142 - Pilgrims in Their Own Land: 500 Years of Religion in America

Pilgrims in Their Own Land:
500 Years of Religion in America
By Martin E. Marty
Boston, Little, Brown, 1984. 488 pp. $25.00.

In 477 pages of text, less than half the space used by Sydney Ahlstrom for his Religious History of the American People (1972), Martin Marty tells the story of American religion with style, humor, and profound insight. Marty ranges more widely than Ahlstrom did, and frequently follows signal movements and leaders with more precision and empathy.

From a quick survey of what came to be called "Indian tribes," Marty moves to consideration of Spanish missions, colonial establishments, independence movements, and various ethnic immigrations. He traces the political warp, while accentuating the religious woof, in the weaving

144 - Pilgrims in Their Own Land: 500 Years of Religion in America

of the American church/state/social fabric. Nor is the more contemporary charismatic, cult member, or fundamentalist ignored. Many leaders of every hue get paragraphs, or at least sentences, and resulting notations in the extensive index.

My quarrel, if I have one, is with the theme of the effort. The American religious are never at home, according to Marty: "they are not a 'settled' people." The author himself is critical of his own theme: "That observation may seem commonplace, almost banal" (page 430). No, the theme is not faulty for its banality. Rather, it simply does not hold true, at least for many religious leaders and people. In honesty, such a theme may characterize Martin Marty, ever the inquisitive seeker and social critic, who keeps searching, convinced the whole story of American religion does make sense and will form a single narrative if only the right pattern can be discerned. The sub-theme that Marty relates, the dialectic between threat and opportunity, may offer greater promise and actually exercise more heuristic power upon the author.

Whatever the theme, the story itself is told in superb fashion, mixing biography and commentary on movements and reactions. No one I read today even comes close to him in the ability to choose anecdotes, human conflicts, and precise characterizations which together paint a personal portrait while honoring the milieu at the same time.

Rather than tiring in the process of reading, I discovered myself eager at the end to find Marty admiring or criticizing the contributions of such figures as Thomas Merton, Cardinal Francis Spellman, Billy Graham, Martin Luther King, Jr., Malcolm X, Reinhold Niebuhr, John Courtney Murray, and Will Herberg.

Some disquieting notes occurred along the way for this reader. Were women as insignificant in American religion as they appear in this book? Marty names many female leaders, but he dwells upon just a few-Anne Hutchinson, the Grimké sisters, and Mary Baker Eddy, for example. Again, the immense power of Calvinism in general, and the "Princeton Theology" in particular, received scant attention, though such world views exercised (and exercise) great sway in American religion, and the attraction of contemporary fundamentalism is incomprehensible unless both sources be traced. Third, Marty refers to but does not really treat Black American Religion or slavery as an institution until he catalogues the reform issues of the nineteenth century. Even then, his access to the subject, in part, is through the study of John Woolman, a white leader from colonial times.

The flyleaf says Martin Marty has written more than thirty books. Of the score I have read, this is the most comprehensive and the best crafted. Worth the purchase, worth the reading, worth remembering.

Louis Weeks
Louisville Presbyterian Theological Seminary
Louisville, Kentucky