434 - American Christianity, Vol. II, 1820-1960

American Christianity, Vol. II, 1820-1960
By H. S. Smith, R. T. Handy, and L. A. Loetscher
634 pp. New York, Charles Scribner's Sons, 1963. $10.00

As this writer already has stated, in a review of the first volume (1960), the second and final volume should be in every major library. It is not likely to be rivaled, much less superseded, for many years to come. Taking up where the first volume ended (1820), it carries the history down to the present day. Quite apart from the admirably comprehensive selection of original documents, the historical and interpretative passages (comprising roughly one-third of the text) constitute a survey of American Christian history. They could be read separately as a concise and popular history of the major trends in our nation's religious life and thought. They are lucid, and written in a style that is dignified and yet free from a burden of technical terms that is believed to repel the lay reader.

The documentary selections are arranged in eleven chapters, extending from the Second Great Awakening of the 1820's to the present-day ecumenical movement. Their comprehensiveness may be suggested by enumerating only some of the topics: the free-will controversy, temperance, perfectionism, Western colleges and missions, the early peace crusade, the Episcopal High Church movement, the Roman Catholic internecine war over "trusteeism," discussion of the doctrine of the Real Presence, parochial schools, the Papal encyclicals and American Roman Catholic thought, Transcendentalism, Christian socialism, American interest in Oriental and other non-Christian religions, Christian Science, New Thought, slavery and abolitionism, the Modernist-Fundamentalist cleavage, religious naturalism and humanism, Biblical criticism, the Kingdom of God movement, the evangelism of Dwight L. Moody, the rise of Jehovah's Witnesses, Lutheran conservatism, the conflict between science and religion, the Churches and the labor question, Catholic and Protestant social action, and the Church's relations to capitalism, secularism, politics, international affairs, segregation, and various aspects of ecumenicity.

One should not expect to discover everything that he or any other could wish in such a collection. This reviewer, however, would have liked one or two more selections on missions, and one on the present urgent problem of the Church in the inner city. And since there is a section on religion and science, there might have been a passage from some literary historian on the relations of religion to American literature. All significant movements and schools of thought are represented, either by selections or in the historical passages.

The approach emphasizes not the ecclesiastical and denominational aspects of American Christianity, but rather the development of religious

435 - American Christianity, Vol. II, 1820-1960

thought as seen in its relation to the main currents of the nation's intellectual and social developments. The editors have done far more than to present a collection of source documents. In fact, they have expressed a philosophy that appears destined to reshape the writing of American religious and spiritual history. They have humanized what to many has appeared to be a specialized, professional discipline. After their work, it will hardly be possible ever to return to the purely ecclesiastical and denominational type of "church history" that prevailed until recent times.

Among the most helpful and interesting features are the well selected bibliographies, with brief critical remarks, that are appended to the chapters. These will be prized by theological students, ministers, sociologists, "secular" historians, study groups in Churches-and especially, interested individual laymen. A frequent criticism of American "church history" is that it has been written largely for professionals. As a member of a parish library committee for nearly five years, this reviewer can testify that the traditional type of church history is not one of the popular classes of books. The approach to the subject, which this collection and its interpretation seem likely to inspire, promises to make the criticism seem more and more irrelevant. The editors have fashioned a broad and liberal approach to the needed multi-volume work that eventually will do for American religious history what Doctor Kenneth Scott Latourette's monumental accomplishment has done for the history of Christianity's worldwide expansion.

One theme that appears throughout the volume is the continuous appearance of two basic attitudes toward religion and its place in the world: the one, that religion is concerned primarily with individual salvation; the other, that it cannot be truly effective unless it strives for the melioration of society. In this respect, the collection is a major contribution to a greater historical awareness and clarity of thinking in the present dilemma of American Christianity, as it confronts the insistent problems of national social tensions and world politics.

A very thorough index of subjects and personal names rounds out the volume and makes it possible to locate any topic. The clear-cut illustrations are mostly portraits of leaders whose writings are landmarks in our spiritual and social history. One cannot but admire the volume simply as a sample of handsome book-making. And the editors and their assistants have done an admirable task of proofreading. This reviewer, examining the text over a period of weeks, located only the barest minimum of typographical error.

Nelson R. Burr
Library of Congress
Washington, D. C.