It's springtime, which means that Princeton University Press is having its annual 50% off spring sale. From May 4th through June 9th, you can get 50% off nearly every single print, e-book, and audio book from Princeton University Press. Just go to press.prinston.edu to get 50% off incredible books like Disneyland and the Rise of Automation and Beyond Belief, how evidence shows what really works. There are so many fantastic books you can get an incredible deal on.
Go to press.prinston.edu and use the code spring50. That's sp-r-i-n-g-50 at press.prinston.edu. This sale only lasts for a month, so go and get some books. Welcome to the new books network.
Welcome to the new books network in this podcast channel of Christian Studies. I'm Justin McGarry. I am one of the hosts of this channel. Today we will be talking about the book, Transatlantic Religion, Europe, America, and the Making of Modern Christianity, published by Brill Press, a fascinating, wide-ranging group of essays that focuses on the 19th century connections between Europe and America, that aims to show how these transatlantic exchanges played a crucial and substantially unexplored role in the shaping of American religious life.
Religious historian Mark Knoll in the foreword says that this book demonstrates better than any other single volume to date, how very important for the history of Christianity in the United States, those connections, links, and relationships between America and Europe have been. And today with me are the editors, Annette Ober and Zach Repervis. So Annette and Zach, welcome to the show. Thank you.
Great to be here. Yes, thank you. It's a pleasure to be here. Yeah, and I'm looking forward to our conversation together.
I think the book is really interesting. And before we actually dive into the book, maybe you could just share a little bit about yourself, you know, a little bit about your background. Annette, would you kick us off? Sure.
I'm a historian of the Lichten and lecturer at a graduate school in Philadelphia. My academic specialty is 19th century Protestant Transatlantic Religion. And my book entitled The German Roots of 19th Century American theology was published by Oxford University Press and I previously saw as a fellow at a crack sent off. My research interest ranged from intellectual history and historical and transatlantic studies to American and German religious studies.
Yeah, thank you. Zach, how about yourself? Yeah, I teach the most lecture history at Edinburgh Theological Seminary. Had a few different appointments before this.
It was at the University of Edinburgh and also the University of Gertingen. University of Wisconsin-Madison. So sort of like the characters in the book have felt the transatlantic experience. I work mostly similar to Annette on some history of theology in the modern period in the 19th century, but also to some Reformation studies and sort of the reception of the Reformation traditions.
Wonderful. Yeah, and both of your volumes are very interesting and well with three. And being that you're both kind of not only scholars of the transatlantic kind of historical approach as well as living it. Maybe that's where we could kick things off.
So how is this the approach to transatlantic religion different from previous histories of American religion as far as the context for thinking about American religion? Where do you see this current volume fitting? Yeah, even though 19th century cross-border connections where common stand-out histories of American religion have generally been limited to national context, specifically the importance of religion to nation-building and American religious exceptionalism. As more the number of works explored to transatlantic religious relationships in terms of German influences, we are the loose one and more radiant churches, patriotism and the transatlantic culture of revivalism.
So the number of books emphasizing this narrow approach in 19th century American religious history has resulted in a tendency to about highlighting frontier upheavals, westward expansion and the influence of Anglo-Atlantic relations, which in turn emphasizes the culture of revivalism and specific philosophies such as common sense realism. Such studies have often overlooked the beginning and the revolution of the period and continuing throughout the 19th century, American religious figures were infrequent in an ongoing dialogue with Europeans. As our book shows, Americans borrowed many European ideas and thanks to the many travelers and immigrants who moved between European countries and the US, they emerged a transatlantic movement of ideas. So what happens is now approach means that many important aspects of regarding the creation of American religion have been overlooked or under emphasized.
And two factors are particularly striking, the first associated with the challenges of reading different languages such as German, Dutch, Danish, French and Italian. And the second is the perception of American exceptionalism that emphasized separation from European geography, ideology, politics and lifestyles during the 18th and 19th centuries. Yeah, so is there anything you would add to where the volume particularly fits? Well, I think there's a very full excellent answer by net that I would second heartily.
