The New Measures, (Paperback)

The New Measures: A Theological History of Democratic Practice brings thick cultural history to contemporary debates about religion and democracy. Combining histories of performance, space, institutions, and ideas, the book tells the story of the 'new measures' that circulated in the religious revivals of the 1820s and '30s. The book's attention to detail moves it beyond abstraction and caricature to a more materialist political theology. And its eschatological hope resists narratives of progress and decline to understand American democracy as both tangled in contradiction and caught up in redemption.