Surge of Piety: Norman Vincent Peale and the Remaking of American Religious Life

Surge of Piety: Norman Vincent Peale and the Remaking of American Religious Life

How did Norman Vincent Peale's blockbuster bestseller  The Power of Positive Thinking capture the hearts and minds of millions of Americans, reshaping the nation's spiritual landscape?   Near the height of Cold War hysteria, when the threat of all-out nuclear war felt real and perilous, the American minister offered a gospel of self-assurance in an age of mass anxiety.   Despite Peale's success and his ties to powerful conservatives such as Dwight D. Eisenhower, J. Edgar Hoover, and Joseph McCarthy, the full story of his "religio-psychiatric" clinic and movement has never been told. Award-winning scholar Christopher Lane shows how the famed minister's brand of Christian psychology inflamed the nation's religious revival by promoting the concept that belief in God was essential to the health and harmony of all Americans. We learn in vivid detail how Peale and his powerful supporters fueled a massive rise of religiosity and religious nationalism by orchestrating major changes in a nation newly defined as living "under God." This blurring of the lines between religion and medicine would reshape religion and the self-help movement as we know them in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. "A fascinating and accessible reassessment of a pivotal political moment, and the enduring fusion of popular religion and psychology in American life."-- Darren Dochuk, University of Notre Dame "Carefully examining everything from Freudian psychology to traditional revivalism, Lane masterfully shows why we cannot make sense of the tremendous mid-century upsurge in American religiosity without understanding the inimitable Peale."-- Matthew Avery Sutton, author of American Apocalypse: A History of Modern Evangelicalism "In Surge of Piety, Christopher Lane ably shows the ways in which Norman Vincent Peale's potent combination of Protestant Christianity, popular psychiatry, and nationalist politics helped remake America."-- Kevin M. Kruse, author of One Nation Under God: How Corporate America Invented Christian America "Lane tells the story of Peale's rise and fall crisply and without malice, even when Peale is at his more-huckster-than-minister gauchest."-- Ray Olson, Booklist " Surge of Piety contains some impressive archival research on Peale's relationship with Blanton, and on Blanton's relationship with Sigmund Freud."-- Wall Street Journal "Lane's book will surely be requisite reading for historians who strive to give us a fuller perspective on the career and impact of this unusual American religionist."-- Mitch Horowitz, Washington Post "Lane studies how Peale developed a popular theology that fused American business-speak with Christianity, psychoanalysis, and political conservatism, with considerable long-term success.... Thanks to ... Surge of Piety, we have a little perspective on what Peale's philosophy meant for America, and, by extension, for Trump."-- Sam Buntz, Washington Monthly “In Surge of Piety , Lane develops a close portrait of Norman Vincent Peale’s effort to propel his particular brand of religio-psychiatry into the heart of the U.S. imagination.” —Kathryn Lofton, American Literary History "Lane has done impressive archival research on Peale. . . . [T]he book is thoughtful and makes for interesting reading."-- M. A. Granquist, CHOICE "Now that one of Peale's disciples sits in the Oval Office, there couldn't be a better time for the publication of Christopher Lane's Surge of Piety: Norman Vincent Peale and the Remaking of American Religious Life. "-- Paul Matzko, The Gospel Coalition A professor of English at Northwestern University, Christopher Lane has received fellowships from the Guggenheim and Mellon Foundations. His writing has appeared in numerous national publications, including the New York Times . His books include Shyness and The Age of Doubt.