Finstuen, A.S. - ORIGINAL SIN AND EVERYDAY PROTESTANTS: THE THEOLOGY OF REINHOLD NIEBUHR, BILLY GRAHAM, AND PAUL TILICH IN AN AGE OF ANXIETY - Hardcover

Andrew S. Finstuen, Director of the International Honors Program, visiting assistant of church history at Pacific Lutheran University   In the years following World War II, American Protestantism experienced tremendous growth, but conventional wisdom holds that midcentury Protestants practiced an optimistic, progressive, complacent, and materialist faith. In Original Sin and Everyday Protestants, historian Andrew Finstuen argues against this prevailing view, showing that theological issues in general--and the ancient Christian doctrine of original sin in particular--became newly important to both the culture at large and to a generation of American Protestants during a postwar "age of anxiety" as the Cold War took root.    Finstuen focuses on three giants of Protestant thought--Billy Graham, Reinhold Niebuhr, and Paul Tillich--men who were among the era's best known public figures. He argues that each thinker's strong commitment to the doctrine of original sin was a powerful element of