Only a few months after Calvin's death, August 1564 to be precise, Theodore Beza composed a preface for the posthumous French edition of Calvin's commentary on the book of Joshua: it took the form of a brief biography of the reformer. Describing the death of Calvin, Beza recalled the sadness that invaded Geneva on the announcement of the death of the prophet of God: “The following night, and the day after as well, there was much weeping in the city. For the body of the city mourned the prophet of the Lord, the poor flock of the Church wept the departure of its faithful shepherd, the school lamented the loss of its true doctor and master, and all in general wept for their true father and consoler, after God.”

It may appear absurd to link a thinker of Christian antiquity with the peoples of early modern North America. The Bishop of Hippo (354–430) was not particularly interested in evangelization beyond the Mediterranean world. While he encouraged the proselytization of the tribes of North Africa, Augustine rejected the possibility of “New Worlds” as “on no grounds credible” for lack of scriptural warrant. His achievement, some thousand years before Columbus, was to provide the authoritative account of religious conversion as well as the intellectual foundations for Christian spirituality. This legacy was not well suited, however, to deal with problems raised by contact with “new” peoples of the Americas. It had little to say about the “nature” of these “savage” peoples as well as the prospects for their conversion. Augustinian theology emphasizes relations between God and self, in contrast to the approach identified with Thomas Aquinas, which asserts the possibility of finding God in the world and propels inquiry in that direction. Augustine's sense of the corruption of fallen humankind and the powerlessness of nature without God would appear to discourage any but the most morbid interest in New World peoples.

Most American scholars are reasonably well aware of the contributions of Thomas Jefferson (and his younger colleague, James Madison) to the establishment of the legal framework for religious freedom in the United States. Perhaps many are less aware of Jefferson's “second life” in the Supreme Court's several encounters with Jefferson and with the religion clauses of the First Amendment. This article will, first, review briefly Jefferson's lifelong commitment to religious liberty, which he regarded as the foundation of all liberties. Second, attention will be given to Supreme Court decisions in this troubled arena, with some comment on Jefferson's continued relevance—to use a tame and tired word—within the contemporary American scene.

Thirty years ago Alan Heimert published his monumental study of religion's relationship to the American Revolution. Religion and the American Mind: From the Great Awakening to the Revolution contradicted the conventional wisdom rooted in Vernon Parrington's 1927 Main Currents of American Thought and implicitly challenged the more recent interpretation put forward by Heimert's own mentor, Perry Miller. Critics responded vigorously, but their reproofs did not foretell the future of Heimert's argument. Indeed, in the past twenty years a cadreof young scholars assumed either his thesis or method and moved the debate toward the personalities and movements Heimert underscored. Some of today's leading scholars who study connections between the revivals and the Revolution pay homage to Heimert's thought in footnotes if not in the texts themselves. Two social/intellectual movements seemingly at cross-purposes, namely Protestant evangelicalism and the new cultural history, rescued Heimert's work from scathing yet well-placed criticisms to establish its assertions as a leading model for understanding religion's role in the American Revolution.

Hours before dark on a lazy summer afternoon in the mid-1990s, cars arrived in a long unbroken line that connected a rural two-lane highway to an unpaved parking lot. Seasonal thunderstorms and churning steel-belted radials combined to turn the meadow for overflow parking into a muddied mess. Still, some six thousand emerged from those vehicles and made their way toward a rustic fairgrounds stage. After displaying a ticket, they chose a spot, set up a few lawn chairs, and settled in for a long evening of entertainment and worship—making little to no distinction between the two. Each fan paid twelve dollars apiece to attend this gospel music event held just outside Boone, North Carolina, a small tourist community in the remote mountainous region of the state. All in all, few could complain about the price; the evening program featured five major groups, four with songs in Southern Gospel Music's Top 80 Hits monthly chart.