Also, I think that as how we thought about the volume and put it together, we were keen of bigger paradigm shifts going on in historiography. One of those is certainly the international turn moving beyond national borders. And so I'm sure we'll get into in more detail the different approaches that we discussed in terms of entangled history and cultural transfer and those sorts of things. And so we're keen to find a lens, a transatlantic lens as we've put it in the book that takes account of those different realities, the different connections that a diverse group of American thinkers and institutions and peoples and so on and so forth has with Europeans across the board.
And so I'd say just that international perspective is also something that we were keen to imbue the book with and that I think makes it stand out in some respect. I would like to add something about the entangled history, which is an important aspect. As Dr. Bluntik history emerged as a discipline based on the observation that developments in Europe and North America were closely entangled.
Therefore, any profound understanding requires an assessment of a common story. Our book uses an entangled history approach that is considered an essential concept in trans-cultural relationship studies. In other words, it emphasizes the interconnectedness of societies as its fundamental point of departure. Its core principle is that individual nations cannot function as a singular unit of history because they exert their own personal identity.
Entangled history traces connections between ideas and individuals who move across national boundaries. In other words, it emphasizes the interconnectedness of societies as its fundamental point of departure. Its core principle is that individual nations cannot function as a singular unit of history because they exert their effects through interaction and dialogue. Our book in particular focuses on the transatlantic history premise that emphasizes the consideration of networks and ancient connections.
Yeah, so you break the book essentially into two parts, education and the establishment of new networks and then different developments. And it seems to me developments theological, cultural, political. And it seems to me that kind of the entangled nature actually makes it somewhat hard at times to organize, I guess. But maybe you could just explain how you organize the project.
You break into these two parts. How did that come about? Was it challenging? Because there's a lot of overlap of figures and people and ideas throughout.
Sure. No, I think you're right. In one sense, it's good to admit that those categories are maybe arbitrary is perhaps too strong, but you're right that figures like Philip Schof and many others freely, wildly transgress these tidy little divisions and they do reappear in different chapters. Or just looking at the book again, I see we have a great chapter by Mike Shea on Anglophone's from Missionary Initiatives towards Roman Catholics and Anglicans in Rome.
And that appears in the second half of the book on sort of the lots of cultural, political developments. It could very well have been placed in the first half. So these seem to be prominent categories that arose from the material as we looked at the experience of sort of 19th century religious history and also the particular aims and theses that appeared in the chapters that we received from our contributors. But I think it does point to the prominence of these networks and this sort of entangled approach that really is the foundation for so many of the other developments that do take place.
And I think it also is helpful to spotlight as it were some of these. I think it's helpful to spotlight some of these networks that do appear in the first half of the book. So the rise of new forms of communication, new forms of travel, which aided the building of new institutions, personal contacts on a formal and informal basis and all of these things I think have a very important part to play in these more particular doctrinal or cultural or theological slash political questions that appear in the second half of the book. Yeah, so there's a few prominent figures that recur, especially August Tolok and Philip Schaff a number of times as well as a few others, maybe less prominently than those two.
But maybe you could say something about those two. What do they reveal kind of about the transatlantic world in the American religious life? Yeah, August Tolok was an important German Protestant political scholar. He was a sophisticated with awakening movement to influence the transatlantic religious world.
He was profoundly influencing also the revival of evangelical learning and academic learning and opposition to enlightenment, rationalism and Germany. He had an important influence on 19th century American religious history. I think the most direct and important exchange between Americans and Tolok occurred at the University of Palais. We are Tolok welcomed many international students.
Tolok considered his American students with more than ordinary interest involved in the habit of calling a number of those his special heads. He was especially close to American students like Edward Robinson and Charles Hutch. Many of his American students became key members of a transatlantic network who translated some of his work into English and who advocated biblical literature in America. So what happened among American evangelical scholars they relied on Tolok as a guide for a critical scholarship.
A review of the American Protestant literature of the time shows that Tolok became for Americans a trusted and expert guide for understanding difficult German religious developments. And in particular what was known as the rationalistic controversy. His influence was not only thanks to his quality skills but also his success as a mediating figure for he attempted to create a balance between traditional Protestantism and modern science in a post-enlightenment context. In particular we can see that a pragmatic trend of the American mind similar to active piety watched a natural bridge between Americans and Tolok.
And besides that Tolok appeared to Americans from different religious backgrounds. He became as is seen in our book on intellectual mental to Lutheran's, Baptist, Congregationalist and even Uniteratants. So his positive perception among such a large and mixed group is expressed by his prioritistically oriented mediating approach. And you see that come out in David Kommlein's article over whether Tolok was a universalist.
