Reviews for The quality of mercy

The average rating for The quality of mercy based on 2 reviews is 2.5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2009-05-01 00:00:00 John Dillow An in-depth look at New School Calvinism and social reform before the Civil War, this book is particularly helpful in interpreting the Beechers, Theodore Dwight Weld, and Samuel Hopkins. The detailed look at the anti-Catholic phenomena was particularly stimulating, as it showed how far NSCs would go to deny Catholicism as a legitimate way of Christianity, life, and being an American.

Review # 2 was written on 2021-03-07 00:00:00 David Williams A compact study of secularization in American higher education during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, focusing on Christianity. The authors divide the book into discussions of secularization in the sciences and in the humanities. As scientists embraced naturalism and empirical evidence, appeals to God became less and less common in scientific discourse. As humanities embraced philology and began to view art as culturally conditioned, appeals to God and transcendent truth became less common, although talk of morality could be a cover for professors to keep Christian influences in the classroom. Naturally, people objected to secularization in both science and humanities classrooms. I found the authors' claim about the humanities driving secularization to be compelling. The book's focus on Christianity made me wonder what discussions of secularization were like among Jewish academics.