A01=Margaret Bendroth
Author_Margaret Bendroth
Calvinism in American culture
Category=NHK
Category=QRAX
Category=QRMB3
Congregational church polity
Congregational churches
Congregationalism
Council for Social Action
denominational mergers
Douglas Horton
eq_bestseller
eq_history
eq_isMigrated=1
eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
Henry Martyn Dexter
mainline Protestantism
New England in American culture
Pilgrims and Puritans in historical memory
Protestant denominationalism
Protestant ecumenism
religion and historicism
religious tolerance in American culture
theological liberalism
United Church of Christ
Williston Walker
Product details
- ISBN 9781469624006
- Weight: 385g
- Dimensions: 233 x 154mm
- Publication Date: 28 Oct 2015
- Publisher: The University of North Carolina Press
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Paperback
Secure
checkout
Fast Shipping
Easy returns
Congregationalists, the oldest group of American Protestants, are the heirs of New England's first founders. While they were key characters in the story of early American history, from Plymouth Rock and the founding of Harvard and Yale to the Revolutionary War, their luster and numbers have faded. But Margaret Bendroth's critical history of Congregationalism over the past two centuries reveals how the denomination is essential for understanding mainline Protestantism in the making.
Bendroth chronicles how the New England Puritans, known for their moral and doctrinal rigor, came to be the antecedents of the United Church of Christ, one of the most liberal of all Protestant denominations today. The demands of competition in the American religious marketplace spurred Congregationalists, Bendroth argues, to face their distinctive history. By engaging deeply with their denomination's storied past, they recast their modern identity. The soul-searching took diverse forms - from letter writing to eloquent sermonizing to Pilgrim-celebrating Thanksgiving pageants - as Congregationalists renegotiated old obligations to their seventeenth-century spiritual ancestors. The result was a modern piety that stood a respectful but ironic distance from the past and made a crucial contribution to the American ethos of religious tolerance.
Bendroth chronicles how the New England Puritans, known for their moral and doctrinal rigor, came to be the antecedents of the United Church of Christ, one of the most liberal of all Protestant denominations today. The demands of competition in the American religious marketplace spurred Congregationalists, Bendroth argues, to face their distinctive history. By engaging deeply with their denomination's storied past, they recast their modern identity. The soul-searching took diverse forms - from letter writing to eloquent sermonizing to Pilgrim-celebrating Thanksgiving pageants - as Congregationalists renegotiated old obligations to their seventeenth-century spiritual ancestors. The result was a modern piety that stood a respectful but ironic distance from the past and made a crucial contribution to the American ethos of religious tolerance.
Margaret Bendroth is executive director of the Congregational Library and Archives in Boston, USA. She is the author of Fundamentalism and Gender, 1875 to the Present, among other books.
