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The Problem of Christian Unity in Early Nineteenth-Century America*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 July 2009

Lefferts A. Loetscher
Lefferts A. Loetscher
Affiliation:
Princeton Theological Seminary
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Extract

American Protestants in the early nineteenth century faced intellectual and social challenge which made conspicuous the weakness of their own divided condition. The American Revolution—which was part of a larger upheaval in the Atlantic Community—had spread Enlightenment ideas, with their aggressive attack on orthodoxy. Quite typical was the lament of a convention of Massachusetts Congregational ministers in 1799 over “the present decay of Christian morals and piety, and the awful prevalence of speculative and practical infidelity.” Well before the middle eighteen-thirties the tide of deism had ebbed, but some, like the editors of the new Christian Review, were still building sea walls against it.

Type
Research Article
Information
Church History , Volume 32 , Issue 1 , March 1963 , pp. 3 - 16
Copyright
Copyright © American Society of Church History 1963

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