The social gospel was one of the most productive intellectual movements to originate from American Protestantism. Essentially, the new religious ideology of the late nineteenth century brought the ethical element of Christianity to bear upon the unprecedented problems of social adjustment caused by the rise of an industrial society. It inspired an outpouring of social criticism and reform activity unequalled in the nation's religious experience. The urban-centered problems of slums, crime, political corruption and industrial strife turned progressive-minded churchmen to the mission of social uplift.

In spite of the nativism that agitated the United States during the second quarter of the nineteenth century, the Catholic Church experienced a noticeable drift of native American converts from other denominations. Between 1841 and 1857 the increased number of converts included a significant sprinkling of Protestant ministers. The history of this movement, which had its paradigm in the Oxford Movement, will be treated more in detail elsewhere. The purpose of this essay is simply to recount the attempt by several converts to establish a religious congregation of men dedicated to the Catholic apostolate among native Americans.

The history of the public school affords one significant means of discerning the pattern of evolving church-state relations in the United States. This is true because there have been frequent overlappings of the institutions of the church and the state in the public schools. However, the story deals with more than institutional encounter. The first amendment to the Constitution of the United States does not refer to church and state; it speaks of “an establishment of religion“ and of “the free exercise thereof.” In recent years it has become quite clear that under this language the public schools are on shaky grounds constitutionally whenever they engage in any activity of a religious nature. But the public school has always been looked to as the primary institution for instilling what is common and public in national life and thought—the shared memories and aspirations, loyalties and beliefs. Hence the public school has been confronted with the difficult responsibility of passing on the common traditions and even instilling “a common faith” (Dewey), while not engaging in “an establishment of religion.”

Even the most ardent devotee of ecclesiastical history cannot realistically claim for his special interest a major role in Clio's fraternity in this age of high secularization. Yet it may be said, I believe, that the role is growing rather than diminishing for historians generally as they assess the value of scientific and professional works such as those of the Fliche and Martin series, The Christian Centuries edited by Louis J. Rogier, Roger Aubert, and David Knowles, the successive volumes of Concilium. Theology in The Age of Renewal devoted to ecclesiastical history, and the projected Oxford History of the Christian Church under the guiding hand of Owen Chadwick. And parenthetically at the outset I should like to make it clear that while most of the materials used in this paper are related to the Roman Catholic Church simply because of my greater familiarity with her story, I use the term ‘Christian Church’ in the broadest possible sense to embrace the Protestant, Anglican, and Orthodox communions, as well as that of the Church to which I owe my personal faith and allegiance.

In several articles and books published in recent years attempts have been made to examine the anti-Christian tradition in China and to seek for the causes of the failure of Christianity to substitute itself for the religious and philosophical traditions of the Chinese people. Reflective analyses of missionary policy and strategy, as well as of the Chinese milieu within which missionaries carried on their activities, have been made by theologians, historians and sociologists in order to determine what “went wrong.”

Our text is taken from one of the valuable and important articles by Hans van Campenhausen now presented in English under the title Tradition and Life in the Church. These essays deal with aspects of church life from Easter to the early middle ages and reflect their author's learning and sober judgment on such diverse topics as early Christian aceticism, church order, military service, images, and priesthood (the problem of the character indelebilis). At the beginning of an interesting study of “Augustine and the Fall of Rome.”

Even the most casual reader will be wrenched up short by the title of Giuseppe Luigi Dossetti's superb book, ll Simbolo [!] di Nicea e di Costantinopoli. How is it possible to speak as if Christendom's first two ecumenical councils produced the same creed? One automatically expects i simboli, but Dossetti insists that he means what he says, and, while he relies upon the works of Lebon, Kelly and Ritter for the primary exposition of the theory, he makes his critical edition of the texts and witnesses to the creeds of Nicea and Constantinople go far to support his title's contention.