Gibson Winter Research Articles

CATHOLIC-PROTESTANT TENSIONS IN POST-WAR AMERICA: PAUL BLANSHARD, JOHN COURTNEY MURRAY, AND THE “RELIGIOUS IMAGINATION”

It is one of the ironies of American religious history that the most thoroughly anti-Catholic work to appear after the Civil War was published in the unlikely decade after the Second World War, when the last good war had been fought and won, and what Gibson Winter termed “the suburban captivity of the churches” was well underway, a “captivity” in which questions of crabgrass ostensibly replaced theology as the major topic of conversation. A series of articles that had begun to appear in the Nation , a staunchly libertarian journal, in November 1947, was published by Beacon Press in 1949 as American Freedom and Catholic Power —a work that would set the stage for increasingly neuralgic exchanges between Catholics and Protestants during a decade in which sociologist Will Herberg announced that the “American Way of Life” was now acceptably packaged in Protestant, Catholic, and Jewish forms. The author of that book, Paul Blanshard, understood himself to be issuing a timely call to protect the First Amendment of the Constitution against the encroachments of a Catholic hierarchy living within the very fortress of the free world, but hostile to American democratic and political values.

Catholics and American culture: Fulton Sheen, Dorothy Day, and the Notre Dame football team

Catholics and American Culture: Fulton Sheen, Dorothy Day, and Notre Dane Football Team. By Mark S. Massa. New York: Crossroad, 1999. x + 278 pp. $24.95 (cloth). Growing up as a low-church Yankee Episcopalian in Boston during 1950s, was nurtured in a culture imbued in anti-Catholicism. Most of my family members assumed that Catholics were both socially and spiritually beneath us, and remarks such as She's a Catholic ... but nice were commonplace at dinner table. still vividly remember my grandmother telling me, I don't think you ought to go to John's house-after all, they're Catholics. Indeed, there were two words invariably spoken in whispered tones at our home, as if sounds themselves had a power to undo us: cancer and Catholic! Inasmuch as this prejudice had an intellectual basis, it was articulated in Paul Blanshard's American Freedom and Catholic Power (1949), classic expression of modern Protestant concerns about inherent foreignness of Roman Catholicism. The fact that Blanshard's book was published in Boston by respected Beacon Press and was regarded as a responsible statement of liberal social thought indicates endurance of antiCatholic bigotry (at least among Protestants in Northeast) after World War II. While Mark Massa, a Jesuit who teaches at Fordham University did not know my family, he could well have written Catholics and A-merican Culture to explain why our prejudices and anxieties were not only wrong but also ridiculously misplaced. As he demonstrates in this extraordinarily rich, readable, and insightful book, Yankee Protestants had no reason at all to fear Roman Catholics in their midst. A remarkable transformation occurred in American Catholicism during period when Massa and were growing up, and most white Catholics entered the verdant ... pastures of middle-class acceptance and affluence (p. 2) where all traces of their religious distinctiveness disappeared. During this process, Catholics generally abandoned the fortress of immigrant Catholic subculture (p. 36), and instead embraced what Episcopalian Gibson Winter has called suburban captivity of churches. Moreover, thanks to popularity and influence of such identifiably Catholic figures as Joseph McCarthy Fulton J. Sheen, and John F. Kennedy Catholics moved into center of nation's cultural mainstream. This shift was completed in fall of 1960 with Kennedy's election as president. Running on a platform that stressed disjunction between his religious beliefs and his political views, Kennedy successfully dissociated himself both from Blanshard's stereotype of alien-controlled Catholic politician and from vapid Piety on Potomac fostered during Eisenhower administration. While his enthusiastic embrace of secularity raises disturbing questions about effectiveness of social mission of his church-an irony Massa highlights-Kennedy's victory demonstrated how far American Catholicism had come in little more than a decade since publication of Blanshard's book. As foregoing discussion suggests, Catholics and American Culture is neither a conventional narrative history nor an exhaustive sociological study of multicultural Catholic community today. Instead, Massa examines in detail a few key individuals and events in order to illustrate what he believes is central theme in American Catholic history between 1945 and 1970: evolution of Roman Catholicism from its older, ghetto style of religion to a newer, `culture religion' one (p. …

