Mark Stoll - Protestantism, capitalism, and nature in America

Protestantism, capitalism, and nature in America — read online for free the complete book (whole text) full work

Below is the text of the book, divided by pages. System saving the place of the last page read, allows you to conveniently read the book "Protestantism, capitalism, and nature in America" online for free, without having to search again every time where you left off. Put a bookmark, and you can go to the page where you finished reading at any time.

Light

Font size:

↓

↑

Georgia Tahoma Arial Verdana

Reset

Interval:

↓

↑

Bookmark:

Make

1234567...138

---

title	:	Protestantism, Capitalism, and Nature in America
author	:	Stoll, Mark.
publisher	:	University of New Mexico
isbn10 | asin	:	0826317812
print isbn13	:	9780826317810
ebook isbn13	:	9780585214870
language	:	English
subject	Nature--Religious aspects--Christianity, Human ecology--Religious aspects--Protestant churches, Protestant churches--United States--Doctrines, Capitalism--Religious aspects--Christianity.
publication date	:	1997
lcc	:	BT695.5.S75 1997eb
ddc	:	261.8/362/0973
subject	:	Nature--Religious aspects--Christianity, Human ecology--Religious aspects--Protestant churches, Protestant churches--United States--Doctrines, Capitalism--Religious aspects--Christianity.

Page iii Protestantism, Capitalism, and Nature America Mark Stoll University of New Mexico Press Albuquerque

Page iv 1991 by Mark R. Stoll All rights reserved. First Edition Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Stoll, Mark, 1954 Protestantism, capitalism, and nature in America / by Mark Stoll. 1st ed. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-8263-1780-4 (cl) 0-8263-1781-2 (pbk.) 1. Nature Religious aspects Christianity. 2. Human ecology Religious aspects Protestant churches. 3. Protestant churches United States Doctrines. 4. Capitalism Religious aspects Christianity. 1. Title. BT695-5.S75 1997 261.8' 362 '0973 dc20 96-25351 CIP

Page v For Lyn

Page vii CONTENTS Preface ix Introduction. The Lumbermen of Eden 1 Book One. Protestantism, Capitalism, and Nature Chapter One Beauty and Wonder, Dominion and Stewardship 11 Chapter Two Capitalists and Militants, Rationalists and Ascetics 29 Book Two. Protestants, Capitalists, and Nature Chapter Three God, Nature, and the Puritans 55 Chapter Four Nature's God in the Age of Reason 77 Chapter Five Conquest and Contemplation 99 Chapter Six Steam and Steel and Christian Civilization 125 Chapter Seven Progressive Gospels of Nature 141 Chapter Eight The Twentieth Century 171 Notes 199 Bibliography 241 Index 267

Page ix PREFACE Why has the United States been the world's leader in reducing pollution, establishing parks, and protecting wilderness? Why does the United States have the world's largest and most powerful environmentalist movement? And why does this active environmentalism occur in the world's most powerful industrial economy? A reader of the standard historical accounts would surely come away believing that the environmental movement and the environmental or ecological ethic are a century old, at most, and have no roots deeper than Emerson or Thoreau, or perhaps Gilbert White of Selborne, England. In fact, it is difficult to discern much of an intellectual genealogy at all for what we call modern environmentalism. The enormous impact of religion specifically Christianity and particularly Protestantism on American ideas about nature, both positive and negative, is least acknowledged of all. Protestantism has been the fireman at the boiler, the switchman on the tracks, giving momentum and direction to American ideas about nature. It is a curious fact of American history that the people who dominated the early, formative years of both capitalism and environmentalism grew up with the same cultural and religious values. The source of those values for most of them was the most fanatically religious area of colonial British America, New England. The connection between Protestantism, capitalism, and nature continues today. Protestantism has continued to refresh itself and readjust its values through periodic eras of revival, like the one currently in the United States. The closest contemporary parallel we have to those early Puritan settlers, in theology, ethic, and self-assuredness, are the conservative Prot-

Page x estant churches. Those churches continue to produce the foremost advocates of both resource development and wilderness preservation: witness James G. Watt and Dave Foreman. This book describes two similar but different things: how people's religious thinking about nature, and how people's religious thinking, have affected the natural world. The former has an explicit and the latter an implicit effect upon nature. The book treats religion not as something that goes on within the four walls of a church but as something that cannot be contained within walls or even within a creed, a force in society that intrudes into all aspects of life. Likewise, it does not deal with capitalism as a system (if it is a system) but rather as an entrepreneurial spirit, eager to organize and rationalize for long-term profit, eager to build and act and extract and produce and distribute and trade, and jealous of any power that seeks to impede such activity.

Next page

1234567...138

Light

Font size:

↓

↑

Georgia Tahoma Arial Verdana

Reset

Interval:

↓

↑

Bookmark:

Make

Similar books «Protestantism, capitalism, and nature in America»

Look at similar books to Protestantism, capitalism, and nature in America. We have selected literature similar in name and meaning in the hope of providing readers with more options to find new, interesting, not yet read works.

Frank Stewart

A Natural History of Nature Writing

Jeffrey H. Ryan

This Land Was Saved for You and Me: How Gifford Pinchot, Frederick Law Olmsted, and a Band of Foresters Rescued Americas Public Lands

Joseph Cornell

John Muir: My Life with Nature

Paul Brooks

Speaking for Nature: The Literary Naturalists, from Transcendentalism to the Birth of the American Environmental Movement

Bryan E. Bannon

From Mastery to Mystery: A Phenomenological Foundation for an Environmental Ethic

Jennifer Delton

The Industrialists: How the National Association of Manufacturers Shaped American Capitalism

Wapner

Living through the end of nature: the future of American environmentalism

William Cronon

Uncommon Ground: Rethinking the Human Place in Nature

Mark A. Noll

Protestantism : a very short introduction

Robert L. Dorman

A word for nature: four pioneering environmental advocates, 1845-1913

Robert Booth Fowler

The greening of Protestant thought

Thurman Wilkins

John Muir: Apostle of Nature

Discussion, reviews of the book Protestantism, capitalism, and nature in America and just readers' own opinions. Leave your comments, write what you think about the work, its meaning or the main characters. Specify what exactly you liked and what you didn't like, and why you think so.