So far as religious affairs are concerned, the colonial period of our history begins with the planting of the first permanent English colony in 1607, guided by the intention to perpetuate in the new land the religious patterns to which the mother country had grown accustomed. Chief of these for our purposes was uniformity enforced by the civil power. The period culminates just 180 years later with the complete rejection of this central intention in the provisions for national religious freedom in the Constitution (1787) and First Amendment (1791).

I have been told that when Charles de Gaulle was asked what something he had said would mean to an ordinary Frenchman, he replied, "I do not know, I'm not an ordinary Frenchman." Similarly, I suppose I am not an ordinary reader of this book, A Religious History of the American People (Yale University Press; 1158 + xvi pp.; $19.95), but one who has for many years been surveying the same hills and valleys that Sydney Ahlstrom has traversed with camera and notebook. But while I have worked more as a topographer with the hope of making a usable map for the guidance of any who might wish to follow, Ahlstrom has pulled together an imposing slide show of the terrain and its inhabitants—a travelogue made up of thousands of discrete snapshots given unity primarily by the fact that all were taken by the same historically conditioned person.

The apt phrase, “a nation with the soul of a church” was coined by G. K. Chesterton in answer to his question, “What Is America?” the title of the autobiographical essay in which he relates how he came to appreciate what the United States was all about. Being irked, and then amused by the kinds of questions asked him when he applied for entrance into the United States, he was led to ask what is it that “makes America peculiar?” He concluded that it was the fact that

America is the only nation in the world that is founded on a creed. That creed is set forth with dogmatic and even theological lucidity in The Declaration of Independence… It enunciates that all men are equal in their claim to justice, and that governments exist to give them that justice, and that their authority is for that reason just. It certainly does condemn anarchism, and it does also by inference condemn atheism, since it clearly names the Creator as the ultimate authority from whom these equal rights are derived.

History and church history are disciplines well entrenched in the schools. This means that church historians commonly have an unquestioned place in theological school faculties. Hence there is little incentive for them to become self-conscious or troubled about the reason-for-being either of the discipline or of themselves. Probably church history is always included in the curriculum more from habit than because there is an articulated rationale for it. I dare say that many church historians if asked the question “Why have church history in the curriculums” would reply in effect that its place is obvious, and if one cannot see the obvious it is hopeless to try to explain it to him.

I think it would be hard to overestimate the importance of such discussions as we are carrying on. From the beginning I was thrilled at the idea of being part of such a group. Historians are so commonly blamed, and I suppose rightly so in many cases, for encouraging and accentuating the differences between peoples and nations and groups that it is good for them to come together to discuss their common ground. Here I suppose, of all the possible topics, religion is most important. Every historian must begin with some conception of what is most important for human life, and this will condition all his work. And this suggests a form of exploration for each of us, at least privately. For with all our differences of background and understanding the fact that we are here suggests that we do believe it is important that such groups come together to discuss these matters. And this at least implies our conception of what really is “the last, best hope of earth.”

So far as religious affairs are concerned, the colonial period of our history begins with the planting of the first permanent English colony in 1607, guided by the intention to perpetuate in the new land the religious patterns to which the mother country had grown accustomed. Chief of these for our purposes was uniformity enforced by the civil power. The period culminates just 180 years later with the complete rejection of this central intention in the provisions for national religious freedom in the Constitution (1787) and First Amendment (1791).

The Christianity which developed in the United States [after 1800] was unique. It displayed features which marked it as distinct from previous Christianity in any other land. In the nineteenth and twentieth centuries the Christianity of Canada most nearly resembled it, but even that was not precisely like it.

Our freer, but yet far from freed, land is the asylum, if asylum there be, for the hope of man; and, there, if anywhere, is the second Eden to be planted in which the divine seed is to bruise the head of Evil and restore Man to his rightful communion with God in the Paradise of Good.