Claims concerning the foundations of knowledge and the nature of reality have played a central role in American religious discourse. For that reason many participants in that discourse have engaged in a lively, often spirited interaction with philosophical thought. This was especially the case in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, when profound changes in American cultural and intellectual life resulted in challenges to prevailing doctrines and traditional sources of religious authority. In responding to those changes, many theologians, clergy, and learned laypeople found themselves drawing on the resources of philosophy in formulating and defending their worldviews.

For much of the period between 1865 and 1945 the engagement of American religious thinkers with philosophical reflection and analysis was motivated primarily by a desire to come to grips with the implications of modern science. By the second half of the nineteenth century scientists had become quite successful in describing phenomena in terms of intelligible natural laws, and many enthusiastic supporters of their efforts saw no reason to doubt that the reign of order pervaded the entire universe. Just as importantly, even pious members of the scientific community were coming to believe that “it is the aim of science to narrow the domain of the supernatural, by bringing all phenomena within the scope of natural laws and secondary causes.”