These chapters show the importance of social history in surveys of church history. A particular benefit of the second edition is the reworking of chapters 14–16, which provide better background and coherence to 20th-century developments.
Space does not allow for a full account of the strengths of the book. This historiographic inclusivity helps achieve Noll’s goal of presenting a more diverse vision of North American Christianity than in the first edition. Students will encounter the influence of Sidney Ahlstrom and Martin Marty as well as Catherine Brekus and Allen Dwight Callahan.
The second edition, therefore, holds a unique position in the literature as it bridges the gap between pre- and post-Y2K historiography. Noll’s updated lists for further reading on each chapter show the more recent scholarship that informed Noll’s revisions and expands the base of interlocutors for students. Given that the first edition of the book was already the standard textbook for courses on the history of Christianity in the United States and Canada, evaluating the book’s place in the literature is almost superfluous. More scholarship of and from minority voices, social history, more measured language when referring to the so-called Second Great Awakening, rearrangements, revisions, and the new millennium add context and clarity to the stories of Christianity in North America. Noll lists the changes from the first to the second edition in the introduction. As a whole, Noll’s textbook achieves its stated aims. This inclusivity is especially noticeable as the Christianities in the United States and Canada are compared and contrasted. This presentation attends to both the writings of major figures and the experiences of common people. Noll intentionally writes a history of Christianity rather than a history of religion in America in order to present this Christianity on its own terms. The result is a textbook on the history of Christianity in North America that introduces its readers to the diverse ways and diverse communities in which Christianity has taken root. In addition to including the many developments over the last quarter of a century, Noll incorporates lived religion and social history and elevates typically unheard voices. Twenty-seven years after the publication of the first edition of A History of Christianity in the United States and Canada, Mark Noll’s already triumphant textbook has been revised and published in an outstanding second edition.
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