DESCRIPTION
Horace Bushnell (1802-1876) is one of the most studied figures in nineteenth- century American religious history, but there have been no recent major biographies of him. Robert Bruce Mullin's Puritan as Yankee provides a much-needed look at this famous American Christian thinker.
Based on a close reading of Bushnell's writings and unpublished sources and giving careful attention to how Bushnell's contemporaries saw him, Mullin's book throws fresh light on its subject. Breaking from the long tradition of portraying Bushnell as the father of American theological liberalism, Mullin offers a fundamentally new picture of Bushnell as a man deeply concerned with the questions of his age — and a far more interesting figure than previously thought. Bushnell emerges here as an innovator, a Yankee tinkerer in the field of religion, and a profoundly conservative figure.
REVIEWS
Harry S. Stout
"The Puritan as Yankee will surely stand as the definitive biography of Horace Bushnell for this generation. Based on meticulous research and rendered in engaging prose, the book succeeds in preserving Bushnell's greatness while, at the same time and in many particulars, unveiling an entirely new and, to this reader, persuasive portrait of this nineteenth-century pastor-theologian. In Robert Bruce Mullin's fresh study readers will encounter a surprising Bushnell, one who is more great preacher than great theologian and one who is as conservative — and even proto-Pentecostalist — as he is liberal. This volume will rank among the very best in what is unarguably the strongest religious biography series on the market."
Grant Wacker
"Mullin's intellectual biography of Horace Bushnell ranks as one of the finest in the entire field of American religious studies. Drawing on an encyclopedic reading of the sources, Mullin shows that Bushnell was both a great imaginer of new things and a great conserver of old things. This volume represents a superior achievement in the clarity of its prose, the breadth of its scholarship, and the force of its argument."
E. Brooks Holifield
"Grounded in an extraordinary range of reading and a fresh analysis of the primary sources, Mullin's biography provides innovative and surprising insight into one of America's most intriguing nineteenth-century religious leaders. The Horace Bushnell we discover in these pages doesn't fit the stereotypes. At once liberal and conservative, modern and traditionalist, fascinated by science and captivated by miracles, hopeful of progress and worried by change, the Bushnell we meet here eludes our easy categories. Mullin wonderfully locates him in his time and place, carrying us from the labyrinths of church politics to the academic lecture halls and the social disarray of mid-nineteenth-century America. This is a superb study of a complex and important Protestant leader."
Daniel Walter Howe
"Mullin gives us a new interpretation of one of America's greatest Christian thinkers, Horace Bushnell. Exploiting hitherto untapped sources, his book is rich in learning, graceful in expression, and — like its subject — full of imagination and wit."
Library Journal
"Sophisticated, well informed, and challenging. . . Recommended for all religion and early American history collections."