Darryl Hart

Benjamin Franklin grew up in a devout Protestant family with limited prospects for wealth and fame. By hard work, limitless curiosity, native intelligence, and luck (what he called "providence"), Franklin became one of Philadelphia's most prominent leaders, a world recognized scientist, and the United States' leading diplomat during the War for Independence. Along the way, Franklin embodied the Protestant ethics and cultural habits he learned and observed as a youth in Puritan Boston. Benjamin Franklin: Cultural Protestant follows Franklin's remarkable career through the lens of the trends and innovations that the Protestant Reformation started (both directly and indirectly) almost two centuries earlier. His work as a printer, civic reformer, institution0builder, scientist, inventer, writer, self-help dispenser, politician, and statesmen was deeply rooted in the culture and outlook that Protestantism nurtured. Through its alternatives to medieval church and society, Protestants built societies and instilled habits of character and mind that allowed figures such as Franklin to build the life that he did. Through it all, Franklin could not assent to all of Protestantism's doctrines or observe its worship, but for most of his life he acknowledged his debt to his creator, revelled in the natural world guided by providence, and conducted himself in a way (imperfectly) to merit divine approval. In this biography, D. G. Hart recognizes Franklin as a cultural or non-observant Protestant, someone who thought of himself as a Presbyterian, ordered his life as other Protestants did, sometimes went to worship services, read his Bible, and prayed, but could not go all the way and join a church

The latest scholarship on the role of hymns in American evangelicalism. Music and song are important parts of worship, and hymns have long played a central role in Protestant cultural history. This book explores the ways in which Protestants have used and continue to use hymns to clarify their identity and define their relationship with America and to Christianity. Representing seven groups--Baptists, Presbyterians, Lutherans, Mennonites, Holiness, Hispanics, and Evangelicals--the nine essays reveal how hymns have helped immigrants to establish new identities, contributed to the body of worship resources, and sustained ethnic identity. Individual essays address the music of the Old-Fashioned Revival Hour, America's longest running and most successful independent radio program; singing among Swedish evangelicals in America; the German hymn tradition as transformed by Mennonite immigrants; the ways hymnody reinforces themes of the Wesleyan holiness movement; the history of Mercer's Cluster (1810), a southern hymnal that gave voice to slaves, women, and native Americans; and the Presbyterian hymnal tradition in Canada formed by Scottish immigrants. "This anthology is most original in reaching beyond . . . familiar lines of analysis to approach hymnody from various oblique angles rooted in religious history, sociology, theology, and evangelical studies." --Mel Piehl, Dean, Christ College, and Professor of Humanities and History, Valparaiso University Edith L. Blumhofer is Director of the Institute for the Study of American Evangelicals, Professor of History at Wheaton College, and author of Aimee Semple McPherson: Everybody's Sister. Mark A. Noll is McManis Chair of Christian Thought at Wheaton College. Stephen Marini is Elisabeth Luce Moore Professor of Christian Studies at Wellesley College.