowded cities and crummy working environments. They believe that a little God could go a long way in developing a manageable work force. All it seemed God’s gospel of protestant work ethics and morality lacked was a bit of capitalist funding.

This book is fun, frightening, and enlightening. It’s empowering to see the roots of many aspects of the modern American Christian message. It allows us to name them, point to their origins, and rob them of any mystical power. I think it’s a great service that Turner has taken the time to research these moments and offer something outside plausibility structures most of us live in. The real power of this book, unlike most books, speeches, or sermons, is in its subtlety. By presenting us with the origins of some of our favorite pet theology, he asks us to move forward more gently. We must begin to realize that our beliefs about who God is, what God is like, and what God wants have not developed in a vacuum. We have not been entirely in control of what we believe, what our churches teach, or what we think we know about God. There is a long line of men and women who came before stretching back ages. They have each left their mark on our thoughts, practices, and rhetoric. The real power of this Matthew Paul Turner’s book is its quiet call for a more humble approach to certainty, the future, the past, and especially our great big American God. ( )
  erlenmeyer316 | Sep 21, 2015 |
Witty and entertaining commentary on how the God or at least the perception and use of God as evolved from the Puritan experience to the present. ( )
  VGAHarris | Jan 19, 2015 |
This review was written for LibraryThing Early Reviewers.
This is a book about the history of Christianity in America, written by a young, white, evangelical blogger from Nashville, Tennessee. As best I can tell, Matthew Paul Turner (whom I’ll call Matthew in this review) gained a following online by blogging stories of his personal experiences as a believer, seasoned with irreverent, edgy humor. One such episode kicks off this book: During a friendly debate, a friend of Matthew’s asks, “Where would God be without America?” He’s not being ironic. It’s an engaging anecdote about how nationalism can seep into the very foundations of sincere belief. I found it to include the most insightful of Matthew’s several attempts to define fundamentalism.

This opening dialogue with “Dave” (not his real name) also introduces Matthew’s willingness to use figures of speech that might offend some readers. Here’s one: “Well, I don’t think anybody questions the fact that America and Christianity have shared the same bed from time to time. But I hate to break it to you, man, God gets around.” Hilarious. And sloppy. Setting aside the question of how useful it is to portray God as a bed hopper, you’ll notice that Matthew has conflated “God” with “Christianity” in these sentences. This fuzziness about the meaning of the word “God” persists throughout the book. It can mean a concept of the Deity, or a strain of Christianity, a new form of worship, a “message,” or perhaps a sense of identity as a certain kind of Christian. Often it’s not clear what Matthew is thinking — for instance, when he writes that God in America, around the year 1700, “still smelled like a European.” (That phrase earned an eye roll from this reader.)

This book does presume some familiarity with terms such as “premillennial,” “postmillennial,” “charismatic,” and “prosperity gospel.” (That last term does get defined, eventually, but not the first time it appears.) For example, Matthew’s friend Dave is a “Christian Zionist,” and if you don’t know what that means, this book won’t help you.

Well, let me begin saying what I liked best about this book. The initial dialogue with “Dave” was an entertaining way to raise some profound issues, and while it was irreverent, it also showed (I thought) a sincere effort to understand where Dave was coming from as he worked his way through a series of video lectures by one of the latest of many End Times preachers our nation has produced. As a southerner who has had similar intense dialogues with friends who are boiling over with Christian zeal (including one in Matthew’s hometown of Nashville), I thought this dialogue was a very promising start to the book. Going in, I already knew that not all “conservative” Christians think alike, and some of their bitterest fights are with each other. This stuff matters to me, and I looked forward to gaining some insight into the diverse cultures and perspectives of American Christianity.

That’s not what I got. True, there are a couple more anecdotes about believers — namely, “Caroline,” who calls Jesus “my husband” and invokes his name with every breath, and an unnamed couple in Chicago who were planning a public event starring the Holy Spirit. (“The more I listened,” Matthew quips, “the more the Holy Spirit sounded like a diva.”) Matthew makes good use of these anecdotes; for instance, he uses Caroline’s intense Jesus-speak as a counterpoint to the fact that the first generations of American evangelicals had remarkably little to say about the Son. They were all about the Father.

