| Details | | Publication Date: | 1993-08-01 | | Edition Description: | Reprint |
| Size | | Height: | 8.5 in | | Width: | 5.5 in | | Thickness: | 0.8 in | | Weight: | 9.6 oz |
Publisher's Note
In this strikingly bold and original work, Harold Bloom extends his investigation of the religious imagination to produce a brilliant examination of America's national soul. We think we are a Christian nation, but we are not, says Bloom, who identifies the American religion as a variation on Gnosticism. We are Americanized Gnostics, believers in a pre-Christian tradition of individual divinity. Americans believe that God knows and loves them in a personal way, and that something inside them, deeper even than a soul, is already in contact with god. The American self stands outside of creation; it is older than creation, as old as God, of which it is a part. In the American religion, to be free is to be joined in solitude with God or Jesus. "No Western nation is as religion-soaked as ours," says Bloom, and he explores the varieties of religions that have grown on American soil. With perception and insight he examines Christian Science, Seventh-day Adventism, Jehovah's Witnesses, Pentecostalism, and the varieties of New Age and African-American beliefs. But he probes most deeply into the two religions that he believes will come to pervade our national life in the next century: the Mormons and the Southern Baptists. Bloom's analysis of religion in America, while certain to be controversial, will influence and perhaps shape any discussion of this subject for years to come.
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