Congregationalists, the oldest group of American Protestants, are
the heirs of New England's first founders. While they were key
characters in the story of early American history, from Plymouth
Rock and the founding of Harvard and Yale to the Revolutionary War,
their luster and numbers have faded. But Margaret Bendroth's
critical history of Congregationalism over the past two centuries
reveals how the denomination is essential for understanding
mainline Protestantism in the making.
Bendroth chronicles how the New England Puritans, known for their
moral and doctrinal rigor, came to be the antecedents of the United
Church of Christ, one of the most liberal of all Protestant
denominations today. The demands of competition in the American
religious marketplace spurred Congregationalists, Bendroth argues,
to face their distinctive history. By engaging deeply with their
denomination's storied past, they recast their modern identity. The
soul-searching took diverse forms--from letter writing and eloquent
sermonizing to Pilgrim-celebrating Thanksgiving pageants--as
Congregationalists renegotiated old obligations to their
seventeenth-century spiritual ancestors. The result was a modern
piety that stood a respectful but ironic distance from the past and
made a crucial contribution to the American ethos of religious
tolerance.