Looking for God in the suburbs: the religion of the American dream and its critics, 1945-1965

This is the only book I know of that connects the social criticism of the 1950s to the religious radicalism of the '60s...A book that everybody who writes about the cultural and social history of the 1950s and '60s will have to take into account. --William O'Neill, Rutgers University In the 1950s, 99 percent of adult Americans said they believed in God. How, James Hudnut-Beumler asks, did this consensus about religion turn into the confrontational debates over religion in the 1960s? He argues that post-World War II suburban conformity made churchgoing so much a part of middle-class values and life that religion and culture became virtually synonymous. Secular critics like David Riesman, William Whyte, C. Wright Mills, and Dwight Macdonald, who blamed American culture for its conformism and lack of class consciousness, and religious critics like Will Herberg, Gibson Winter, and Peter Berger, who argued that religion had lost its true roots by incorporating only the middle class, converged in their attacks on popular religion. Although most Americans continued to live and worship as before, a significant number of young people followed the critics' call for a faith that led to social action, but they turned away from organized religion and toward the counterculture of the sixties. The critics of the 1950s deserve credit for asking questions about the value of religion as it was being practiced and the responsibilities of the affluent to the poor--and for putting these issues on the social and cultural agenda of the next generation.

Community and Spiritual Transformation: Religion and Politics in a Communal Age. Gibson Winter

Previous articleNext article No AccessBook ReviewsCommunity and Spiritual Transformation: Religion and Politics in a Communal Age. Gibson Winter William J. EverettWilliam J. Everett Search for more articles by this author PDFPDF PLUS Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditEmail SectionsMoreDetailsFiguresReferencesCited by The Journal of Religion Volume 71, Number 4Oct., 1991 Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1086/488750 Views: 3Total views on this site Copyright 1991 The University of ChicagoPDF download Crossref reports no articles citing this article.

Renewing the Earth - Renewing Theology

This article examines three metaphors for world process - the organic, the mechanistic, and the artistic - drawn from the work of Gibson Winter in his book, Liberating Grace. The significance of these three metaphors for ecology and theological method are examined in turn. In so doing a correlation is also offered between cultural types (Voegelin), theological styles, stages of meaning (Lonergan), and stages of faith (Fowler).

Liberation and Ethics: Essays in Honour of Gibson Winter Charles Amjad-Ali and W. Alvin Pitcher, editors Chicago: Centre for the Scientific Study of Religion, 1985. xiv + 234 p

Liberation and Ethics: Essays in Honour of Gibson Winter Charles Amjad-Ali and W. Alvin Pitcher, editors Chicago: Centre for the Scientific Study of Religion, 1985. xiv + 234 p

Liberating Creation: Foundations of Religious Social Ethics. By Gibson Winter. New York: Crossroads Publishing Co., 1981. 145 pp. $10.95

Journal Article Liberating Creation: Foundations of Religious Social Ethics. By Gibson Winter. New York: Crossroads Publishing Co., 1981. 145 pp. $10.95 Get access Ronald H. Stone Ronald H. Stone Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Journal of Church and State, Volume 25, Issue 1, Winter 1983, Pages 176–177, https://doi.org/10.1093/jcs/25.1.176 Published: 01 January 1983

Book Notices

Journal Article Book Notices Get access Liberating Creation: Foundations of Religious Social Ethics. By Gibson Winter Crossroad, 1981. 145pages. $10.95. Richard A. Hoehn Richard A. Hoehn Texas Christian University Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Journal of the American Academy of Religion, Volume LI, Issue 3, September 1983, Pages 522-b–523, https://doi.org/10.1093/jaarel/LI.3.522-b Published: 01 September 1983

