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The history of the Diocese of Pennsylvania is in many ways a history of the Episcopal Church at large. It remains one of the largest and most influential dioceses in the national church. Its story has paralleled and illustrated the challenges and accomplishments of the wider denomination—and of issues that concern the American people as a whole. In This Far by Faith, ten professional historians provide the first complete history of the Diocese of Pennsylvania. It will become essential reading for anyone wishing to understand the history and significance of the Episcopal Church and of its evolution in the Greater Philadelphia area. Aside from the editor, the contributors are Charles Cashdollar, Marie Conn, William W. Cutler III, Deborah Mathias Gough, Ann Greene, Sheldon Hackney, Emma J. Lapsansky-Werner, William Pencak, and Thomas F. Rzeznik.
American Episcopalians have long prided themselves on their love of consensus and their position as the church of American elites. They have, in the process, often forgotten that during the nineteenth century their church was racked by a divisive struggle that threatened to tear apart the very fabric of the Episcopal Church. On one side of this struggle was a powerful and aggressive Evangelical party who hoped to make the Episcopal Church into the democratic head of "the sisterhood of Evangelical Churches" in America; on the other side was the Oxford Movement, equally powerful and aggressive but committed to a range of Romantic principles which celebrated disillusion and disgust with evangel...
The author of The American Creed tells “the story of our nation’s historical encounters with God and culture” (Peter J. Gomes, New York Times bestselling author). Today’s dispute over the line between church and state (or the lack thereof) is neither the first nor the fiercest in our history. In a revelatory look at our nation’s birth, Forrest Church recreates our first great culture war—a tumultuous, nearly forgotten conflict that raged from George Washington’s presidency to James Monroe’s. Religion was the most divisive issue in the nation’s early presidential elections. Battles raged over numerous issues while the bible and the Declaration of Independence competed for Am...
A history of mainline Protestant responses to immigrants and refugees during the twentieth century Open Hearts, Closed Doors uncovers the largely overlooked role that liberal Protestants played in fostering cultural diversity in America and pushing for new immigration laws during the forty years following the passage of the restrictive Immigration Act of 1924. These efforts resulted in the complete reshaping of the US cultural and religious landscape. During this period, mainline Protestants contributed to the national debate over immigration policy and joined the charge for immigration reform, advocating for a more diverse pool of newcomers. They were successful in their efforts, and in 196...
“Anglo-Catholic” is not an abstract label for Father Gordon Butler Wadhams, the vibrant personality whose life is narrated and whose writings are anthologized here. In the Episcopal (Anglican) Church, Anglo-Catholicism attracts, repels, confuses, and has a variety of meanings that Wadhams sorted out across the years as an Episcopal and a Roman Catholic priest. Joseph F. Byrnes here presents and clarifies his writings on the church and ecumenism, the liturgy, the Bible, and Christian mission. The lifelong Anglo-Catholic vocation of Gordon Wadhams was marked by inspiring family experiences, enlivened by his own youthful experiments with churchgoing and focused by his friends and mentors, Episcopal and Catholic. His timeline cannot be our own, but it serves as a template for our own search to understand how the church is built up by ecumenism, how its liturgy develops by acculturation of timeless traditions, how it valorizes the biblical writings for each generation, and how it inspires the rejection of war, elimination of racism, and dedication to the intellectual and physical well-being of all.
Few topics are as pertinent to the American political scene as immigration. This timely book examines the attitude of American Evangelical Protestants toward European immigration into the United States before the Immigration Act of 1924. Of particular interest are the effects, as seen by evangelicals, that immigration had in the cities, in education, in politics, and in the evangelical quest to win the prohibition of alcohol. It also addresses the rise of the 19th century evangelical's main ethnic opponent, the Irish immigrant, and the Irish dominance of the American Catholic Church. The text is based largely upon the writings, speeches, and sermons of evangelicalism.
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The first comprehensive biography of Elihu Palmer tells the life story of a freethinker who was at the heart of the early United States' protracted contest over religious freedom and free speech. When the United States was new, a lapsed minister named Elihu Palmer shared with his fellow Americans the radical idea that virtue required no religious foundation. A better source for morality, he said, could be found in the natural world: the interconnected web of life that inspired compassion for all living things. Religions that deny these universal connections should be discarded, he insisted. For this, his Christian critics denounced him as a heretic whose ideas endangered the country. Althoug...