America the biblical

“This country is, as everybody knows, a creation of the Bible,” said Solomon Schechter at the dedication of a new building at New York’s Jewish Theological Seminary in 1903. The renowned Jewish scholar went on: “The Bible is still holding its own, exercising enormous influence as a real spiritual power, in spite of all the destructive tendencies.”

Schechter gave these remarks at almost the exact midpoint between the American founding and the present day. Were they true then? Are they true now? True or not, what do they mean? And what are “the destructive tendencies” to which he refers?

In his new book, historian Mark Noll attempts an answer. Across 850 pages, he takes the reader on a comprehensive journey through the long American 19th century, from the publication of Thomas Paine’s The Age of Reason in 1794 to the tercentennial celebration of the King James translation of the Bible in 1911. The result, as with everything published by Noll, is the very definition of scholarly excellence. Words like masterly and magisterial fail to do it justice. His knowledge of the sources and periods is encyclopedic; the reader is left breathless after minor seven-page asides, to say nothing of whole chapters. The book is, in the best sense, overwhelming.