American Denominational History: Perspectives on the Past, Prospects for the Future

(ProQuest: ... denotes non-US-ASCII text omitted.) American Denominational History: Perspectives on the Past, Prospects for the Future is a volume in the Religion and American Culture Series. It is edited by Keith Harper and contains nine essays: "Catholic Distinctiveness and the Challenge of American Denominationalism" by Amy Koehlinger; "New Directions on the Congregational Way" by Margaret Bendroth; "Presbyterians in America: Denominational History and the Quest for Identity" by Sean Michael Lucas; "From the Margin to the Middle to Somewhere In Between: An Overview of American Baptist Historiography" by Keith Harper; "'Everything Arose Just as the Occasion Offered': Defining Methodist Identity through the History of Methodist Piety" by Jennifer L. Woodruff Tait; "Black Protestantism: A Historiographical Appraisal" by Paul Harvey; "Mormon Historiography" by David Whittaker; "Interpreting American Pentecostal Origins: Retrospect and Prospect" by Randall J. Stephens; and "'We're All Evangelicals Now': The Existential and Backward Historiography of Twentieth-Century Evangelicalism" by Barry Hankins.Harper has produced a very valuable book, highly useful for the study of a variety of American religious groups across a wide spectrum of American religious history. There are two problems with it, both involving the title. Consider that neither the title nor subtitle of the book announces its primary content. This is a historiographical study. To be sure, each author offers some historical information about the assigned topic, but the great virtue of the book is not the historical analysis but the often thoughtful review of the studies published on the topic, roughly since the 1950s. The editor may have believed that the phrase in the subtitle, "Perspectives on the Past," sends the historiographical message but it would have been much better to be explicit.The second problem is the term "denominational." The editor's original plan for this volume was to republish William Warren Sweet's classic four-volume Religion on the American Frontier , updating the sources and including historiographical essays on each of Sweet's big four denominations: Baptists, Presbyterians, Congregationalists, and Methodists. The Alabama Press persuaded the editor to create "a single volume of historiographical essays on American denominations" (ix). Unfortunately, the editor decided to use the term "denomination." Only four of the nine chapters are strictly speaking about denominations. Neither American Catholicism nor Mormonism are denominations, and the other three chapters deal with denominations in a general sense. American religion is in the midst of a sea change from denominational or Church history to religious history. The editor notes that but might have been well advised to launch his book into the new seas and call it what it is: a historiographical study of American religious life at the dawn of the twenty-first century.These comments are caveats of regret because the editor's decisions may have limited the audience for the book. Once students interested in modern American religious life pick it up they are in for a treat. While it is true of virtually every multi-author volume that the quality of research and writing varies, the reality of this volume is that the editor chose very able people, many of whom have made serious personal contributions to their subjects. …