Three hundred years of religion in america

Abstract

William G. McLoughlin. Soul Liberty: The Baptists' Struggle in New England, 1630- 1833. Hanover: University Press of New England, 1991. 336 pp. Kenneth H. Winn, Exiles in a Land of Liberty: Mormons in America, 1830-1846. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1989. x + 284 pp. Richard A. Grusin. Transcendentalist Hermeneutics: Institutional Authority and the Higher Criticism of the Bible. Durham: Duke University Press, 1991. 194 pp. Martin E. Marty. Modern American Religion: The Noise of Conflict, 1919-1941. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1991. xiv + 464 pp. Illus. The nature of authority has been an unsettled and unsettling question in the history of religions in North America. From Anne Hutchinson's antinomian controversy through the Canadian debates over the clergy reserves to Martin Luther King's appeal to a law higher than that of the State, American religious history has reverberated with the sound of clashes over conflicting conceptions of legitimacy. The variety of contexts and the multitude of shapes in which debates over religious authority have emerged help to explain the complexity of its history. In matters such as the engagement of religion and culture, the interpretation of scripture, separation of church and state or immigration legislation, differing assessments of origins, intentions, meaning, circumstance and significance have shaped the debates over authority in American religion. The four books under review add to our understanding of this common theme of authority, while at the same time making individual contributions to their specific fields of research.