Includes bibliographical references (pages 357-361).
Summary
Examines how the spiritual beliefs and vision of America's founders shaped the country's history and culture and assesses the influence of the spiritual traditions of African slaves, Native Americans, and early mystical communities on colonial America.
"An eclectic mixture of autobiography, U.S. intellectual history, philosophical inquiry, and spiritual wonderment, this extended meditative essay examines "America as an Idea" by uncovering the latent wisdom of many of its shining lights: Benjamin Franklin, William Penn, George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln, Frederick Douglass, and Walt Whitman. Needleman, a philosophy professor and author of Money and the Meaning of Life, reinterprets the lives of each of these leaders in the context of their strong spiritual beliefs and their contributions to unifying a deeply divided body politic. The author liberally quotes classical philosophers, historians, biographers, and the subjects themselves, and he often interjects his own life experiences and spiritual beliefs into his loosely structured narrative. Needleman also tackles what he considers to be America's two most grievous historical blemishes: the murder of Native American culture and slavery and suggests how America should confront these wrongs." [from the "Library Journal"]
edited by Diana Zimmerman Umble and David L. Weaver-Zercher.
ISBN
9780801887895 (hbk. : alk. paper)
0801887895 (hbk. : alk. paper)
Place of Publication
Baltimore
Publisher
Johns Hopkins University Press,
Date of Publication
2008.
Physical Description
ix, 275 p. : ill. ; 24 cm.
Series
Young Center books in Anabaptist & Pietist studies
Notes
Includes bibliographical references and index.
Contents
Witnessing the Amish / Crystal Downing -- Reel Amish / Dirk Eitzen -- "Why we fear the Amish" / Julia Spicher Kasdorf -- Pursuing paradise / David L. Weaver-Zercher -- Heritage versus history / Susan Biesecker -- Hollywood rumspringa / Dirk Eitzen -- Amish informants / Donald B. Kraybill -- Inscribing community / Steven M. Nolt -- Publish or perish / Karen Johnson-Weiner -- "Wicked truth" / Diane Zimmerman Umble -- The Amish, the media, and the Nickel Mines School shooting / Diane Zimmerman Umble and David L. Weaver-Zercher.
The Bible in iron : pictured stoves and stoveplates of the Pennsylvania Germans; notes on colonial firebacks in the United States, the ten-plate stove, Franklin's fireplace, and the tile stoves of the Moravians in Pennsylvania and North Carolina, together with a list of colonial furnaces in the United States and Canada
Bound with: Old Home Week , Manheim, Pa. (1912) and History of Lancaster (1870)
Bibliography: p. 206-208.
Contents
Chapters : The decorated iron stoves of Europe /// The decorated iron stoves of colonial America /// Notes on colonial firebacks, date plates and miscellaneous stoves
Summary
Contains notes on colonial firebacks in the US, the ten-plate stove, Franklin's fireplace and the tile stoves of the Moravians in Pennsylvania and North Carolina, together with a list of colonial furnaces in the US and Canada.
