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Review: 'Harold Frederic’S Social Drama And The Crisis Of 1890s Evangelical Protestant Culture', William Vance Trollinger

William Vance Trollinger Jr.

Harold Frederic’s The Damnation of Theron Ware (1896) is a terrific novel. The title character is a young, naïve, poorly educated Methodist minister who — when the narrative begins — has been appointed to take the pastorate of a small-town church in upstate New York. It is within only a matter of weeks after moving to Octavius with his wife, Alice, that Theron makes the acquaintance of exotic and compelling individuals who challenge his heretofore unexamined evangelical faith. Abandoning his Methodism with impunity, Ware is soon hurtling toward his “damnation.”

Damned but not dead: At the end of the novel, …

Riley’S Empire: Northwestern Bible School And Fundamentalism In The Upper Midwest, William Vance Trollinger

William Vance Trollinger Jr.

In the 1920s a loosely-united band of militant conservatives launched a crusade to capture control of the major Protestant denominations. These fundamentalists staunchly affirmed the supernaturalness and literal accuracy of the Bible, the supernatural character of Christ, and the necessity of Christians to separate themselves from the world.

Most often Baptists and Presbyterians, they struggled to re-establish their denominations as true and pure churches: true to the historic doctrines of the faith as they perceived them, and pure from what they saw as the polluting influences of an increasingly corrupt modern culture. But by the late 1920s the fundamentalists had …

Hero Of The Heartland: Billy Sunday And The Transformation Of American Society, 1862-1935, William Vance Trollinger

William Vance Trollinger Jr.

Review of: Hero of the Heartland: Billy Sunday and the Transformation of American Society, 1862-1935. Martin, Robert F.