"The passing of reformed theology as a major influence in American life during the nineteenth century was not a spectacular event, and its mourners have been relatively few. Calvinism, when it is mentioned, is still often portrayed as a dark cloud that hovered too long over America, acting as an unhealthy influence on the climate of opinion. Nonetheless, the transition from the theologically oriented and well-formed Calvinism characteristic of much of American Protestantism at the beginning of the nineteenth century to the nontheologically oriented and often poorly informed conservative Protestantism firmly established in middle-class America by the end of the same century remains a remarkable aspect of American intellectual and ecclesiastical history. The twentieth-century attitude, itself a product of this transition, has placed strong emphasis on nineteenth-century Protestant activities - their organizations, their revivals, and their reforms. The mind of American Protestantism in these transitional years deserves at least equal consideration." -from the Introduction

Nathaniel Taylor was arguably the most influential and the most frequently misrepresented American theologian of his generation. While he claimed to be an Edwardsian Calvinist, very few people believed him. This book attempts to understand how Taylor and his associates could have counted themselves Edwardsians. In the process, it explores what it meant to be an Edwardsian minister and intellectual in the 19th century.

No living scholar has shaped the study of American religious history more profoundly than George M. Marsden. His work spans U.S. intellectual, cultural, and religious history from the seventeenth through the twenty-first centuries. This collection of essays uses the career of George M. Marsden and the remarkable breadth of his scholarship to measure current trends in the historical study of American evangelical Protestantism and to encourage fresh scholarly investigation of this faith tradition as it has developed between the eighteenth century and the present. Moving through five sections, each centered around one of Marsden’s major books and the time period it represents, the volume explores different methodologies and approaches to the history of evangelicalism and American religion. Besides assessing Marsden’s illustrious works on their own terms, this collection’s contributors isolate several key themes as deserving of fresh, rigorous, and extensive examination. Through their close investigation of these particular themes, they expand the range of characters and communities, issues and ideas, and contingencies that can and should be accounted for in our historical texts. Marsden’s timeless scholarship thus serves as a launchpad for new directions in our rendering of the American religious past.

Charles Hodge (1797-1878) was one of nineteenth-century America's leading theologians, owing in part to a lengthy teaching career, voluminous writings, and a faculty post at one of the nation's most influential schools, Princeton Theological Seminary. Surprisingly, the only biography of this towering figure was written by his son, just two years after his death. Paul C. Gutjahr's book is the first modern critical biography of a man some have called the "Pope of Presbyterianism." Hodge's legacy is especially important to American Presbyterians. His brand of theological conservatism became vital in the 1920s, as Princeton Seminary saw itself, and its denomination, split. The conservative wing held unswervingly to the Old School tradition championed by Hodge, and ultimately founded the breakaway Orthodox Presbyterian Church. The views that Hodge developed, refined, and propagated helped shape many of the central traditions of twentieth- and twenty-first-century American evangelicalism. Hodge helped establish a profound reliance on the Bible among Evangelicals, and he became one of the nation's most vocal proponents of biblical inerrancy. Gutjahr's study reveals the exceptional depth, breadth, and longevity of Hodge's theological influence and illuminates the varied and complex nature of conservative American Protestantism.

Presbyterianism emerged during the sixteenth-century Protestant Reformation. It spread from the British Isles to North America in the early eighteenth century. During the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, Presbyterian denominations grew throughout the world. Today, there are an estimated 35 million Presbyterians in dozens of countries. The Oxford Handbook of Presbyterianism provides a state of the art reference tool written by leading scholars in the fields of religious studies and history. These thirty five articles cover major facets of Presbyterian history, theological beliefs, worship practices, ecclesiastical forms and structures, as well as important ethical, political, and educational issues. Eschewing parochial and sectarian triumphalism, prominent scholars address their particular topics objectively and judiciously.

In an exciting reinterpretation of the early nineteenth century, Leo Hirrel demonstrates the importance of religious ideas by exploring the relationship between religion and reform efforts during a crucial period in American history. The result is a work that moves the history of antebellum reform to a higher level of sophistication. Hirrel focuses upon New School Congregationalists and Presbyterians who served at the forefront of reform efforts and provided critical leadership to anti-Catholic, temperance, antislavery, and missionary movements. Their religion was an attempt to reconcile traditional Calvinist language with the prevalent intellectual trends of the time. New School theologians preserved Calvinist language about depravity, but they incorporated an assertion of nominal human ability to overcome sin and a belief in the fixed, immutable nature of truth. Describing both the origins of New School Calvinism and the specific reform activities that grew out of these beliefs, Hirrel provides a fresh perspective on the historical background of religious controversies.

Essays discuss proslavery arguments in the churches, the urge toward compromise and unity, the coming of schisms in the various denominations, and the role of local conditions in determining policies

This study examines how the rise of liberal and fundamentalist factions of American evangelicalism in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries - a dispute usually assumed to be basically theological - appeared from the perspective of the ministers and congregations of New York City's Protestant churches. The rise of liberalism and fundamentalism cannot be understood apart from their interaction with the social and cultural forces of the changing modern city - and particularly, their interaction with the welter of reform movements the advent of modernity inaugurated, usually called progressivism.