"Culture and Redemption is a wonderfully refreshing book about anomalies of power among America's religions and cultures. Tracy Fessenden's expansive and often surprising readings demonstrate that strongly Protestant and broadly religious concerns persistently upended the seemingly natural triumph of secularism in America, with powerful effects on our literature and ethics alike. In short, a fascinating book."--Jon Butler, Yale University"Tracy Fessenden's Culture and Redemption is an important work of scholarship. The book makes a compelling case for seeing particular forms of Protestant religion as an 'unmarked category' in American cultural analysis and urges a rethinking of some major works of American literature in relation to that category. The book is tightly argued, thoroughly researched, and consistently well written."--Lucy Maddox, Georgetown University"This extraordinary, potentially landmark work is thickly textured, intellectually nuanced, and relentlessly insightful. Analyzing Puritan sermons, early school primers, and the nineteenth-century canon, Tracy Fessenden reveals the religious legacies and hidden agendas of American secularism. Her chapter on The Great Gatsby is a tour de force."--Thomas J. Ferraro, Duke University