In spite of the importance of Philip Melanchthon for the subsequent history of both the Lutheran and the Reformed churches, the quantity of theological literature from his pen to be had between hard covers in English is disappointingly small. The fourteen or so items translated into English that survive from the sixteenth century are relatively inaccessible. So are the four or five out of the nineteenth century.

In the eighteenth century the Moravian Brethren founded on the coast of Labrador a mission to the Eskimos which is now approaching its bicentenary. Although supported by the British government, the mission owed its success largely to the zeal of the Moravians themselves, together with the prudent wisdom of the policies they developed to deal with a native people formerly regarded as savage and lawless by all Europeans who came in contact with them.

Few books purporting to be serious historical and theological analyses miss the mark as widely as Thomas G. Sanders' Protestant Concepts of Church and State, a “study” sponsored by the National Council of Churches and the Fund for the Republic. Far from clarifying Protestant thinking in this area, the author compounds the confusion and does little to enhance the reputation of either the sponsoring agencies or the publisher. Both sponsoring agencies have sufficient resources to have provided the author with competent counsel, and it is usual publishing practice to submit manuscripts to outside readers for criticism in order to avoid obvious gaffes. Apparently this responsibility was not taken seriously.

The decline of Calvinist orthodoxy worked an intellectual revolution in the minds of several million Americans during the period between the eighteen twenties and the eighteen forties. The social ferment of that generation produced a variety of effects including social perfectionism, theological liberalism, millennial sects, and new waves of revivalism. To multitudes of men and women a new earth seemed as close as a new heaven. Working hand in hand with the theological rebellion which insisted on the possibility of universal salvation and the actuality of great freedom for the will, social circumstance provided an environment rich in economic abundance and freedom for social experiment. America seemed so close to social perfection, religious salvation so near for so many, the inner and outer human worlds so plastic and pregnant with possibility, that the pursuit of either piety or social reformation promised spectacular results. The Mormons and other new sects with evangelical and millennial overtones absorbed many advocates of “the newness,” but an important minority regarded the old and the new sects as almost equally intolerable. It was not easy for these unchurched rebels to find a niche in American society; they inherited religious sensibilities which made them feel uncomfortable with both militantly secular social reformers and the scattered theological rebels who clung to the label of “Deist” or “Agnostic.”