The Oxford Handbook of the Bible in America

Abstract

The Oxford Handbook of the Bible in America is designed to address a noticeable void in resources focused on analyzing the Bible in America in specific historical moments and in relationship to specific institutions and cultural expressions. Paying attention to the Bible from its earliest appearance in seventeenth-century New England up through its presence and usage in twenty-first century America, this handbook takes seriously the fact that the Bible is both a physical object that has exercised considerable totemic power, as well as a text with a powerful intellectual design that has inspired a wide range of cultural rituals, social policies, and artistic expression. This Handbook brings together a number of established scholars, as well as younger scholars on the rise, to provide insightful overviews and rich bibliographic resources to those interested in the Bible’s role in the history of American cultural formation. Topics addressed in the Handbook include—but are not limited to—the Bible’s production, translation, distribution, and interpretation in the United States, the Bible’s usage and relationship to a host of American religious traditions and social movements, as well the Bible’s linkage to such things as American cinema, literature, art, music, amusement parks, environmentalism, theories of gender and race, education, and politics.