DESCRIPTION
Up-to-date one-volume edition of a standard text
For decades students and scholars have turned to the two-volume Documentary History of Religion in America for access to the most significant primary sources relating to American religious history from the sixteenth century to the present. This fourth edition—published in a single volume for the first time—has been updated and condensed, allowing instructors to more easily cover the material in a single semester.
With more than a hundred illustrations and a rich array of primary documents ranging from the letters and accounts of early colonists to tweets and transcripts from the 2016 presidential election, this volume remains an essential text for readers who want to encounter firsthand the astonishing scope of religious belief and practice in American history.
REVIEWS
— George M. Marsden
University of Notre Dame
“A classic is now even better. One could hardly imagine a combination better suited than Mark Noll and Heath Carter to update Edwin Gaustad’s much admired collection. Noll brings his unsurpassed knowledge of the field and Carter adds perspectives that are engaging a younger generation of historians. Many of the new additions are fascinating reading just in themselves. Teachers of American religious history will find this text ideally suited to their needs.”
— Kate Bowler
Duke Divinity School
“This updated collection of primary documents has been expertly pulled into a single volume to give a new generation of students access to a wide range of prominent religious voices. Beautifully narrated and carefully curated, these readings are thoughtfully chosen to showcase fundamental debates about the character of American religion.”
— John Fea
Messiah College
“Edwin Gaustad’s Documentary History of Religion in America has long been the gold standard for teachers who want to bring primary sources into their American religious history classrooms. In this new edition, Noll and Carter have somehow managed to improve upon a classic!”
— Kathryn Gin Lum
Stanford University
“Heath Carter has given scholars and students of American religion a gift. He has consolidated Gaustad and Noll’s classic into an accessible single-volume resource, while expanding the diversity of perspectives represented within. Expertly framed and clearly contextualized, this will be an indispensable volume for years to come.”
Reading Religion
"And a lot of college professors said, 'Take a two-volume classic anthology that I really can’t use because it’s just too long for one semester, and condense it into one volume, and while you’re at it update it and bring it up to the present, but also shorten it a lot, I mean a lot, and then I might use it.'
And they received the volume, and they said, 'It is good.' And the light shone onto the darkness of their syllabi."
Choice
"This edition does a remarkable job of balancing the diversity of religions in the US with the seminal documents that illustrate it. . . . Recommended."
Reviews in Religion and Theology
“Having access to the cumulative insight of three exceptional scholars of American religion is a priceless gift. . . . This work still remains the single most accessible, comprehensive, and insightful work in its field.”