You see all these Americans fighting over whether Tolok was on their side. Such an interesting show is kind of his incredible prominence. Yeah it sounds out that Tolok became an intellectual hero to quite a diverse group of Americans who could draw on his different views. Yeah, yeah.
And what about Schof? I mean he's another, he shows up in a few essays and of course maybe is one of the most well known figures from the whole volume to an American audience of religious history in particular. David Kommlein's scholar Philip Schof was an important transatlantic figure who made significant contributions to American religious studies. He was born in Switzerland and studied on Germany and moved to America in 1844.
But maintained close ties with his European peers and communicated regularly with his German professors. As a faculty member at a reform seminar in Nazusburg and later at Union Seminary in New York, he acted as a bridge builder between German and American ideas. Then he arrived in the US very few seminary curriculums offered classes in the same way as in German universities. Schof was surprised to learn that the outdated church history text written by Johann Losheim still served as a primary textbook in American seminaries.
This motivated him to promote several ideas that were being debated in German universities at the time. And he encouraged the church history scholarship in the same way that he was, that he was trained in Germany and became a mentor to American researchers. Our book reads him as an exceptional influential transatlantic figure. Yeah, and Elizabeth Clark's article showing Schof's relationship with the American Arthur McGifford in a mentoring relationship, I think really draws out quite well Schof, sending an American over to study in Europe and then kind of guiding him through that world and helping him then come back to the United States and have quite a significant influence himself as a church history scholar.
Yeah, and one of the other articles that was quite interesting was Schaise, Michael Schaise article, which points, he spends a bit of time on the importance of kind of the informal networks. Is there something we can say about some of the other figures, other networks that appear in these essays, Zach, perhaps, would you want to tackle that? Sure, I think, yeah, Mike's essay, Mike Schaise that you mentioned that we've referred to here on missionary activities in Rome is very dense and so it's somewhat hard to discuss all the names that he mentions, but I think he does. Bring a very helpful approach.
One that he's picking up on things that other scholars have done in regard to the Oxford movement, so this movement that arises from Oxford in some sense in the first third were Soviet 30s and thereabouts within the Church of England, but to look at the fact that they really were Oxford movements plural, not just one figure and so he brings this maybe more differentiated approach to some of those discussions as he talks about missionary initiatives, which I think sheds sheds new light on that terrain. Another sort of network we might say a relationship or something that's been recast in the volume is also someone like George Bancroft. Bancroft was this decorated Harvard historian and politician and one picture has sort of emerged when scholars look at what he said he was up to when he went abroad to Europe, in particular to Germany to study when he wrote back as to what he was up to to his Harvard but maybe another picture emerges when one looks as Paul Kerry did in his chapter in the book at Bancroft's journal entries and lecture notes and other sort of student material that he produced and generated. And so the two portraits don't always line up and so I think it's one really interesting case where looking at new sources sheds in some way significant new light on our view of an understanding of somebody like Bancroft or some of these other important figures.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, I think that the picture that is provided by a number of these essays is how well connected these a number of these figures are that are often kind of treated either in isolation or just within their own national boundaries. And so one of the things that you note in the book is how often really much of American religious historiography has been limited to to America as far as focusing on, you know, usually the frontier or sometimes if there is the connection back to Europe, it's usually in the Anglo American connection. Maybe, could you say a little bit about some of the other countries that emerged what are some of the connections. Germany is quite prominent, but you also have chapters that show connections back with the Netherlands with Denmark with France and that would you want to hit on a few of those countries in ZAC maybe you as well.
Yeah, I would like to start actually with Germany. German historians were particularly interested in exploring the German education systems influence on America all the way from nursery schools to universities. For example, Jürgen helps pioneer in research shows how the German concept of business sharp shaped American higher education. Despite all this research into Germany's influence, few scholars have engaged with academic and religious networks within the 19th century European and American Protestant and Catholic figures.
So the question is why Germany and not Oxford leading 19th century of and Czech academics in the US understood their shortcomings in scientific work in several disciplines and therefore welcomed the texts and ideas coming out of German universities for use as models for their own biblical scholarship as well as for research into church history and cosmetics. American professors became heavily reliant on German texts and by 1825 fluency and the German language was a requirement for doing academic work in the US. Many American students viewed attendance at a term university as indispensable for their academic locations. Therefore, German divinity studies became very influential in American universities and seminars.
