A Plot of Possibilities: Elizabeth Clark's The Fathers Refounded

2020 ◽  
Vol 89 (2) ◽  
pp. 404-408
Author(s):  
Margaret M. Mitchell
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Roman Catholic ◽  
Church History ◽  
Early Church ◽  
History Of Christianity ◽  
Pivotal Moments ◽  
Nineteenth Century America ◽  
Depth Study ◽  
History Of ◽  
Protestant Liberalism

Elizabeth A. Clark's immensely learned new book, The Fathers Refounded: Protestant Liberalism, Roman Catholic Modernism, and the Teaching of Ancient Christianity in Early Twentieth-Century America, which follows directly on her examination of the nineteenth century in Founding the Fathers: Early Church History and Protestant Professors in Nineteenth-Century America, is a joy to read and from which to learn about the histories of our discipline, the history of Christianity. Chiefly, the book documents, through in-depth study of three fascinating figures, the severance of the field of “church history” from “theology” and, in particular, its pivotal moments within Protestant and Catholic “modernism.”

Transatlantic Textbooks: Karl Hagenbach, Shared Interests, and German Academic Theology in Nineteenth-Century America

2014 ◽  
Vol 83 (3) ◽  
pp. 650-683 ◽  
Author(s):  
Zachary Purvis
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
The United States ◽  
Church History ◽  
Nineteenth Century America ◽  
Swiss German ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Rich ◽  
Religious Cultures ◽  
Academic Theology

The rise of German academic institutions in the nineteenth century considerably altered the landscape of American higher education. American students of theology looked to Germany to develop their discipline, where they found model textbooks that gave directives in learning and piety, transforming academic and theological practice. With sensitivity to the history of the book and the history of the rich cultural traffic across the Atlantic, this article focuses on the reception in English translation of the important and widely read Swiss-German church historian Karl Rudolf Hagenbach, whose textbooks enjoyed a considerable audience in the United States by crossing ideological boundaries and unseating obdurate assumptions. By examining this reception in the United States and Britain and investigating those “transatlantic personalities” who played pivotal roles in bringing his ideas from the “Old World” to the “New,” this article demonstrates Hagenbach's lasting influence on the changing fields of history, church history, and academic theology in America. An “Atlantic” perspective on these themes offers new insights for our understanding of religion in the modern academy, the movement and translation of theological ideas in an age of steamship travel, and the surfacing of commonalities among ostensibly mismatched, if not outright conflicting, Protestant religious cultures.

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