Background
Butler, Jon was born on June 4, 1940 in Fort Smith, Arkansas, United States. Son of Harold J. and Genevieve Virginia (Sorenson) Butler.
( In this first modern history of the Huguenots' New Wor...)
In this first modern history of the Huguenots' New World experience, Jon Butler traces the Huguenot diaspora across late seventeenth-century Europe, explores the causes and character of their American emigration, and reveals the Huguenots' secular and religious assimilation in three remarkably different societies—Boston, New York, and South Carolina.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0674413210/?tag=2022091-20
("Quite ambitious, tracing religion in the United States f...)
"Quite ambitious, tracing religion in the United States from European colonization up to the 21st century.... The writing is strong throughout."--Publishers Weekly (starred review) "One can hardly do better than Religion in American Life.... A good read, especially for the uninitiated. The initiated might also read it for its felicity of narrative and the moments of illumination that fine scholars can inject even into stories we have all heard before. Read it."--Church History This new edition of Religion in American Life, written by three of the country's most eminent historians of religion, offers a superb overview that spans four centuries, illuminating the rich spiritual heritage central to nearly every event in our nation's history. Beginning with the state of religious affairs in both the Old and New Worlds on the eve of colonization and continuing through to the present, the book covers all the major American religious groups, from Protestants, Jews, and Catholics to Muslims, Hindus, Mormons, Buddhists, and New Age believers. Revised and updated, the book includes expanded treatment of religion during the Great Depression, of the religious influences on the civil rights movement, and of utopian groups in the 19th century, and it now covers the role of religion during the 2008 presidential election, observing how completely religion has entered American politics.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0199832692/?tag=2022091-20
( This new edition and update of the seminal study, Power...)
This new edition and update of the seminal study, Power, Authority, and the Origins of American Denominational Order, questions the assumption that colonial American churches were seedbeds of democratic sentiment merely awaiting the American Revolution to cast off the shackles of both political and religious domination. Jon Butler points out that pre-Revolutionary Americans spoke of themselves as British and replicated familiar British forms in their North American settlements. In this work, he shows that colonial American religious organization reflected a clear and conscious commitment to British patterns of life and faith. Examining late-17th-century and early-18th-century North American Quaker, Baptist, Presbyterian, and Anglican groups and religious structures, Butler finds that ministers wielded considerable power over their congregations, and the minutes of their meetings reveal that these ministers were hardly “proto-democrats” or individualists impatient with religious discipline. On the contrary, they themselves seem to have enthusiastically followed established norms of faith and order, and their congregations seemed quite satisfied with such proceedings. In a nation still grappling with issues about religion in the public sphere and the ways religious bodies assert their own authority, this history of four English Protestant groups in America's earliest plural colonies speaks with a remarkably prescient voice.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0817355251/?tag=2022091-20
Butler, Jon was born on June 4, 1940 in Fort Smith, Arkansas, United States. Son of Harold J. and Genevieve Virginia (Sorenson) Butler.
Bachelor, University of Minnesota, 1964; Doctor of Philosophy, University of Minnesota, 1972.
He earned his bachelor"s and doctoral degrees from the University of Minnesota, and is known for his research on the role of religion in early American history. At Yale, he served as chair of the American Studies Program from 1988 to 1993, the director of the Division of the Humanities from 1997 to 1999, and chair of the Department of History from 1999 to 2004. He was also a Guggenheim Fellow and earned an honorary Doctor of Science from the University of Minnesota.
Butler is president of the Organization of American Historians, 2015-2016.
He is currently an adjunct research professor at the University of Minnesota College of Liberal Arts, in the Department of History.
( In this first modern history of the Huguenots' New Wor...)
( In this first modern history of the Huguenots' New Wor...)
( This new edition and update of the seminal study, Power...)
("Quite ambitious, tracing religion in the United States f...)
(Many people believe that the piety of the Pilgrims typifi...)
President Hamden Basketball Boosters Association, Hamden, Connecticut, 1994-1994. Member American History Association, Organisation American Historians, American Society Church History, American Studies Association (chair, Franklin prize jury since 1980). M C.
Married Roxanne Deuser, July 18, 1970. Children: Benjamin J., Peter F.