As our book shows, there are some other countries that are very important. Roland, maybe Suck can say something about the other countries. Sure. Yeah, I think some other sort of relationships that are uncovered and discussed in the book include, well, one of the final chapters, Timothy's chapter on France and the US offers an intriguing look at in one sense the narrow question of establishment or disestablishment of the church vis-a-vis the state, but really is a much kind of broader look at how to conceive church state relations.
So he uncovers all kinds of interesting material looking at conversations that were had between various French theologians at the beginning of the 20th century, with his landmark 1905 law, codifying a separation of church and state in France with various theologians and church figures in America. And sort of the French theologians often looked at the United States as something as a test case for thinking about the separation of church and state and what that would do to politics, but also to the religious vitality, we might say, of the state. And so he traces correspondence and other means of communication between figures like Cardinal Gibbons in Baltimore and the French Protestant theologian Paul Subacchier in Paris. Another sort of connection that is sometimes commented upon, but still perhaps there's more work to do there is Denmark and the United States.
Of course, there's various immigration patterns to discuss, but in the chapter by Lee Barrett, he gets great length to discuss the reception of a figure like Hans Lawson Martinson, an important Danish theologian in the 19th century among what's sometimes called the Mursersburg School of Theology. It's figures like like Schof and others there, Mursersburg read someone like Martinson in German translation, not in Danish, but nevertheless that represents an important influence sort of mediating forms of Hegelian philosophy to them and got them into various controversies along the way. And that is well placed to talk about some of those particular things, having worked on figures like Emmanuel Gerhard and others, but I think the interesting thing is that it's not just a sort of English or a Scottish connection that holds across the Atlantic with the United States, but that there are a host of other countries that belong in this conversation, sort of states in Scandinavia, but also Europe, proper Germany, France and elsewhere, which together provide, I think, a more accurate description of how these theological developments and networks that we've been discussing, how they arise and what they accomplish. Yeah, and even one of the things that comes out in Elizabeth Clark's article, just focusing on the American Arthur McGifford is how much he travels Europe himself, spending times in the different libraries and then he'll ultimately come back, having really traveled quite extensively, and then the process, so to speak, continues.
Now, one of the other things that you note in the book is that so often American religious focuses on Protestantism and that your volume kind of does try to provide some, maybe correction or counterbalance to that by looking at transatlantic Catholicism. Is there something you'd like to say? There's a few articles that hit on this, the article by Charlotte Hanson on Lord John Acton, Michael Shays article, which we've already mentioned, and Zach, you have mentioned the article by Timothy Verhoeven. And also, as far as transatlantic Catholicism that you'd like to make mention of.
Sure, I think we don't want to, in any way, sort of deny the real tremendous value that there is in so many of the sort of single confessional histories, we might say, in the sense of a Protestant story about a denomination or a movement or something like that in the United States in the modern period. But what we're keen to do is to broaden the picture somewhat, to say that in some cases, interesting things might be learned when we take kind of a multi-confessional approach. So if we had room to do a bigger book, we might have been able to include other voices and traditions as well, but it's interesting to see that something can be learned from the kind of transatlantic Catholic perspective. When thinking about Protestant history and vice versa, I mean the chapter on the 1905 French law shows that I think rather well that here are these conversations that are happening across confessional boundaries in many regards.
And so I think historians sometimes have to be careful not to artificially impose confessional boundaries on the historical material. Certainly there is room to look at confessional perspectives, but we should also be sensitive to broader discussions that might have been taking place in the period under view. I think that, yeah, there's a number of ways that, and Michael, is it Michael? No, it's a very horrible article.
He shows that there's also even conversation happening across the denominational lines as well. So it's definitely, I think, kind of a rich picture. Now, one of the other things that you mentioned is sources. How do you find the historians in this volume are looking at sources either differently or new sources?
What sort of things are they, where are they going? That's also kind of maybe enhancing the picture that we have of both transatlantic history as well as American religion. Yeah, the book references a large number of previously unexamined, and non-drent materials. This new source is especially those located in historical archives support and understanding of new concepts regarding transatlantic influences in the development of religious studies in America.
