The American Quest for the Primitive Church

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Richard Thomas Hughes
University of Illinois Press, 1988 - Political Science - 257 pages
The dream of restoring primitive Christianity lies close to the core of the identity of some American denominations---Churches of Christ, Latter-day Saints, some Mennonites, and a variety of Holiness and Pentecostal denominations. But how can a return to ancient Christianity be sustained in a world increasingly driven by modernization? What meaning might such a vision have in the modern world? Twelve distinguished scholars explore these and related questions in this provocative book.

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Contents

On Recovering the Theme of Recovery
1
Puritanism and the Enlightenment
17
Biblical Primitivism An Approach to New England Puritanism
19
Roger Williams and the Restauration of Zion
33
Primitivism in the American Enlightenment
50
Puritan and Enlightenment Primitivism A Response
69
Biblical Scholarship and Fundamentalism
79
Biblical Primitivism in American Biblical Scholarship 16301870
81
Biblical Primitivism in the American Baptist Tradition
143
Restoration Ideology among Early Episcopal Evangelicals
153
Perplexity over a Protean Principle A Response
171
Indigenous American Traditions
179
The Reality of the Restoration and the Restoration Ideal in the Mormon Tradition
181
Playing for Keeps The Primitivist Impulse in Early Pentecostalism
196
The Restoration Ideal in the Churches of Christ
220
Comparing Three Approaches to Restorationism A Response
232

Contending for the Faith Once Delivered Primitivist Impulses in American Fundamentalism
99
Primitivism in Fundamentalism and American Biblical Scholarship A Response
120
European Traditions in America
129
Biblical Primitivism in Early American Methodism
131
Epilogue
239
Notes on Contributors
247
Index
251
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