1878-1899: Religion: Publications

Charles Augustus Briggs, The Authority of Holy Scripture: An Inaugural Address (New York: Scribners, 1891)—this vigorous defense of historical criticism of the Bible triggered a Presbyterian heresy trial and one of the most significant defenses of academic freedom in American history;

Briggs, Biblical Study: Its Principles, Methods and History (New York: Scribners, 1883)—a defense of the new historical and literary criticism of the Bible;

Briggs, Whither? A Theological Question for the Times (New York: Scribners, 1889)—a controversial defense of scientific and historical criticism of Scripture;

James Freeman Clarke, Ten Great Religions: An Essay in Comparative Theology (Boston Sc New York: Houghton, Mifflin, 1883)—a widely read work, which reflects both the late-nineteenth-century fascination for Asian religions and confidence in the superiority of Christianity;

William Newton Clarke, An Outline of Christian Theology (New York: Scribners, 1898)—the most influential scholarly attempt to synthesize and represent a systematic theology from a modernist Protestant perspective;

Daniel Dorchester, Christianity in the United States from the First Settlement down to the Present Time (New York: Hunt & Eaton, 1895)—a Methodist historian’s account asserting the pervasive, formative, and continuing influence of Protestantism on American culture;

Richard T. Ely, Social Aspects of Christianity (New York: Crowell, 1889)—an influential treatise by a leading American economist and theorist of the Social Gospel movement;

James Cardinal Gibbons, The Faith of Our Fathers: Being a Plain Exposition and Vindication of the Church Founded by Our Lord Jesus Christ (Baltimore: Murphy, 1877)—an immensely influential popular apologetic for the Roman Catholic faith by the leading American Catholic hierarch of the late nineteenth century, this work had many editions and was the most widely read Catholic book in America;

Washington Gladden, How Much Is Left of the Old Doctrines? (Boston & New York: Houghton, Mifflin, 1899)—a popular and nontechnical assessment of the profound impact of modernist revisions to theology, biblical studies, and church history;

Gladden, Who Wrote the Bible? A Book for the People (Boston & New York: Houghton, Mifflin, 1891)—a general survey of modernist biblical studies by the most widely known liberal Protestant clergyman of the 1890s, Gladden’s book introduced historical criticism to a mass audience;

Robert Ingersoll, Some Mistakes of Moses (New York: Farrell, 1879)—penned by America’s most celebrated agnostic and critic of organized religion, this is a detailed, rationalistic, and scathing attack on the proposition that the Bible was divinely inspired;

Theodore Munger, The Freedom of Faith (Boston & New York: Houghton, Mifflin, 1883)—an optimistic essay on the “New Theology” developing among modernist theologians whose goal was to modify evangelical Calvinism and bring it into conformity with modern science;

Charles Sheldon, In His Steps (Chicago: Advance, 1897)—a Kansas minister’s melodramatic novel, novel that spoke for a conservative strain of the Social Gospel movement;

Egbert Smythe, ed., Progressive Orthodoxy (Boston: Houghton, Mifflin, 1885)—a series of essays with strong modernist leanings by professors at Andover Theological Seminary, this book provided the grounds for a storm of heresy accusations and legal actions that would rock one of the nation’s elite Protestant seminaries in the late 1880s and early 1890s;

Newman Smythe, Christian Ethics (New York: Scribners, 1897)—Smythe’s most important work, this book exemplifies the growing emphasis by theological modernists on ethics, rather than on personal salvation, as the central theme in Christianity;

Smythe, Old Faiths in a New Light (New York: Scribners, 1879)—a New England theologian’s influential introductory discussion of the main themes and findings of the historical-critical school of scholarship evolving in Protestant universities and seminaries in Europe;

Elizabeth Cady Stanton, ed., The Woman’s Bible, 2 volumes (New York: European Publishing, 1895, 1898)—a withering critique of the repression of women in the Hebrew and Christian Scriptures and of conventional organized religion edited by a leading feminist;

Josiah Strong, Our Country: Its Possible Future and Its Present Crisis (New York: American Home Missionary Society, 1885)—a Cincinnati minister’s national best-seller mixing optimistic predictions of the eventual global triumph of American forms of democratic capitalism and Protestantism with considerable nervousness about the present impact of mass immigration, Mormonism, and socialism on American society;

Lewis Wallace, Ben-Hur: A Tale of Christ (New York: Harper, 1880)—a Civil War general’s best-selling popular novel capitalizes on widespread American curiosity about the historical setting of the life of Christ.