Liberating Creation by Gibson Winter New York, Crossroad, 1981. 145 pp. $10.95

Liberating Creation by Gibson Winter New York, Crossroad, 1981. 145 pp. $10.95

Reviews

Book reviewed in this article: Ethics and Science. By HENRY MARGENAU. New York: Robert E. Krieger Belief and Ethics: Essays in Ethics, the Human Sciences, and Ministry in Honor of W. Alvin Pitcher. Edited by W. WIDICK SCHROEDER and GIBSON WINTER. Nature and Purpose. By JOHN F. HAUGHT. LanhamOur Fragile Brains: A Christian Perspective on Brain Research. By D. GARETH JONES. Downers Grove

Ricoeur's "Political and Social Essays"Political and Social Essays. Paul Ricoeur , David Stewart , Joseph Bien

Previous articleNext article No AccessReview ArticlesRicoeur's "Political and Social Essays" Political and Social Essays. Paul Ricoeur , David Stewart , Joseph Bien Fred LawrenceFred Lawrence Search for more articles by this author PDFPDF PLUS Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditEmail SectionsMoreDetailsFiguresReferencesCited by The Journal of Religion Volume 59, Number 2Apr., 1979 Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1086/486688 Views: 12Total views on this site Copyright 1979 The University of ChicagoPDF download Crossref reports no articles citing this article.

Toward a Theological Understanding of PraxisThe Understanding of Faith: Interpretation and Criticism. Edward Schillebeeckx , N. D. Smith

Edward Schillebeeckx's recent book, The Understanding of Faith, can be read as a series of exercises in the critical reconstruction of theological hermeneutics. It is not a systematic or exhaustive treatment, but it is significant in representing the effort of perhaps the most cosmopolitan of European Roman Catholic theologians to come to grips with certain problems in theological method that have emerged in light of recent developments in the general field of cultural hermenuetics. Schillebeeckx's range of concern and some of the approaches that he develops seem to bear a family resemblance to similar efforts in the field of cultural hermeneutics advanced by Paul Ricoeur and Gibson Winter, and in theological hermeneutics as in the recent work of Langdon Gilkey and David Tracy. Whatever the reasons for this convergence, it certainly can be taken as encouraging news for those who have found promise in the recent discussions of the problem of interpretation conducted on this side of the Atlantic. An especially important parallel is discerned in Schillebeeckx's willingness to explore the relevance of a praxis criterion for the manifold operations of theological hermeneutics. That he attempts to specify this criterion through a serious discussion of the work ofJuirgen Habermas's critical theory of society is particularly significant, in that Schillebeeckx's discussion of Habermas can be taken as a clue to

Being Free: Reflections on America's Cultural Revolution. By Gibson Winter. New York: Macmillan Company, 1970. 158 pp. $4.95

Journal Article Being Free: Reflections on America's Cultural Revolution. By Gibson Winter. New York: Macmillan Company, 1970. 158 pp. $4.95 Get access Richard Besancon Richard Besancon Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Journal of Church and State, Volume 17, Issue 3, Autumn 1975, Pages 542–543, https://doi.org/10.1093/jcs/17.3.542 Published: 01 October 1975

The Dream and the Wrath

In the midst of pervasive malaise America tries to look forward to celebrating its bicentennial. It is not an easy thing to celebrate a birthday when the body and spirit are sick. Little wonder that social analysts and critics are calling for a renewal of the American spirit, the recovery of an American tradition from the distortions of our recent past. It is this tradition that must provide guidance for the future that is already upon us. Daniel Bell, in his The Coming of Post-Industrial Society, is but the latest of the company of exhorters, which includes such critics as Sydney Ahlstrom, Robert Bellah and Gibson Winter.

REVIEWS

Theological Explorations. By Paul van Buren Verbum: Word and Idea in Aquinas. By Bernard Lonergan, s.j. Metaphysics. By Emerich Coreth. English Edition by Joseph Donceel Wittgenstein and the Problem of Other Minds. Edited by Harold Morick Wittgenstein and the Problem of Other Minds. Edited by Harold Morick. Essays in Legal Philosophy. Edited by Robert S. Summers. The Son of Man in Mark. By Morna D. Hooker. Portrait of Paul. By E. W. Hunt. Tradition and Life in the Church. By Hans von Campenhausen. A History of the Franciscan Order from its Origins to the Year 1517. By John Moorman, Bishop of Ripon. Reason and Authority: the Thought of William Chillingworth. By Robert R. Orr. Deism: an Anthology. By Peter Gay. Social Ethics. Edited by Gibson Winter. The Peasant of the Garonne. By Jacques Maritain.

