In the Beginning Was the Word

A superb study of Early America's most widely read book by one of the nation's leading historians of religion. No one has ever before described and analyzed the role of the Bible in colonial America as thoroughly as Mark Noll has in this important book. In the Beginning Was the Word is a landmark work of history. -- Gordon S. Wood, Professor of History Emeritus, Brown University In the Beginning Was the Word documents the Bible's ubiquity in the nation's formative years. With massive research and lapidary prose, Noll shows how Scripture provided solace for individuals, authority for Protestants, and warrants for Christendom. Lest there be any doubt, the volume secures the author's rank as the dean of active American religious historians. -- Grant Wacker, Gilbert T. Rowe Professor of Christian History, Duke Divinity School Mark Noll has written a learned and wise treatment of the power of the Bible in early American history, sensitive to the ways Scripture was invoked on different sides of many disputes. Noll appropriately roots his account in the Old World background and restores the importance of Puritanism to the course of American History. -- Daniel Walker Howe, Pulitzer-Prize-winning author of What Hath God Wrought: The Transformation of America, 1815-1848 Noll shows how 17th-century Americans received conflicting models of scriptural authority from Europe: the Bible under Christendom (high Anglicanism), the Bible over Christendom (moderate Puritanism), and the Bible against Christendom (Anabaptists, enthusiasts, Quakers). In the 18th century, the colonists turned increasingly to the Bible against Christendom, fueling the Revolution against Britain and preparing the way for a new country founded on the separation of church and state. --Wichita Eagle, New & Notable [A] rich and deep examination of the place of the bible, both as an object and a source of ideas, in the public life of early America . . . Noll has demonstrated that it is virtually impossible to understand the colonial society without understanding the place, significance, and prominence of scripture in private and public life. --New Books in History