To view the grantees' papers for this project, click here.

The Lilly Endowment Inc. of Indianapolis has awarded the Institute for the Study of American Evangelicals (ISAE) a two-year grant in the amount of $482,900 to study confessional traditions transplanted from Europe into the American religious and cultural setting. The project has its roots in the work of Mark Noll (The Old Religion in the New World [2001]) and Roger Finke and Rodney Stark’s groundbreaking monograph The Churching of America, 1776-1990 (1992) in its attempt to assess how confessional traditions--transplanted from European settings where they generally enjoyed privileged standing in their identities built around historic confessions of faith–adjusted to a religious marketplace dominated by democratic and revivalist impulses.

Catholic, Episcopal, Lutheran, Reformed/Presbyterian, Mennonite, and Orthodox traditions have frequently been evaluated in light of particular ethnic identities and immigrant histories. The timing of their arrival in the colonies/United States, changes of language, and differing paths to Americanization have all influenced these groups in distinctive ways and have been the focus of much scholarship. However, this new project hopes to incorporate these insights under the rubric of a unified set of questions to determine how these European-rooted traditions’ shared commitments to historic confessions might illuminate broader insights into the American religious experience. For example, the confessional traditions offer a laboratory for revisiting old debates about the persistence of European influences in the American setting. They also offer an opportunity for testing assumptions about the power of geographic and cultural regions for molding all comers.

The confessional churches’ existence and–relative to Europe in particular–thriving nature also prompts us to examine these traditions against the backdrop of American evangelicalism which has often defined much of its identity and practice over and against the confessional denominations. This is an important set of questions for contemporary evangelicalism in light of an emerging interest in confessional traditions which, first noticed in such books as Robert Webber’s Evangelicals on the Canterbury Trail (1985), continues to make itself felt among certain segments of evangelicalism, particularly within its elite circles.

The new project has two components, one aimed primarily at academics and church leaders, and another designed to promote discussion and understanding of the project’s issues and findings at the popular level amongst the laity across the various traditions. The former segment of the project would involve the commissioning of chapters for a book which would reflect on how each confessional tradition adapted or resisted to the American setting and how such choices shaped the tradition’s American identity. Other aspects of the study will include an emphasis on understanding how Confessional churches have impacted minorities in the United States as well as the changing contours of the anti-confessional context through the years. To present the findings of the project’s research, the ISAE plans to convene a two-day invitational seminar in Chicago for scholars, church leaders, religion writers, editors, and seminarians. The project budget will include travel and housing stipends to enable invited participants from points distant to attend the meeting.

The second, and in some ways, much more ambitious goal for this project will be the preparation of a book, a DVD/video series and leader’s guide dealing with the project theme for use by adult education and study groups at the congregational and parish level. The resource will be designed to provide an overview of the American religious landscape in which confessional traditions have been planted, and then offer chapters on the American experience of the major confessional traditions. The book and video resource will explore the ways in which each tradition has interacted with other forms of American Christianity and the larger American cultural setting. The lessons will be created with an eye to the popular market and with the needs of the local church in mind. The addition of a video component to the curriculum should prove particularly relevant in presenting the visual and expressive elements of several of the confessional traditions as well as recognize the fact that the use of video is an increasingly common aspect of adult study groups.

The ISAE will include regular updates on the progress of “Confessional Traditions in American Christianity” in the pages of the Evangelical Studies Bulletin and on the website. For further information on the project, contact Dr. Edith Blumhofer, ISAE, Wheaton College, Wheaton, IL 60187 (Edith.L.Blumhofer@wheaton.edu).