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Author Vermurlen, Brad, author.

Title Reformed resurgence : the new Calvinist movement and the battle over American evangelicalism / Brad Vermurlen
Published [New York, NY] : Oxford University Press, [2020]

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Description 1 online resource (1 volume) : illustrations
Summary "One of the biggest movements in American Christianity, especially among younger Evangelicals, is a groundswell of interest in the Reformed tradition. In Reformed Resurgence, Vermurlen provides a comprehensive sociological account of this New Calvinist phenomenon-and what it entails for the broader Evangelical landscape in the United States. Vermurlen's explanation of the Reformed resurgence develops a new theory for understanding how conservative religion can be strong and thriving in the hypermodern Western world. It is a paradigm using and expanding on strategic action field theory, a recent framework proposed for the study of movements and organizations but rarely applied to religion. This approach to religion moves beyond market dynamics and cultural happenstance and instead shows how religious strength can be "fought for and won" as the direct result of religious leaders' strategic actions and conflicts. But the battle comes at a cost. In the same storyline by which conservative Calvinistic belief experiences a resurgence in its field, present-day American Evangelicalism has turned in on itself. Because a field-theoretic model of strength is premised upon an underlying current of disunity and conflict, it has baked into it a concomitant element of significant overall religious weakness. The vision of Evangelicalism in the United States, in the end, consists of pockets of subcultural and local strength within a broader framework of secularization as "cultural entropy," as religious meanings and coherence fall apart"-- Provided by publisher
Notes "This book is a revised and expanded version of my doctoral dissertation completed in the Department of Sociology at University of Notre Dame in 2016. "
Bibliography Includes bibliographical references and index
Notes Description based on online resource; title from digital cover (viewed on September 30, 2020)
Subject Christian sociology -- Reformed Church.
Calvinism -- United States -- Sociological aspects
Evangelicalism -- United States -- Sociological aspects
Big churches -- United States -- Sociological aspects
Religion and sociology -- United States
Christian sociology -- Reformed Church
Religion and sociology
United States
Form Electronic book
LC no. 2020007116
ISBN 9780190073541
0190073543
9780190073534
0190073535