Synopses & Reviews
Synopsis
Broad in scope yet written from a well-defined perspective, this book provides a superb narrative survey of Christian churches, institutions, and interactions with culture in the United States and Canada from the colonial period to the present.
One of the foremost authorities on the history of Christianity in North America, Mark Noll has intentionally made this history a comprehensive, balanced one-volume work: the book covers the great variety of Christian experience throughout all of North American history, sensitively encompassing the story of many contrasting groups and regions--elite and common people, whites and blacks, Catholics and Protestants, men and women, North and South. Adding a personal dimension to the narrative, numerous biographical profiles further enrich Noll's multifaceted exploration of major movements and events.
Table of Contents
I: Beginnings -- European expansion and Catholic settlement -- The English re formation and the Puritans -- Other beginnings -- II: Americanization -- A renewal of piety, 1700-1750 -- The churches in the revolution -- The revolution in the churches -- III: The "Protestant century" -- Evangelical mobilization -- "Outsiders" -- "Evangelical America," 1800-1865 -- His dominion: "Christian Canada" -- The last years of "Protestant America," 1865-1918 -- IV: The emergence of religious pluralism -- The Civil War -- Non-white, non-Protestant -- Protestantism shaken -- Legacies of "Christian America" -- V: Wilderness once again? -- Turbulent decades -- Trends -- Communities -- Personalities, leaders, exemplars -- American Christianity, Christianity in America.