Three Bible Nation Arguments and the Black Social Gospel

Abstract

This book completes the magnificent two-volume work that Mark Noll began with In the Beginning Was the Word: The Bible in American Public Life, 1492–1783 (2016), or to say the same thing differently, it completes the trilogy of his summing-up books that he began with America's God: From Jonathan Edwards to Abraham Lincoln (2002). Like its two predecessors, America's Book contains capsule summaries of arguments that Noll has proffered in several of his many previous books, especially on US American evangelicalism and the Civil War. Moreover, it ranges comprehensively over the vast expanse of US American religious history in meaning-of-it-all fashion, with Noll's customary acumen. No scholar tires of the accolade “magisterial,” which Noll earned for America's God and In the Beginning Was the Word. This book completes a magisterial trilogy by lucidly, astutely, learnedly, and generously covering its waterfront, and by disciplining the entire exposition with a twofold argument that yields a third argument.