GA Bibliography of Secondary SourcesSacvan Berkovitch, The American Jeremiad Download The American JeremiadDavid Howard-Pitney, The African American Jeremiad Download The African American Jeremiad (and notes Download notes)Robert N. Bellah, “Civil Religion in America” Download “Civil Religion in America”James A. Colaiaco, Frederick Douglass and the Fourth of July Download Frederick Douglass and the Fourth of JulyElizabeth Van Der Lei and Keith D. Miller, “Martin Luther King, Jr.’s ‘I Have a Dream’ in Context: Ceremonial Protest and African American Jeremiad” Download “Martin Luther King, Jr.’s ‘I Have a Dream’ in Context: Ceremonial Protest and African American Jeremiad”Bernard W. Bell, “The African American Jeremiad and Frederick Douglass’s Fourth of July 1852 Speech” Download “The African American Jeremiad and Frederick Douglass’s Fourth of July 1852 Speech”Willie J. Harrell, “A Call to Consciousness and Action: Mapping the African-American Jeremiad” Download “A Call to Consciousness and Action: Mapping the African-American Jeremiad”Shirley Wilson Logan, “Ida B. Wells, ‘Lynch Law in All Its Phases'”Bercovitch, Sacvan. The american jeremiad. University of Wisconsin Pres, 2012.Sacvan Bercovitch describes the American Jeremiad using Winthrop’s Model of Christian Charity, which aims to unite society by creating tensions between ideal social life and its actual expression. In contrast to its European predecessors, Bercovitch compares the American jeremiad. The American jeremiad, by contrast, added to public life the dimension of progress. A jeremiad describes a three-step process invoking a biblical standard for individual behavior and public life, outlining the ways in which a people have fallen from that standard, and envisioning an ideal public life based on a return to the spiritual standard.Notes: As a result, the American jeremiad offers a paradoxical rhetoric between hope and fear in the face of the ideal. In this way, the American jeremiad can stimulate the energy required to improve the quality of life for everyone. Jeremiads operate by blurring individual and communal pursuits.Their effectiveness lies in recognizing the tension between communal ideals and individual efforts, and purifying them as a means of improving society. It is the conservatism of the American jeremiad that has irked many critics. Participants should not question the foundations of their current problems, rather they should affirm them in this rhetorical appeal that calls for a new world to emerge.
