Brave New World: Protestant America

Sources: Mark Noll, A History of Christianity in the United States and Canada (Eerdmans, 1992); Jane Shaw, "The Late Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries," in Richard Harries and Hnry Mayr-Harting, eds., Christianity: Two Thousand Years (Oxford, 2001); Brian Moynahan, The Faith (Doubleday, 2000).

Reading: 2 Cor. 6:14-7:1.

Cities of Refuge
America becomes a land of nonconformist and oddball refugees (Baptists, Quakers, English Catholics, Presbyterians, English Unitarians, Moravians, Reformed, Pietists, Shakers)
American Puritans try to create a new Calvinist 'Israel' from scratch (Jonathan Edwards)
Christian variety creates "denominational" Christian pluralism; establishment is unattractive

The Early Modern Framework
English empiricism (Locke, Hume) informs America's high philosophy
Paine, Jefferson, Franklin make Christianity "reasonable" as Deism
The Founding Fathers establish a generic, uninstitutional "God" as America's patron
A new Constantinian identity: denominations support the framework's (limited) tolerance

Dynamic: Mission and Renewal
French Catholics and English Protestants send a few missions to indigenous Americans
Great Awakenings, Pietism, Wesleyan sanctification, and American revivalism bring open air meetings, door-to-door evangelism, circuit-riding, Holiness movements to American life
Southern faith moves from advocating mere obedience to evangelizing and baptizing slaves
The southern black Church and white Church become engines of national renewal
Social reform (education, mercy, Abolition, Temperance) drives social innovation (women's participation, new Christian institutions)
These movements often conflict with the rationalistic, pluralistic, elitist official ideology