How can one cover the entire history of Christianity in America in a single book of modest size, while keeping the text accessible for students and general readers? This kind of question traditionally has two answers. Some highlight particular episodes that illuminate the whole, while others opt for broad coverage in pursuit of a comprehensive survey. Elesha Coffman has recently given us a well-received instance of the former with her Turning Points in American Church History: How Pivotal Events Shaped a Nation and a Faith (Baker Academic, 2024). Now, Mark A. Granquist provides an illuminating example of the latter approach. The strengths and weaknesses of these methods are well known and need not be belabored here. The real question is, having made his choice for broad coverage, does Granquist implement it well? The answer is a qualified yes, but readers’ evaluations will greatly depend on what they are hoping to get from a synthetic history.

Granquist provides a sweeping history of Christianity in the United States, but the book is not without an analytical anchor and interpretive judgments. An introductory chapter presents two key ideas that guide the narrative. The first major theme is that there is a basic structure to Christianity in the United States that sets it apart from the European Christianity that birthed it. This structure consists of “Freedom of religion, pluralism, and a voluntary religious system” that has produced a dynamic “religious marketplace” in the United States (15). The second and related theme is continuity. Rather than highlighting turning points, Granquist contends that the basic structure of American Christianity was established relatively early in American history and has continued to today. The strength of this approach is that it provides a coherent narrative for general readers and creates effective resonances between past and present. In Granquist’s story, today’s “seekers” and ubiquitous language about being “spiritual but not religious” (343) are nothing out of the ordinary. Instead, they emerge as longstanding features of the structure of American religion.

After establishing this foundation in chapter 1, eleven additional chapters take us on a chronological journey through the entire history of American Christianity. Each chapter concludes with a brief bibliography that readers might use for further exploration. Granquist’s teaching experience is evident. He knows where the myths are in the history of American Christianity, and is not shy about knocking them down (sorry, the average immigrant to early America was an economic migrant, not a pious Puritan). He embeds the story in the general history of the United States and does not take readers’ historical knowledge for granted. The narrative is well-balanced, with three chapters covering the origins of Christianity in America to the dawn of the Revolutionary War, four chapters from the Revolution to the onset of the First World War, and four chapters from that war to the present. As this schema suggests, Granquist organizes the book around broad changes in American life, not specifically religious events. The point is continually made that Christianity influenced these larger changes and was in turn influenced by them.

Granquist is especially effective in tracing the rise, fall, and changing fortunes of the great variety of denominations that make up Christianity in America. Readers who may be curious about how various denominations came to be or what their differences are will find here a useful primer. For this reason, it is easy to imagine the book being used in seminaries and Christian colleges. For the same reason, it is much harder to envision the book being used at secular colleges, where ordinary students’ “so what?” questions would present a formidable barrier.

The text is supplemented by forty-four inset boxes featuring primary source excerpts. More could have been done to invite readers to make the most of these resources. Readers are largely left to their own devices to figure out what these sources have to do with the story being told. It is easy to imagine brief scaffolding material that would invite readers to consider how the primary sources confirm, challenge, or add nuance to the author’s interpretations. Attentive readers will also wonder why less than 15 percent of the selections feature women authors. As Granquist himself notes, “Throughout the history of Christianity in America, women have constituted the majority of church members” (194). The decision to highlight primarily male voices flows from Granquist’s focus on church polity, clergy, and institutional history rather than incorporating sources and methods from social and cultural history. It is quite striking how rarely readers are treated to the voices of ordinary people.

Specialists will quibble with some of Granquist’s characterizations and interpretations, but that is an inherent hazard of any broad-brush synthesis. The author intends the book as an introductory starting point for readers, not a conclusion, and it is on that basis that the book must be judged. Still, there are some puzzling interpretations. For example, Granquist twice euphemistically refers to the United States’ brutal conquest of the Philippines in such a way that readers would not even know that a war took place there. He declares that the Philippines “came under American protection” (200, 225). This troubling phrase seems to reprise rather than analyze the tropes of early twentieth-century Christian imperialists.

It would be fascinating to teach the history of Christianity in the United States using Granquist’s book one semester and Coffman’s the next. What patterns might we find in how students engage with these different methodologies? I recommend the book for professors who desire a survey text for their students that does not assume prior knowledge and will provide a strong foundation for understanding the basic structure of American Christianity. It is also useful for general readers. Last but not least, American Christians themselves could stand to benefit from this model of scholarship that is critical, myth-busting, and faith-affirming all at once.