505 - Undermined Establishment-Church-State Relations in America, 1880-1920

Undermined Establishment-Church-State Relations in America, 1880-1920
By Robert T. Handy
Princeton, Princeton University Press, 1991. 204 pp. $29.95.

This is a fine addition to an excellent series, "Studies in Church and State," edited by John F. Wilson. Handy's argument is an extension of his theme in A Christian America: Protestant Hopes and Historical Realities. American evangelical Protestants, he maintains, set out to create a cultural establishment of Protestantism in nineteenth-century America. Having lost legal establishment, these evangelicals (today known as mainline Protestants) sought to so influence the institutions, values, and mores of the nation so that it would

506 - Undermined Establishment-Church-State Relations in America, 1880-1920

be discernibly "Christian," by which they meant Protestant. During the late nineteenth century, several factors combined to "undermine" this establishment, according to Handy. The complexities of an urban, industrialized society were a substantial challenge to Protestant hegemony. The increasing pluralism of the American population-both in ethnicity and in religious persuasion-were especially powerful. Debates about the meaning and authority of Christianity itself also eroded the consistency and power of the evangelical Protestant consensus. By the early twentieth century, the mainline Protestant denominations faced new competitors, both within and without the churches.

Handy is one of the most distinguished historians of American Christianity. He writes with a deft hand and makes marvelous use of anecdotes and illustrations. This is a superior achievement based on a lifetime of scholarship.

John M. Mulder
Louisville Presbyterian Theological Seminary
Louisville, KY.