The publication of a major reference work in any field of interest is always a welcome event. The three-volume Encyclopedia of the American Religious Experience: Studies of Traditions and Movements, edited by Charles H. Lippy and Peter W. Williams (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1988), is no exception. It is welcome for the authoritative up-to-date information it supplies, and it is doubly welcome for its new conception in design, format, and scope. Unlike many encyclopedias, it is not an alphabetical compendium of many brief entries dealing with narrowly defined topics or very specific items. Instead, this new encyclopedia is composed of 106 essays (mostly fourteen to sixteen large double-column pages in length, with some as long as twenty-eight pages) ranging over a broad spectrum of themes, traditions, movements, and preoccupations of“the American religious experience.” Little is neglected. While the volumes are not arranged for ready reference use, provision is made for this aspect of more convetional encyclopedias by an unusually good index which helps one locate information on a wide variety of subject matter, both past and present. The focus on the broad aspects of religion in America more than compensates for the absence of any readily available alphabetized items of information.

For more than fifty years the Weber thesis, which attributed to Calvinism a decisive influence in the development of modern capitalism, has been vigorously debated. In his celebrated essay, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Calvinism (1904), Max Weber had suggested that Calvinism contributed to the rise of capitalism in various ways—by relaxing the restraints which hitherto had largely served to impede its growth; by fostering the economic virtues of diligence, frugality, honesty, prudence, and sobriety; and, most of all, by providing a psychological fillip to the development of the “spirit” of capitalism, “the temper of single-minded concentration upon pecuniary gain.” The controversy precipitated by the publication of Weber's essay engendered considerable heat that often served to obscure the points at issue, but over the years the continuing discussion has served to remove many of the issues from the area of debate and to narrow the focus of the central issue that remains.

A striking feature of religious life in the United States has been the strength and vitality of the black churches. How is the distinctive character of these churches, as well as their strength and vitality, to be explained and understood?

A review in the New York Times observed that “the church abandoned the Negro in the 19th century and took up Hugh Hefner in the 20th. Churchmen in America have always been followers instead of leaders.” While this wry comment is not entirely true, it has enough truth to keep clergymen from undue selfesteem. It is clear, on the other hand, that churchmen on occasion have been leaders as well as followers. An equally wry comment attributed to Lincoln Steffens provides a clue to the clergy's leadership role. Americans, Steffens remarked, never learned to do wrong knowingly. Whenever they compromised with principle, they had to find a pious justification for it. Clerical leadership was especially prominent in the period prior to World War I, since this was a time when the American public looked to the pulpit for its pious justifications.