Church History in the Age of Science: Historiographical Patterns in the United States, 1876-1918

Considered a founder of the field of church historiography, Henry Warner Bowden provides the earliest analyses of the work of John C. Shea, Ephraim Emerton, Frank H. Foster, Arthur C. McGiffert, Walter Rauschenbusch, and Philip Schaff.

Bowden explicates the dramatic juxtapositions resulting from two powerful and opposing definitions of history: objectivity vs. faith; naturalism vs. providential activity; science vs. theology. As the decades passed, the theological position gradually lost its appeal, allowing scientific ideals to prevail.

Henry Warner Bowden is Professor of Religion at Rutgers University.