Matthew wants American Christians to understand their history a little better. More specifically, he wants to teach evangelical Christians about their past. This is not a history of “God in America” or even of the Christian God in America; it is a history of evangelical Christianity in America. Except for the charismatic sects (Pentecostals, Church of God, etc.) that compete with evangelicals for members and influence, most other denominations are an afterthought here. Even the Roman Catholics only attract attention here as the objects of evangelical prejudice, rivalry, and finally, political alliance.

I don’t really have a problem with this; after all, evangelical Christianity is a large enough topic for a book. I did expect some attention, though, to how evangelicals deal with an ever more pluralistic society, in which the fastest growing belief systems are apparently Islam and “none of the above.” The last chapter, “One Nation under Gods,” looked like it might be about that pluralism. Instead, it describes a schism within the right wing of evangelicalism: what Matthew calls a “Great Split” between the more “relational” God of Billy Graham and the biblical-literalist God of Graham’s reactionary critics. This “Great Split” was presumably bad for evangelical Christianity, although it coincided with a surge in evangelical growth and influence. Pity the poor reader: Matthew presents us with two evangelical Gods, plus a third, Pentecostal God whom he remembers to tack on. There is a digression about a commodified GOD™ (spelled in all-caps, followed by a trademark symbol) who makes Matthew very angry. By now, the conceit of using the word “God” to mean almost anything related to Christianity has been stretched beyond the breaking point. An experienced editor could have been a great help here.

Matthew’s free-wheeling style occasionally scores a hit, as in his summary of the difference between Arminian and Calvinist views on predestination: "One side cannot fathom a God who cherry-picks souls that will go to heaven and souls that will go to hell, and the other side believes that God's sovereignty over the eternal destinies of humanity (divine cherry-picking) only magnifies his glory, power, and honor." (p. 98) OK, that seems fair to both sides.

In other cases, though, Matthew’s style makes me wince. When I read “a more tangible and hopeless narrative thread,” or of a movement “from providence to tragedy,” or of Christians being "slightly merciful” to a cause, or of two things that are "morphed perfectly together,” I have to ask myself: Is he even trying to think of the right words? When I read of preachers "loading Jesus into the guns of soldiers,” I resent both the absurd image and the awkward way it’s expressed. These screw-ups aren’t just a matter of style. Even a few of the most polished, prominent passages are slipshod, confused in thought as well as language. Take the opening of Chapter 5: “God in America is a free spirit, a supernatural entity capable of being shaped to fit a variety of ideas… (l)ike divine Play-Doh.…" As usual, “God” is used here to refer to almost anything except God. Whatever that thing is, it is “free.” And in Matthew’s world, “free” apparently means “subject to the irresistible shaping influence of others; malleable.” I mean, what the hell?

His historical narrative is entertaining but unreliable. Most readers will probably figure this out for themselves; after all, a statement like "America's most famous Christian slave owner was Patrick Henry” is so obviously untrue as to be dazzling. Other errors are more likely to be shared by readers, such as the assumption that 19th-century "voices that supported abolition” were also for “racial equality.” This was true only of most black abolitionists; most white people who sought to abolish slavery also assumed that black people were inherently and permanently inferior. Unfortunately this book shies away from racial subjects, which leads to an implicit bias toward whiteness that I am sure was unintended. For example, slavery and the Civil War leave almost no trace, even though the war forever changed American views of death and the afterlife. There is nothing about the “color line” that W.E.B. Dubois famously identified as “the problem of the twentieth century,” and nothing about the formation of racially segregated denominations within the ambit of evangelicalism. Matthew finds that “racism ran amok in the South," but not anywhere else, apparently. Describing the Azusa Street revivals that led to Pentecostalism, Matthew lets us know that these congregations did a remarkable job of overcoming race prejudice (which apparently did exist outside the South after all). But then, as the new church institutionalized, it also segregated. Why did this happen? Is it “natural”? It certainly is not, but Matthew seems unwilling to face the subject. He does somewhat better at describing women who influenced the course of Christianity in America. Ann Hutchinson, the colonial dissenter, seems to be a favorite of his.

