The Protestant Voice in American Pluralism [Paperback]

MARTIN E. MARTY has taught at the University of Chicago in its Divinity School, its Department of History, and its Committee on the History of Culture. He is the author of more than forty books, including the three-volume Modern American Religion; The One and the Many; Politics, Religion, and the Common Good; and Righteous Empire, which won the National Book Award. Marty has long been associated with the Christian Century as an editor and writer, and he is a past president of the American Academy of Religion, the American Society of Church History, and the American Catholic Historical Association.

For 350 years, Protestantism was the dominant religion in America—and its influence spilled over in many directions into the wider culture. Religious historian Martin E. Marty looks at the factors behind both the long period of Protestant ascendancy in America and the comparatively recent diffusion and diminution of its authority. Marty ranges across time, covering such things as the establishment of the Jamestown settlement in 1607, the 1955 publication of Will Herberg's landmark book Protestant-Catholic-Jew, and the current period of American ethnic and religious pluralism.

For centuries, American Protestantism dominated in three main ways, says Marty: in the sheer numbers of its committed practitioners (spread across some two hundred denominations), in the Protestant leanings of nonadherents, and in the influence of the Protestant ethic in activities as diverse as business and art. To discover what is particularly American about Protestantism in this country, Marty looks at Protestant creencias, or beliefs, that complement or supplement pure doctrine. These include the notion of God as an agent of America’s destiny and the impact of the biblical credos of mission, stewardship, and vocation on innumerable nonreligious matters of dlR