Common Sense Traditions and American Evangelical Thought

Noll, Mark A.

doi:10.2307/2712899

Cited by 37 publications

(11 citation statements)

References 0 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…It is possible that monosemic interpretive strategies are based on a particular conceptualization of rational thought rooted in the common sense philosophical tradition that was popular in the United States in the late 18th and early 19th centuries (Segrest, 2010). Common sense Scottish philosophy has long exerted a strong influence over fundamentalist and evangelical culture in the United States (Noll, 1985). Marsden (1991) notes that when evangelical and fundamentalists Christians read the Bible, they rarely do so using allegorical, metaphorical, or symbolic interpretations.…”

Section: Theoretical Framework: Worldviews Symbolic Power and Textmentioning

confidence: 99%

Society, institutions, and common sense: Themes in the discourse of book challengers in 21st century United States

Knox

2014

Library & Information Science Research

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Understanding why people attempt to remove, relocate, or restrict books in an age of ubiquitous access is one of the more puzzling aspects of contemporary challenge cases. In order to better comprehend this largely symbolic phenomenon, this study focused on the arguments that book challengers employed to justify the removal, relocation, or restriction of books in 13 challenge cases in public libraries and schools across the United States between 2007 and 2011. Three sources of discourse, which were coded for common themes, were analyzed. The first consisted of a variety of documents, obtained via state open record requests to governing bodies, which were produced in the course of challenge cases. Recordings of book challenge public hearings constituted the second source of data. The third source of discourse consisted of interviews with challengers. The study found the following common themes in challengers' worldviews: First, they saw contemporary society as being in a state of decline and were concerned with preserving the innocence of children in the midst of this decay. Second, they constructed public institutions as symbols of the community that must represent their values and aid parents in their difficult role as boundary setters. Finally, challengers demonstrated a reverence for the books as a material object and employed common sense interpretive strategies. It is hoped that this analysis will offer a starting point for comparing the discourse of challengers to the discourse of other social actors and aid librarians and other information professionals in providing effective responses to challengers to materials in their respective institutions.

show abstract

Section: Theoretical Framework: Worldviews Symbolic Power and Textmentioning

confidence: 99%

Society, institutions, and common sense: Themes in the discourse of book challengers in 21st century United States

Knox

2014

Library & Information Science Research

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…Writing in 1985, Mark Noll argued that this melding of influences led to "the widespread evangelical assumption that proper theology is constructed by joining the facts of Scripture into a scientific system." 49 Indeed, the popular theology published by Tim LaHaye before Left Behind reflects the same assumptions. 50 In subsequent years, and as popular evangelicalism has come to look to alternative media for theological inspiration, rapture fiction might be viewed as a kind of surrogate for such a 'system', while its medium as a novel carries an inherent potential for divergent responses (see above).…”

Section: Left Behind With Common Sense Realismmentioning

confidence: 86%

Keeping the End in Mind: Left Behind, the Apocalypse and the Evangelical Imagination

Guest¹

2012

Literature and Theology

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Use policyThe full-text may be used and/or reproduced, and given to third parties in any format or medium, without prior permission or charge, for personal research or study, educational, or not-for-pro t purposes provided that:• a full bibliographic reference is made to the original source • a link is made to the metadata record in DRO • the full-text is not changed in any way The full-text must not be sold in any format or medium without the formal permission of the copyright holders.Please consult the full DRO policy for further details.

show abstract

“…Challengers believe strongly in the power of reading, and they are also an interpretive community (Fish 1982) that argues that a particular text can be interpreted in only one way. This latter theme is what I call "common sense" interpretation of text, as it is based in the foundations of Scot-tish common sense philosophy of the eighteenth century (Noll 1985;Segrest 2010). They also fear undisciplined imagination (Davidson 2004) and worry that reading certain materials will lead to mimesis where, for example, reading about a character doing drugs will lead the reader to use drugs in real life.…”

Section: The Discourse Of Censorshipmentioning

confidence: 99%

Opposing Censorship in Difficult Times

Knox¹

2017

The Library Quarterly

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

What does it mean to support intellectual freedom under the new administration? How do we uphold our values when many will disagree with the information provided in our institutions? In this short essay I offer a summary of my research on book challengers to better understand why people attempt to censor information. I then argue that, to move forward, librarians and other information professionals must recommit to supporting the principles of intellectual freedom, the code of ethics, and the values of librarianship; review policies; and know their communities-local, state, and national. A s part of my research I receive daily Google alerts on banned books, censorship, intellectual freedom, and book challenges. This helps me remain apprised of what is happening across the country and the world regarding information access. In late January 2017, I received a Google alert that piqued my interest: Animal Farm, George Orwell's allegorical novel, had recently been removed from the curriculum at Stonington Middle School in Mystic, CT (Collins 2017). The board and superintendent insisted that the book had not been banned but simply removed from the curriculum. According to Doyle's (2014) most recent bibliography of challenged books, Animal Farm, a staple of middle school curricula across the country, has not been challenged in the United States since 1987. However, I was not surprised to see the title in my Google alerts, as I suspect that Animal Farm, 1984, Brave New World, and other dystopian and antiauthoritarian novels will be challenged many times over the coming years. In the wake of the election, librarians and other information professionals have been asking themselves how to respond to the authoritarian tendencies of the new administration. My own research focuses on information access, particularly intellectual freedom and censorship and what I call "the discourse of censorship" (Knox 2014b, 2015). I am especially concerned with how people justify the control of knowledge and how to respond to such demands for control. In the weeks after the election it became clear to me that access to information in the public sphere would be threatened and that it was important that those on the front lines know how to respond to such threats.

show abstract

Common Sense Traditions and American Evangelical Thought

Cited by 37 publications

References 0 publications

Society, institutions, and common sense: Themes in the discourse of book challengers in 21st century United States

Society, institutions, and common sense: Themes in the discourse of book challengers in 21st century United States

Keeping the End in Mind: Left Behind, the Apocalypse and the Evangelical Imagination

Opposing Censorship in Difficult Times

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About