Awards

• Winner of Honorable Mention, Frank S. and Elizabeth D. Brewer Prize (American Society of Church History).

Overview

In Saving Faith, David Mislin chronicles the transformative historical moment when Americans began to reimagine their nation as one strengthened by the diverse faiths of its peoples. Between 1875 and 1925, liberal Protestant leaders abandoned religious exclusivism and leveraged their considerable cultural influence to push others to do the same. This reorientation came about as an ever-growing group of Americans found their religious faith under attack on social, intellectual, and political fronts. A new generation of outspoken agnostics assailed the very foundation of belief, while noted intellectuals embraced novel spiritual practices and claimed that Protestant Christianity had outlived its usefulness. Faced with these grave challenges, Protestant clergy and their allies realized that the successful defense of religion against secularism required a defense of all religious traditions. They affirmed the social value-and ultimately the religious truth-of Catholicism, Judaism, Hinduism, Buddhism, and Islam. They also came to view doubt and uncertainty as expressions of faith. Ultimately, the reexamination of religious difference paved the way for Protestant elites to reconsider ethnic, racial, and cultural difference. Using the manuscript collections and correspondence of leading American Protestants, as well the institutional records of various churches and religious organizations, Mislin offers insight into the historical constructions of faith and doubt, the interconnected relationship of secularism and pluralism, and the enormous influence of liberal Protestant thought on the political, cultural, and spiritual values of the twentieth-century United States.

Full Product Details

9780801453946

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Reviews

Saving Faith is a wonderful book that explores how establishment Protestants wrestled with the emergence of secularism, atheism, agnosticism, and pluralism in nineteenth-century America. David Mislin's focus is predominantly on the clergy and other leaders of the liberal mainline churches, and so he has produced an intellectual history as well as a political and religious history. In weaving together these three closely related but distinct subfields, Mislin has produced a work of remarkable originality and insight. -Andrew Preston, Cambridge University, author of Sword of the Spirit, Shield of Faith: Religion in American War and Diplomacy

Author Information

David Mislin is Assistant Professor in the Intellectual Heritage Program at Temple University.

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