ROBERT T. HANDY: A STUDY IN AMERICAN CHURCH HISTORIOGRAPHY

A virtual renaissance has existed in American church historiography during the last thirty years. Major texts, sourcebooks, altases and bibliographies for the discipline have been written since 1950. Robert Handy, Professor of Church History at Union Theological Seminary, has contributed significantly to this renaissance through his sourcebooks, his interpretative analysis Christian America, and his text History of the Churches in the United States and Canada.;The second topic is what Handy calls the Protestant dream for a Christian America. During the nineteenth century Protestants conceived of a distinctly Protestantized vision of Christian America. They expended enormous energies to accomplish their goal. Their goal also produced conflict with Catholicism. Leaders of the social gospel viewed a reconstructed society in terms of Protestant ideas. Another important interpretative theme of Handy is the occurrence of a religious depression during the 1920s. Handy believes that the churches failed to adjust to the twentieth century; consequently, the result was the end of American Protestantism's role as the definer of cultural values. The failure of the Protestant dream, which flourished 1870-1930, made way for eventual recognition of Catholics and Jews as equal partners with Protestants and hence of a more genuine pluralism at mid-century.;Handy's third and fourth topics treat American religious history from the opposite perspectives of division and unity. He describes nineteenth and twentieth century Protestantism as marked by theological division: pietists confronted rationalists, conservatives opposed liberals, and fundamentalists debated modernists. Handy maintains that the nature of theological conflict led to the polarization of Protestantism into such narrow alternatives as fundamentalism and modernism. He argues that these transdenominational factions changed the basic composition of the denomination from a homogeneous to a heterogeneous entity. Handy also views these two centuries in terms of a Protestant quest for unity. In the nineteenth century, the nature of unity was individual participation in voluntary societies; in the twentieth century, it consisted of denominational cooperation in federations and organic mergers. Handy's own participation in the ecumenical process brought additional insight and understanding to his analysis of ecumenism.;The study suggests strengths and weaknesses of Handy's historiography. His weaknesses relate to his limited explanations of denominationalism and conservative evangelicalism. His strengths include his focus on major interpretative themes in American religion such as voluntarism and pluralism, his competence in the treatment of the Black experience and ecumenism, and his identification and explanation of a significant shift in the American religious experience which occurred about 1930. Handy has been a significant and active contributor to the renaissance in American church historiography.;The present study examines Handy's contributions to the present renewal. His significance is measured through an analysis of four major topics in American religious history. The first topic is a consideration of the basic nature of the "American" church: churches in the United States have developed some common characteristics. Historians have traditionally emphasized either European or American sources in the formation of American institutions. Handy stresses the importance of both sources; but he follows the Chicago School, especially Sidney Mead, in affirming the primacy of American environment and culture in the development of a distinctly "American" type church. He delineates three specific conditions which produced this Americanization: voluntarism, religious freedom, and pluralism. The recognition of the pluralistic nature of American religion caused Handy to allocate more space to Black history than have previous scholars.