Mark A. Noll

In this book Mark Noll revisits the history of the American church in the context of world events. He makes the case that how Americans have come to practice the Christian faith is just as globally important as what the American church has done in the world. He backs up this claim, lucidly explaining the relationship between the development of Christianity in North America and the development of Christianity in the rest of the world, with attention to recent transfigurations in world Christianity. -- from publisher description

xii, 209 p. : 23 cm

"Mark A. Noll is McManis Professor of Christian Thought at Wheaton College in Wheaton, Illinois."--BOOK JACKET.

"This book is intended to provide insights for evangelicals, and even more so for those who are not, into the meaning of evangelical activities, aspirations, and ideologies throughout American history. It provides a fascinating insight into a stream of religion which now exerts a considerable social, political, and cultural force."--BOOK JACKET.

Discusses the origins of Protestantism, the diversity of Protestant churches in the United States, and the role of Protestants in American life from colonial times to the present.

"The scandal of the evangelical mind is that there is not much of an evangelical mind." So begins this award-winning intellectual history and critique of the evangelical movement by one of evangelicalism's most respected historians. Unsparing in his judgment, Mark Noll ask why the largest single group of religious Americans -- who enjoy increasing wealth, status, and political influence -- have contributed so little to rigorous intellectual scholarship in North America. In nourishing believers in the simple truths of the gospel, why have evangelicals failed at sustaining a serious intellectual life and abandoned the universities, the arts, and other realms of "high" culture? Noll is probing and forthright in his analysis of how this situation came about, but he doesn't end there. Challenging the evangelical community, he sets out to find, within evangelicalism itself, resources for turning the situation around. - Publisher.

When Christians understand the religious history of the United States, with its close connection to political history, they are better prepared to make knowledgable [sic] contributions to the current discussion of national values, priorities and purposes. Christians in the American Revolution begins with a brief survey of the political and religious background of the pre-Revolutionary years. Th e author then examines the influence of various religious convictions on the movement for independence and, conversely, the effect of the Revolution on colonial church bodies and their understanding of Christian truth. Colonial Christians responded in four major ways to the Revolution: they supported complete freedom in politics and religion; they advocated social and political reform; they called for submission to English authority; and they argued against involvement of Christians in the war effort. Whether Patriot, Reformer, Loyalist or Pacifist, American Christian colonials influenced not only the fledgling nation, but the development of religious thought to the present. This revised edition includes a new bibliographic essay detailing contributions to this field since the first edition was published in 1977. - back of book