Congregationalists, the oldest group of American Protestants, are the heirs of New England's first founders. While they were key characters in the story of early American history, from Plymouth Rock and the founding of Harvard and Yale to the Revolutionary War, their luster and numbers have faded. But Margaret Bendroth's critical history of Congregationalism over the past two centuries reveals how the denomination is essential for understanding mainline Protestantism in the making. Bendroth chronicles how the New England Puritans, known for their moral and doctrinal rigor, came to be the antecedents of the United Church of Christ, one of the most liberal of all Protestant denominations today. The demands of competition in the American religious marketplace spurred Congregationalists, Bendroth argues, to face their distinctive history. By engaging deeply with their denomination's storied past, they recast their modern identity. The soul-searching took diverse forms--from letter writing and eloquent sermonizing to Pilgrim-celebrating Thanksgiving pageants--as Congregationalists renegotiated old obligations to their seventeenth-century spiritual ancestors. The result was a modern piety that stood a respectful but ironic distance from the past and made a crucial contribution to the American ethos of religious tolerance.

A novel, cultural approach to studying mainline denominations. Focusing on each denomination's religious and moral vision--the beliefs, values, symbols, and style that makes it distinct--this book features contributions from a variety of authors, historians, scholars, educators, anthropologists, and liturgists.

The author wrote a compelling story of how the United Church of Christ took shape in the mid-twentieth century. During this time, church unions were a prominent feature of the movement toward Christian unity and secular models of organization dominated denominational development. Charles Shelby Rooks has expanded this classic text by bringing the United Church of Christ story to the forty-year mark. Today the United Church of Christ has grown into a denomination that strives to become a multicultural and multiracial church. Rooks's additional chapter provides reflections on five themes woven throughout the church between 1977 and 1998. The documentation cited will provide helpful guidance to anyone seeking to pursue additional study of the United Church of Christ. An interpretive essay in the history of American Christianity, this book is also a narrative account of the church union process itself. In that respect it is of significance for Protestant Christianity in general.