Like a typical evangelical, Matthew has no idea what mysticism is. He is forced to try to describe it, though, because two of the founding fathers of evangelicalism, Jonathan Edwards and George Whitefield, were sincere mystics. In other words, each of them believed that he had, briefly, experienced God’s presence in a way that transformed his life, but this experience could not be recounted or explained. These days, among evangelicals, such talk would get you funny looks at best. The only Christian mystics left in America are Quakers (and a few other, even smaller sects). Almost everyone else thinks mystical experience is the domain of “Eastern religions,” and therefore highly suspect, at least if you’re a conservative Christian. Certainly it has nothing to do with Christianity, right?

So immediately after calling Jonathan Edwards “one of the most misunderstood individuals in American history,” Matthew proceeds to misunderstand his mystical experience. In effect, he calls Edwards a liar, and an arrogant one at that. As for Whitefield (whose name sounds like “Whitfield”), Matthew treats the “Divine Light” he experienced as just another manifestation of the preacher’s ego. This cynicism seemed to me to stem from our young evangelical author’s discomfort with an unfamiliar subject. It’s true that Edwards, in particular, was a tragically flawed figure, and both he and Whitefield are easy to criticize. But Matthew commits a young man’s error in assuming that it makes sense to subject their entire careers to withering ridicule. After a while this kind of thing gets a little tedious. Sometimes it’s all that Matthew has to offer, and that disappoints me.

There are some passages where I felt that this young writer had taught me something worth knowing. He does a decent job of describing the rise of dispensationalism, that bizarre end-of-the-world doctrine that plays such an outsized role in American culture. (The book lacks an index, so let me direct you to pages 133-143.) Matthew’s discussion of John Nelson Darby and his disciples won’t sway any convinced fundamentalists, but for me it shed some gentle light on a subject that is usually vexing. It may give some readers pause to realize that what we have been taught about the Last Days and the Second Coming is nothing like what was believed by, say, George Washington or Abraham Lincoln.

The discussion of Reinhold Niebuhr, from Missouri, is another of the book’s gems. (It concludes Chapter 8, pp. 163-66.) I sensed that Niebuhr has been very important to the author and that he was probably trying to keep his own feelings and opinions out. Maybe he should have let them in.

Matthew Turner has a fertile imagination and a quick wit. As a faithful Christian of the so-called Millennial generation, he manifests some restless discontent with the noisier forms of postmodern Christianity: the Jesus-themed merchandise, the fire-and-brimstone video performances, the arrogant “Messianic consciousness” denounced by Niebuhr and others. He clearly enjoys irreverence and mockery, perhaps because it helps protect him from genuine commitment or engagement with opponents. When he writes about God and America “exchanging DNA” in a drawn-out love affair, or about how “God lost fair and square” at the Scopes trial, any ensuing controversies are liable to stay on the level of language. As a result, what might have been a cogent critique of the practice of Christianity in America instead merely expresses a mood of restless dissatisfaction, mixed with cynicism and a (subdued, but unmistakable) sense of superiority. The book is something like a political tract to rouse the base, in that the message will probably only reach fans. A young conservative evangelical reading this book would find much to distract or offend, even more to mistrust, and little to challenge his or her received beliefs.

It seems best to conclude this review with a list of some of the books most often cited by Matthew Turner in footnotes. He also mentions them all with approval in the text of his book.

- Frank Lambert, Religion in American Politics: A Short History (2008).
- George M. Marsden, Understanding Fundamentalism and Evangelicalism (1991).
- George M. Marsden, Fundamentalism and American Culture (2006).
- Mark A. Noll, A History of Christianity in the United States and Canada (1992).
- Stephen Prothero, American Jesus: How the Son of God Became a National Icon (2003).
- Garry Wills, Head and Heart: American Christianities (2007).

Comments: https://alarob.wordpress.com/2015/04/28/book-review-our-great-big-american-god/
1 vote Muscogulus | Nov 4, 2014 |
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Americans love God. We stamp God on our money, our bumper stickers, and our bodies. With a church on nearly every street, it's hard to deny our country's deep connection with the divine. Whip-smart and provocative, Turner explores the United States' vast influence on God, told through an amazing true history of faith, politics, and evangelical pyrotechnics. From Puritans to Pentecostals, from progressives to mega-pastors, Turner examines how American history and ideals transformed our perception of God. Fearless and funny, this is the definitive guide to the American experience of the Almighty -- a story so bizarre, incredible, and entertaining that it could only be made in the U.S.A. Ultimately, Turner dares to ask: Does God control the future of America -- or is it the other way around?

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