They also help clarify the influences of ecumenical religious journalism, academic religious mentoring, changes in scientific investigations and institutional goals. Yeah, I just, I think that's exactly right. Just maybe a couple of examples that are interesting as well to think about. We mentioned, for instance, Paul Kerry's chapter on on Bancroft, just sort of one of the first to actually dig into Bancroft papers and look at lecture notes, whereas other scholars had often simply relied on correspondence, which is already an improvement from past scholarship that sometimes settled only for published records.
Some other interesting cases, another one that Justin you mentioned a moment ago was Liz Clark's chapter on the mentoring relationship between Shof and McGiffert. We're very grateful for Liz's contribution. I think it was one of the last pieces that she wrote before her sad death. So we're very excited that that's in the volume and it just stands out as a monument to her tremendous work as a scholar.
But uncovering this rich correspondence between Shof and McGiffert through really a remarkable amount of archival study that she did, which is a recurring theme in here. I think good history is really written from the archives and I think all of our contributors bear that out richly. Yeah, yeah. As you were editing this volume, I'm just curious as to both of you have tended to your own work, because focus particularly on the translink in between American Germany, but as you were editing this volume, what was in your own sense, what emerged, what kind of picture did you feel like your own understanding of this approach to history?
What happened in the editing of the volume for you? Yeah, bringing together the various chapters revealed that there were different influences at work shaping a American religion during the 19th century, and it really reveals that more research needs to be done. Yeah, I think that I would also just echo what Annette has said that is certainly is not the final word, but I think it's an important first or second word on the topic that what really became clear to us and to me working on the project was these different streams of influence. And I think Hartlut Lehmann, who contributed a wonderful epilogue to the end of the volume nudges that conversation forward in an important way, suggesting future itineraries for this conversation to take.
He talks about sort of pluralization, needs to be an important factor, globalization, secularization. Each of these three concepts is really critical and really do emerge in the volume, but so much more could be done to show this rich and diverse and differentiated picture that emerges. So just for example, globalization, I think we're able to establish this importance of a strong and dynamic transatlantic connection between as past scholars have said the old world in the new and done that in a number of interesting ways. But one of the things that would be helpful and intriguing to do going forward would be to even broaden that picture to say that it's it needs to be extended to actors in other parts of the world as well.
So just as the US is not only in conversation with Europe and vice versa, they're in conversation with other figures elsewhere. And so those discussions might play a prominent role, even in realizing our transatlantic picture and of course in the picture of 19th century American, which is history also. So I think what emerges is really this picture of a remarkable number of influences, things that we haven't always paid careful attention to, things like new magazines that arise or new newspaper movements as Andrew Close discusses or how steam travel really did make it possible for so many students to go abroad and study and return and bring with them all sorts of ideas and experiences and so bringing all those things together into a more sort of multi colored picture, I suppose, one that's not just black, white or gray is really something that we learned from this project. Well, it's a wonderful book.
I think that the narrative in the different chapters is great. There's some methodological considerations. There's a lot here in this volume. So thank you very much for your work on this.
We have taken a good bit of your time and I guess I'd just be curious. Do you have a current project or upcoming projects that we can be looking for, then Zach maybe. Yeah, I'm continuing my book on the topic of transatlantic academic relationships. Yeah, thanks for that Justin.
I've been working on a project that shifts gears slightly, although it does connect in some ways which is on to the long term reception of Philip Melankton. So thinking about Reformation history in central Germany and the first half in middle years of the 16th century but they're various publishing endeavors that arise, reprinting his works and so on and so forth in the modern period that connect with some of the figures discussed in our volume. So that's what I'm up to. Well, I definitely look forward to seeing more of your work in the upcoming future and thank you so much for giving us some of your time.
It was a pleasure talking with you. Thank you very much to it. Thank you. It's a great pleasure to be here.
Thank you. It has been a great pleasure to be here. A safer Ontario means more police and prosecutors making sure my car doesn't get stolen. It means building new jails to keep criminals behind bars.
And it means there's no need to wear me when I play at the park. We're making every corner of Ontario safer to make all of Ontario safer. That's how we protect Ontario. For all of us.
Learn how at Ontario.ca.ca. Safer Ontario. Pay for by the Government of Ontario.