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Introduction American denominational history. Some may wonder, why bother with the subject? Others may wonder if such a disciplinary creature still exists. Yet in the middle of the twentieth century,the study of denominational history enjoyed an enviable status. William Warren Sweet’s Religion on the American Frontier featured volumes on Baptists,Presbyterians,Congregationalists,and Methodists. Sweet positioned denominational history near the forefront of historical inquiry by linking the “Big Four” with Frederick Jackson Turner’s “Frontier Thesis,” vis-à-vis westward expansion in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. These works remain valuable to scholars interested in early denominational life among America’s frontier folk.1 It appeared that denominational history would always be a regular feature of the study of America’s historical landscape until 1964, when Henry F. May wrote of American religious history’s“recovery”and scarcely mentioned denominationalism . Since May’s seminal essay, works on American religious history have appeared at a dizzying pace, yet denominational history barely warrants an “honorable mention” in most historiographical surveys. Did the academy take its cue from H. Richard Niebuhr’s scathing critique of American denominations and relegate them to the dustbin of irrelevance? Did scholars come to see purely denominational history as a less attractive alternative to other, more nuanced aspects of American religious history? Or did historians simply distance themselves from often racially and economically segregated denominations as the nation embraced multiculturalism and postmodernism? At the end of the twentieth century Anne Loveland wrote a follow-up essay to May’s work in which she noted that the study of American religious history was alive and well. But, like May, she said nothing about denominational history.2 Recent trends in American religious historiography represent more an 2 Introduction eclipse of denominational history than its abandonment. Henry Warner Bowden’s Church History in the Age of Science: Historiographical Patterns in the United States, 1876–1918 and Church History in an Age of Uncertainty: Historiographical Patterns in the United States, 1906–1990, along with the multivolume series on American denominations that he edited, have kept denominational history studies from slipping into complete obsolescence.3 Likewise, Robert Bruce Mullin’s and Russell E. Richey’s edited work, Reimagining Denominationalism : Interpretive Essays, suggested new directions for those interested in denominational history. This work featured essays by prominent scholars who collaborated under the sponsorship of the Lilly Endowment. They explored various aspects of denominationalism grouped under three headings: “Overviews,”“Models,” and “Case Studies.”4 Overall,the introductory essay by Mullin and Richey represents one of Reimagining Denominationalism’s strongest features. They argue that denominational history has long been an important feature of American religion. But,if denominational history as a discipline has fallen on hard times,at least part of the blame lies with denominational historians. Mullin and Richey note that denominational histories are notorious for two tendencies that distance them from the scholarly mainstream. On the one hand, they tend to be written by denominational “insiders” for denominational insiders. Celebratory and triumphal, this literature recounts how great men in bygone eras vanquished heresy hip and thigh to preserve “pure” Christianity—in a Baptist , Methodist (insert the denomination of choice here) form, of course. On the other hand, even when denominational historians tried to write for“outsiders ,” they tended to produce uneven works that lacked depth and contextualization .5 Another collaborative effort, New Directions in American Religious History , edited by Harry S. Stout and Daryl G. Hart, suggests that a seismic shift rocked the profession in the latter third of the twentieth century. They note that“Church History,”which in generations past had been the realm of white Protestants and rooted largely in intellectual history (or historical theology), has been supplanted by“religious history,”which is“non-mainline-centered” and open to a variety of perspectives, ranging from social and cultural history to sociology and anthropology. As far as religious history is concerned, Stout and Hart see a field that is “exploding.” Interest in American religious life may be at an all-time high, and serious inquiry is no longer the exclusive domain of either history departments or divinity schools.The current scholarship is impressive, but Stout and Hart caution, “Like virtually all fields of American history, religious history is simultaneously rich in its diversity of Introduction 3 interests and methods, and rudderless in its overall direction or sense of professional priorities.”6 In light of the numerous inquiries into American religious thought and practice over the past several decades, now is...

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