In the Beginning Was the Word
The Bible in American Public Life, 1492-1783
The Bible in American Public Life, 1492-1783
In the beginning of American history, the Word was in Spanish, Latin, and native languages like Nahuatal. But while Spanish and Catholic Christianity reached the New World in 1492, it was only with settlements in the seventeenth century that English-language Bibles and Protestant Christendom arrived. The Puritans brought with them intense devotion to Scripture, as well as their ideal of Christendom -- a civilization characterized by a thorough intermingling of the Bible with everything else. That ideal began this country's journey from the Puritan's City on a Hill to the Bible-quoting country the U.S. is today. In the Beginning Was the Word shows how important the Bible remained, even as that Puritan ideal changed considerably through the early stages of American history. Author Mark Noll shows how seventeenth-century Americans received conflicting models of scriptural authority from Europe: the Bible under Christendom (high Anglicanism), the Bible over Christendom (moderate Puritanism), and the Bible against Christendom (Anabaptists, enthusiasts, Quakers). In the eighteenth century, the colonists turned increasingly to the Bible against Christendom, a stance that fueled the Revolution against Anglican Britain and prepared the way for a new country founded on the separation of church and state. One of the foremost scholars of American Christianity, Mark Noll brings a wealth of research and wisdom to In the Beginning Was the Word, providing a sweeping, engaging, and insightful survey of the relationship between the Bible and public issues from the beginning of European settlement. A seminal new work from a world-class scholar, this book offers a fresh account of the contested, sometimes ambiguous, but definite biblical roots of American history.
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Short Review: Noll is pretty much always helpful in understanding the complexity of history. Many people like historians to simplify but history isn't simple. This review of how early colonial Americans (and to a lesser extent Catholic Spanish and Canadian colonialists) understood and used scripture is helpful. Quotes from early american religious or political leaders come up all the time in modern politics, but Noll does a good job placing those types of quotes in context. This is a broad look, not just New England. And Noll hits on many areas, slavery, understanding of the US destiny, relationship to Native Americans, political and religious diversity and leadership and more.
I read this in conversation with God of Liberty: A Religious History of the American Revolution by Thomas Kidd. They were attempting different things, so even when there was overlapping discussion on the same sermons or documents, the orientation was different. I do think this should be read by many that are interested in the question of whether the United States was founded as a Christian country or not. (The answer is that, it is complicated.)
My full review is on my blog at http://bookwi.se/in-the-beginning/