Gibson Winter's "Elements for a Social Ethic": A ReviewElements for a Social Ethic: Scientific and Ethical Perspectives on Social Process. Gibson Winter

Previous articleNext article No AccessReviewsGibson Winter's "Elements for a Social Ethic": A Review Elements for a Social Ethic: Scientific and Ethical Perspectives on Social Process. Gibson Winter Richard McKeonRichard McKeon Search for more articles by this author PDFPDF PLUS Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditEmail SectionsMoreDetailsFiguresReferencesCited by The Journal of Religion Volume 49, Number 1Jan., 1969 Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1086/486154 Views: 26Total views on this site Citations: 4Citations are reported from Crossref Copyright 1969 The University of ChicagoPDF download Crossref reports the following articles citing this article:Donald P. Cushman, Branislav Kovacic The rhetoric of the reasoned social scientific fact, Argumentation 8, no.11 (Feb 1994): 33–47.https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00710702Ted J. Smith Diversity and order in communication theory: The uses of philosophical analysis, Communication Quarterly 36, no.11 (Jan 1988): 28–40.https://doi.org/10.1080/01463378809369705M. Scott Poole, Joseph P. Folger Modes of Observation and The Validation of Interaction Analysis Schemes, Small Group Behavior 12, no.44 (Aug 2016): 477–493.https://doi.org/10.1177/104649648101200406Nick O'Donnell‐Trujillo Relational communication: A comparison of coding systems, Communication Monographs 48, no.22 (Jun 2009): 91–105.https://doi.org/10.1080/03637758109376050

Religious Identity, by Gibson Winter. 143 pp. New York, Macmillan, 1968. $1.45

Religious Identity, by Gibson Winter. 143 pp. New York, Macmillan, 1968. $1.45

The Pentecostal Immigrants: A Study of an Ethnic Central City Church

TN a recent particularly thought-provoking book, The Suburban Captivity of the Churches,' Gibson Winter has raised a challenge for contemporary American Protestantism. His major thesis is that the denominational churches in the suburbs have lost the sense of mission and ministry, and along with it the sense of the church as a community based on faith, as a consequence of a number of complex processes characterizing the development of modern metropolitan areas. Tracing the changing ecological pattern of church distribition and membership over the past few decades, Dr. Winter shows how the suburban church has become progressively more isolated from central city areas, having to devote more and more efforts simply to maintaining its own community consisting in the highly mobile populations of the suburbs. The congregation thus becomes a social grouping which

The New Creation as Metropolis. Gibson Winter

<i>The New Creation as Metropolis</i>. Gibson Winter

Comments on Articles by Professors Friess and Winter

COGENT CHALLENGES to the view of religion presented in my October article come not only from Horace L. Friess' direct comments but also from Gibson Winter's article which appeared in the same issue of the Journal. I will begin by giving my reactions to some of Professor Friess' comments. He presents a sound criticism when he questions my use of the word supreme in the affirmation that one characteristic of religion is the belief-attitude that certain aspects of life are of supreme importance (at least potentially) (p. 8).1 The word is badly chosen. I wrote thinking of it as plural rather than as singular, intending it to modify a number of aspects of life. However, to some readers the word supreme has the meaning of the in a rank order; according to this usage, only one aspect of life could be considered to be religious, at any rate at any one time. Moreover, the supreme concern of many people, the one concern they rank highest, is secular, according to the proposed definition of secular (p. 12), while some of their lesser concerns would meet all of the criteria proposed for religious except the quality of being in a rank order. For example, a person could rank loyalty to the use of the scientific method as highest among his values, and view it as deriving from the Ultimate. Yet it could be for him a secular concern in that it could be thought of as demonstrable empirically. This same person could look on the quality of, say, humility as deriving