Our Great Big American God Quotes

“The more spiritual successes that Edwards experienced, the more he seemed to intentionally infuse his sermons with language deemed to move a person’s emotional center—their souls—to spiritually and physically respond.”
― Matthew Paul Turner, Our Great Big American God: A Short History of Our Ever-Growing Deity

“this integration of Jefferson and Jesus is in many ways how members of the evangelical right can oppose abortion yet ignore the needs of disenfranchised members of society, how they can rage against sexual revolutions and offer little critique on economic greed or mass consumption, and how they can keep labor unions and government in check while not doing the same to Wall Street, insurance companies, and other big American businesses. Of course, much of today’s evangelical political doctrine has become so radical, so driven by fear and hyperbole that it’s more or less a parody of the doctrines of Thomas Jefferson and Jesus, a culture where the poor in spirit are not blessed, they are marginalized and expected to care for themselves.”
― Matthew Paul Turner, Our Great Big American God: A Short History of Our Ever-Growing Deity

“God in America is a free spirit, a supernatural entity capable of being shaped to fit a variety of ideas, Christian or otherwise. Like divine Play-Doh, America's God can be kneaded with hands, squashed between fingers, coerced into shapes, manipulated by devices, and, though it's not always recommended, digested by human bodies. Because God's Spirit is nontoxic.”
― Matthew Paul Turner, Our Great Big American God: A Short History of Our Ever-Growing Deity

“Edwards’s God was glorious, full of beauty, and seemingly uninterested in making people feel insecure. Edwards was a mystic, a man who didn’t simply write or preach about God, he experienced him.”
― Matthew Paul Turner, Our Great Big American God: A Short History of Our Ever-Growing Deity