Religious Tendencies in America 
By Frederick Lynch 
Ninth in a Series of Articles on American Tendencies 
To give any idea of the trend of religious thought in America 
during the last fifty years is like undertaking to write a history of the 
world in one small volume. One can only make a few observations, 
and yet this trend has been so marked that one can outline it in a tew 
words and mention a few of the outstanding leaders in the movement. 
Fifty years ago the country was still largely in the grip ot the 
rigid Calvinistic system of thought which had been fastened upon it 
by several generations of New England theologians. The Calvinistic 
theology was marked by its aloofness from life and all human experi¬ 
ences. Its reality was in the thinking mind rather than in the feelings, 
and it is in the realm of the feelings that man touches reality. It was 
the consciousness of this that called forth that wonderfully eloquent 
and epoch-making essay by Emerson, the famous Harvard Divinity 
School Address. It is in this lecture that the essayist instances his 
listening to the old school preacher. All nature, the people about him, 
his own soul, were real—the preacher and the sermon were unreal and 
far away. Not a line did the preacher draw out of his own experience 
or life or real history. “The true preacher can be known by this, that 
he deals out to the people his life,—life passed through the fire of 
thought. But of the had preacher it could not be told from his sermon, 
what age of the world he fell in; whether he had a father or a child, 
whether he was a freeholder or a pauper; whether he was a citizen or a 
countryman; or any other fact of his biography. 
It was Horace Bushnell, of Hartford, Connecticut, and of Yale 
University, who did more to introduce the note of naturalness and 
humanity into our religious thought than any other man, although the 
writings of Coleridge, and later of Maurice and Robertson of England, 
were being widely read in America. From Bushnell there proceeded 
in quick succession volume after volume emphasizing the naturalness 
and reality of the Christian faith. It is hard for us, after the lapse of 
years, to realize the storm created by the unheralded appearance of 
Christian Nurture into a Calvinistic America. It was as revolutionary 
a book in religion as was Karl Marx’s book in the economic and political 
world, or Darwin’s Origin of Species in the world of science. The 
theology of the day had no place for the child. All men were outside 
the realm of the spirit until by some miraculous act on God’s part they 
were transferred into it. As Bushnell said in the opening pages of 
*If anyone wishes to pursue the subject further there is a most interesting volume 
recently published, Progressive Religious Thought in America, by Professor John Wright 
Buckhan of the Pacific School of Religion. 
