About the Book Goucher, John Franklin.
Christianity and the United States.
Goucher's address, published when he had returned to Baltimore, was entitled simply "Christianity in the United States." In essence, it is a fifty-page essay covering four hundred years of American history that places Christianity ("not the Church") at the center of all developments for good, and at the heart of all bastions against evil. "Christianity," he writes, "accounts for the discovery and settlement of America, it determined our governmental organization, and has been the dominating influence in our national development." (p.9) Clearly, his truncated historical account must move quickly from the first explorations driven by religion, to the populating of the continent in its early day with men and women fleeing persecution for their faith. Quoting James Bryce and his well-known American Commonwealth , the Constitution, when it came, did not make an established church, however Christianity was still, though "not the legally established religion, yet the national religion." (Many of Goucher's points are illustrated with quotations from well-known sources.) | |
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