Beyond a Christian Commonwealth
Hanley, Mark Y.
Antebellum mainline Protestant ministers are often portrayed as heralds of a national 'faith' in republican progress that reached its high point in the three decades before the Civil War. Mark Hanley argues, however, that the liberal culture that emerged in America between 1830 and 1860 seriously eroded mainstream Protestant confidence in the spiritual yield of republican liberty and faith. Through their 'religious jeremiads, ' the vast body o...