Presbyterians and American Culture

Presbyterians and American Culture
Author: Bradley J. Longfield
Publisher: Westminster John Knox Press
Total Pages: 278
Release: 2013-01-01
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 066423156X

This book provides a history of Presbyterians in American culture from the early eighteenth to the late twentieth century. Longfield assesses both the theological and cultural development of American Presbyterianism, with particular focus on the mainline tradition that is expressed most prominently in the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.). He explores how Presbyterian churches--and individuals rooted in those churches--influenced and were influenced by the values, attitudes, perspectives, beliefs, and ideals assumed by Americans in the course of American history. The book will serve as an important introduction to Presbyterian history that will interest historians, students, and church leaders alike.

Seeking a Better Country

Seeking a Better Country
Author: John R. Muether
Publisher: P & R Publishing
Total Pages: 288
Release: 2007
Genre: Presbyterian Church
ISBN: 9780875525747

This book is written to cure the amnesia from which all Presbyterians suffer who trace their origins to the first presbytery founded in 1706 in Philadelphia. We did write this book from the conviction and understanding that the church expressions of Presbyterianism in the Presbyterian Church (USA), EPC, PCA, and OPC have substantial and deep roots in the American Presbyterian experience begun when seven ministers assembled in Philadelphia for mutual edification and to ordain another man to the ministry of the Word and sacrament. As such our purpose is to help contemporary and future Presbyterians connect the dots between their own experiences in particular communions and the generations of Presbyterians who preceded them. - Preface.

American Presbyterianism

American Presbyterianism
Author: Charles Augustus Briggs
Publisher: New York, C. Scribner
Total Pages: 560
Release: 1885
Genre: Presbyterian Church in the U.S. History
ISBN:

Irish Presbyterians and the Shaping of Western Pennsylvania, 1770-1830

Irish Presbyterians and the Shaping of Western Pennsylvania, 1770-1830
Author: Peter E. Gilmore
Publisher: University of Pittsburgh Press
Total Pages: 248
Release: 2020-10-13
Genre: History
ISBN: 9780822966678

Irish Presbyterians and the Shaping of Western Pennsylvania, 1770–1830 is a historical study examining the religious culture of Irish immigrants in the early years of America. Despite fractious relations among competing sects, many immigrants shared a vision of a renewed Ireland in which their versions of Presbyterianism could flourish free from the domination of landlords and established church. In the process, they created the institutional foundations for western Pennsylvanian Presbyterian churches. Rural Presbyterian Irish church elders emphasized community and ethnoreligious group solidarity in supervising congregants’ morality. Improved transportation and the greater reach of the market eliminated near-subsistence local economies and hastened the demise of religious traditions brought from Ireland. Gilmore contends that ritual and daily religious practice, as understood and carried out by migrant generations, were abandoned or altered by American-born generations in the context of major economic change.

Unity in Christ and Country

Unity in Christ and Country
Author: William Harrison Taylor
Publisher: University of Alabama Press
Total Pages: 199
Release: 2017-06-06
Genre: History
ISBN: 081731945X

Examines the interdenominational pursuits of the American Presbyterian Church from 1758 to 1801 In Unity in Christ and Country: American Presbyterians in the Revolutionary Era, 1758–1801, William Harrison Taylor investigates the American Presbyterian Church’s pursuit of Christian unity and demonstrates how, through this effort, the church helped to shape the issues that gripped the American imagination, including evangelism, the conflict with Great Britain, slavery, nationalism, and sectionalism. When the colonial Presbyterian Church reunited in 1758, a nearly twenty-year schism was brought to an end. To aid in reconciling the factions, church leaders called for Presbyterians to work more closely with other Christian denominations. Their ultimate goal was to heal divisions, not just within their own faith but also within colonial North America as a whole. Taylor contends that a self-imposed interdenominational transformation began in the American Presbyterian Church upon its reunion in 1758. However, this process was altered by the church’s experience during the American Revolution, which resulted in goals of Christian unity that had both spiritual and national objectives. Nonetheless, by the end of the century, even as the leaders in the Presbyterian Church strove for unity in Christ and country, fissures began to develop in the church that would one day divide it and further the sectional rift that would lead to the Civil War. Taylor engages a variety of sources, including the published and unpublished works of both the Synods of New York and Philadelphia and the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church in the United States, as well as numerous published and unpublished Presbyterian sermons, lectures, hymnals, poetry, and letters. Scholars of religious history, particularly those interested in the Reformed tradition, and specifically Presbyterianism, should find Unity in Christ and Country useful as a way to consider the importance of the theology’s intellectual and pragmatic implications for members of the faith.

The Re-forming Tradition

The Re-forming Tradition
Author: Milton J. Coalter
Publisher: Westminster John Knox Press
Total Pages: 356
Release: 1992-01-01
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 9780664252991

This book challenges American Presbyterians to remember their calling as Christians. The author believes that Presbyterians are summoned to a character of life that will awaken and address the religious questions of today with powerful and persuasive Christian perspectives and answers. By recognizing again the message of the good news of the gospel and by speaking directly to our world, the authors tell how American Presbyterians can recover their identity as Reformed Christians and continue to make a creative contribution to the witness of the church in the world. Through its examination of American Presbyterianism, the Presbyterian Presence series illuminates patterns of change in mainstream Protestantism and American religious and cultural life in the twentieth century.