In one of our earliest descriptions of meditation on the crucifix, Aelred of Rievaulx (d.1166) described the body on the cross, pierced by the soldier's lance, as food and urged the female recluses for whom he wrote not only to contemplate it but also to eat it in gladness: “Hasten, linger not, eat the honeycomb with your honey, drink your wine with your milk. The blood is changed into wine to inebriate you, the water into milk to nourish you.” Marsha Dutton, who has written so movingly of Cistercian piety, speaks of this as a eucharistic interpretation of the literal, physical reality of the crucifixion and points to the parallel with Berengar of Tours' oath at the synod of Rome in 1079: “The bread and wine which are placed on the altar … are changed substantially into the true and proper vivifying body and blood of Jesus Christ our Lord and after the consecration there are the true body of Christ which was born of the virgin … and the true blood of Christ which flowed from his side … in their real nature and true substance.”

In 1563, just five years after Elizabeth ascended to the throne, John Foxe published the first edition of his Acts and Monuments. Part ecclesiastical history, part martyrology, part English chronicle, and entirely Protestant, this enormously popular work had a significant impact upon its age. The dedicatory letter to the Queen in this first edition begins with an elaborate woodcut of the letter C, in which Elizabeth sits enthroned. [See Figure 1.] This C is the beginning of the word “Constantine.” Foxe writes: “Constantine the greate and mightie Emperour, the sonne of Helene an Englyshe woman of this youre Realme and countrie (moste Christian and renowned Pryncesse Queene Elizabeth) … pacified and established the churche of Christ, being long before under persecution almost … 400 years” (1563 Pref. vi). Thus Foxe immediately emphasizes the supposed Englishness of Constantine and builds upon this link between Rome and Britain by implying that, just as Constantine had delivered the Christians from an age of persecution, so had Elizabeth. But there is another parallel that Foxe is interested in establishing, at which he hints as the letter continues. Foxe tells the story of how Constantine once traveled to Caesaria, where he promised to grant Eusebius, the Bishop, whatever he wanted for the good of the church: “The good and godly Byshop … made this petition, onely to obtaine at his maiesties hand under his seale and letters autentique, free leave and license through al the monarchie of Rome … to searche out the names, sufferinges and actes, of all such as suffered in al that time of persecution before, for the testimonie and faith of Christ Jesus” (1563 Pref., vi).

Leopold von Ranke is probably best known for his dictum that written history must mirror the past wie es eigentlich gewesen. Practicing historians nonetheless know that even the greatest masters of their craft inevitably bring their own histories with them to their work. As a case in point, two decades ago Robert M. Kingdon observed in his address as incoming President of the American Society of Church History that students of the Catholic Reformation tend to focus their attention on institutions and practices, while Protestants and Lutherans in particular give center stage to the history of doctrine. Both, faithful to their own traditions, therefore produce a church history manqué that would benefit from combining the methods, presuppositions, and findings of the two approaches.

The Church of England, being the state church of an imperial nation of diverse peoples and creeds, had to contend with provocative controversies in the early twentieth century leading up to the First World War. Perhaps the greatest was secularization, which gained momenturn in the previous century.2 The last fifty years of the nineteenth century proved threatening for church leaders. Horace Mann's 1851 religious census in England and Wales, although controversial, insinuated church attendance was much lower in Great Britain than previously perceived. Causing more anxiety, the State Church consistently lost authority over many of its traditions, including administering burial grounds and the last rights ceremony.3 Additionally Ecclesiastical courts gave up authority to the civic courts of British society.

In 1895, Wilbur F. Crafts opened on office in Washington, D.C. and proclaimed himself a Christian lobbyist. Over the next quarter century, until his death in 1922, he mobilized churches and individual Christians to pressure Congress on behalf of bills, some he had written, to limit divorce, to control sexuality, and to restrict or prohibit the use of narcotics and alcohol. He also led an unsuccessful campaign for federal censorship of the movies. Crafts deserves more attention than historians of American religion have paid him. His legislative accomplishments render his career important in itself, but an analysis of his theology and lobbying efforts also helps historians better conceptualize social Christianity and the social gospel.

In a 1999 speech at the Yale Law School, former Christian Coalition executive director Ralph Reed was asked to explain how school vouchers could be constitutional. The questioner argued that voucher programs that allowed government money to be used at religious schools would violate the constitutional separation of church and state. In reply, Reed argued, in part, that the voucher system was really nothing new. He failed to see the difference, he said, between the program he was advocating and an earlier program under which the federal government had paid for hundreds of thousands of individuals to go to religious schools. That program, he said, was the G.I. Bill.

Like David Hollinger I think that the history of secularization, or as he prefers, de-Christianization, has been unduly avoided and might well be at the center of contemporary American historiography. As he says, this ought to bring religious history more into the mainstream. But I would like to develop some of his points in a different way than he does in the recent “Perspectives” section in Church History. Our differences derive from the fact that he sees secularization as a default value, the absence of a distraction, whereas I focus on secularism, something substantial and ideological. I hope that adopting that perspective may make sense of his main puzzle, which is why religion “persists” in America even though it has lost all the recent debates. Indeed I would like to turn his question around, to suggest that secularism is failing and that we should start thinking in terms of a “post-secular” society. This could mean, contrary to Hollinger's implication, that America is not lagging in this area but might be “ahead” of Europe.

If we are going to explain the slow pace of de-Christianization for the United States relative to other industrialized societies in the North Atlantic West, we might well begin with the church-state relationship. The absence of an established church in the United States has enabled religious affiliation to function, like other voluntary organizations in “civil society,” as mediators between the individual and the nation. I conimented on this rather old idea in a book C. John Sommerville is kind enough to cite in another connection, Science, Jews, and Secular Culture, but since he does not take up this point, I will develop it a bit further here, before reacting to Sommerville's other concerns as expressed in his refreshingly fair-minded rejoinder to my essay in the March 2001 issue of Church History.