In the aftermath of World War II, the United States stood at a precipice. The forces of modernity unleashed by the war had led to astonishing advances in daily life, but technology and mass culture also threatened to erode the country's traditional moral character. As award-winning historian George M. Marsden explains in The Twilight of the American Enlightenment, postwar Americans looked to the country's secular liberal elites for guidance in this precarious time, but these intellectuals proved unable to articulate a coherent common cause by which America could chart its course. Their failure lost them the faith of their constituents, paving the way for a Christian revival that offered America a firm new moral vision—one rooted in the Protestant values of the founders.
A groundbreaking reappraisal of the country's spiritual reawakening, The Twilight of the American Enlightenment shows how America found new purpose at the dawn of the Cold War.
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“In this compact but powerful analysis of
American life and thought in the years since the Second World War, George Marsden
shows why neither a triumphant secular liberalism nor a restored religious
consensus can serve as a rallying point for national unity. Instead, he makes a
case for a pluralism that treats the widest possible range of religious and
nonreligious perspectives as equally deserving of protections and recognition,
and rejects the privatization of religious speech and expression. The result is
a book that is as much about dawning as about twilight, one that not only
provides a fresh and compelling view of postwar America, but offers a fresh
vision of the road ahead.”
—
Wilfred M. McClay, University of Oklahoma