While it is true that the social gospel of Walter Rauschenbusch is more than the religious strain of the progressive movement, there is no doubt that he sought a christianized social order, one in “harmony with the ethical convictions which we identify with Christ.” And he was much concerned with the Kingdom of God, the “growing perfection in the collective life of humanity, in our laws, in the customs of society, in the institutions for education, and of the administration of mercy.”

Recent Puritan historiography has stressed the characteristics peculiar to the New England churches during the 1630's and 1640's. Historians have noted that while the Puritan church was the central religious institution in a religiously oriented society, it did not have the same importance for its members that the Roman Catholic church, for example, has for its communicants. Since the Puritans believed that God had irrevocably predetermined who would be saved and who damned, they did not need their churches to insure salvation. On the contrary, rather than being a means of gaining salvation, Puritan theory clearly defined the church as a fellowship of those already saved under covenant with God. By excluding all others the New England Puritans attempted to narrow the apparently inevitable gap between the visible and the invisible. In a world where salvation belonged to a minority and where man could do nothing to change his spiritual state, the Puritan church, these historians continue, was not an institution which included all those living within a certain geographical area, such as a parish, or even all the obviously pious within such an area.

Students of American historiography value the latter part of the nineteenth century as a period in which distinctive ideas about the nature and procedures of historical research became explicit. More specifically, it was an era when the scholarly world was greatly influenced by the ideal of scientific objectivity and exactitude. Rapid advances in scientific theory and practical application in the post-war industrial boom set a standard for reliable knowledge in all fields. In that general enthusiasm for scientific precision several practicing historians tried to align their craft with the dominant criteria of their day in hopes of winning added respect and integrity for historical writing. The acceptance of that standard in the realm of historio-graphical theory produced significant repercussions in current ideas about church history, an area which until that time had been considered a separate field of inquiry. The decades between 1884 and 1896 mark a watershed in American thought, a transition from historical sensitivity at once patriotic and hagiographical to a discipline self-consciously, perhaps naively, tied to documentary evidence. But, beyond the popular rubric of faithfulness to the written record, there was a great debate over both the possible interpretations allowed by accumulated data and the final purpose of historical information. Such questions were especially relevant to church historians because they often answered the latter query before the former. The conflicting opinions, articulated by a fresh generation of European-trained scholars, broached questions about the historian's task that continue to be pertinent today. Contemporaneous problems besetting all historians came into open conflict in this earlier period, and serious dilemmas still confront us.

The fate of Fundamentalism in historiography has been worse than its lot in history. The whirlwind of the twenties, after twisting through the denominations, ended by tearing even the name to shreds. Who were the Fundamentalists? Few today will use the name, and there seems to be no unity among those that do.