Episcopal Vision / American Reality: High Church Theology And Social Thought In Evangelical America

Book Summary

The high church movement within the Episcopal Church was antithetical to both the intellectual and social worlds of antebellum America, for it challenged the underlying assumptions of evangelicalism and held itself aloof from reform impulses. The first book to study the Episcopal high church movement within the context of nineteenth-century American culture. Mullin traces the history of the Episcopal Church from its rise in the early nineteenth century, when it was seen as a refuge from the "excesses" of evangelical Protestantism, to 1870, when the antebellum high church synthesis had largely collapsed. His book not only sheds light on the reasons for the flourishing of this alternative social and intellectual vision but also helps to account for the general crisis confronting religion in America at the turn of the century.

Book Details