I
t takes a nonspecialist to write this sort of history nowadays. Journalist Witham has most recently been writing popular studies of science, Darwinism and creationism in the U.S. Here he narrates the history of preaching in America, taking as his title John Winthrop’s famous sermonic description to his fellow Puritans on their way to New England. Except, as Witham points out, no Puritan thought it remarkable to describe the desired commonwealth in biblical terms at the time. Witham knows when to pick up the narrative pace and when to slow down for delicious detail: for example, evangelist George Whitefield was the colonies’ first celebrity, and the last few decades have been marked by “activist” preaching across the ideological spectrum. Historians and theologians will find points with which to quibble. Yet Witham succeeds in lifting up Roman Catholic, women, evangelical and black preachers alongside the mainstay white males. He also resists the temptation to sermonize himself until the last few pages, where he asks whether American preachers’ longstanding comfort with assigning “good” to our motives and “evil” to others’ is more dualistic and Manichaean than Christian. But by then he’s done the good historical work necessary for the one hard question to linger with the reader. (Aug.)
