City on the Hill and Early American Religion
Reproduced from A History of Christian Theology: An Introduction
by William C. Placher, © 1983 William C. Placher
Indeed I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just.
-- Thomas Jefferson 1
An eighteenth-century Italian visitor named Francesco Caraccioli once remarked that England had sixty different religions, and only one sauce. The mind boggles at what he might have said about the United States, which has supported nearly every religion of the Old World and many more besides.
One could write a history of Christianity in the United States by tracing the rise and development of all its denominations. But that would be a very long book rather than just a chapter. It would also study church politics and organization more than theology. The idea of "denomination" itself, incidentally, really developed in the United States.
In Europe after the Reformation each country tended to have an established "church" and various minority "sects." The United States evolved a more or less equal competition among various "denominations": Catholics, Quakers, Congregationalists, Methodists, and so on. Long lists of such names do not make for interesting history.
This look at theology in the United States will try to focus on intellectual issues that have transcended any particular denomination, and on a few denominations that introduced radically new theological ideas.
The following extracts are presented for educational purposes only. The owner retains all rights. This has been broken into individual sections for easier reading.
Reproduced from A History of Christian Theology: An Introduction
by William C. Placher, © 1983 William C. Placher
- Introduction
- New England's Covenant with God
- Rational Religion in America
- Christian Revivals on the American Frontier
- Romanticism in America
- Slavery and Black Religion
- Religious Themes Mainpage
- 2017 Website Updates & Deletions
- Web Master Homepage
- Bristol, Southwest Virginia Revealed
- Science & Technology
- Hobby Electronics
- US Constitution
- Christianity 101
- Nazi Roots of Multicultural Racism
- Classical Deist' View of Religion
- Humanism
- Thomas Paine
- Anti-Semitism
- Atheism
- Christian Activism
- Christian Militias
- Assorted topics, etc.
- Zoroastrianism, Judaism, etc.
- Why Christian Morals Need to be Rejected
- Hard Look at Jewish Religious Leftism
- Among the Goths and the Jews
- Leftist War Against Jews
- George Soros the Radical Non-Jewish Jew
- Judeo-Christian Violence vs. Islamic Violence
- When Christianity Pushed Back Muslim Attacks
- Islam the Demise of Classical Civilization
- Plato's Trinity
- Why Judaism Is The Key To Deism
- Judaism and politics
- About Jewish proselytizing