American Denominational History: Perspectives on the Past, Prospects for the Future is a volume in the Religion and American Culture Series. It is edited by Keith Harper and contains nine essays: “Catholic Distinctiveness and the Challenge of American Denominationalism” by Amy Koehlinger; “New Directions on the Congregational Way” by Margaret Bendroth; “Presbyterians in America: Denominational History and the Quest for Identity” by Sean Michael Lucas; “From the Margin to the Middle to Somewhere In Between: An Overview of American Baptist Historiography” by Keith Harper; “‘Everything Arose Just as the Occasion Offered’: Defining Methodist Identity through the History of Methodist Piety” by Jennifer L. Woodruff Tait; “Black Protestantism: A Historiographical Appraisal” by Paul Harvey; “Mormon Historiography” by David Whittaker; “Interpreting American Pentecostal Origins: Retrospect and Prospect” by Randall J. Stephens; and “‘We're All Evangelicals Now’: The Existential and Backward Historiography of Twentieth-Century Evangelicalism” by Barry Hankins.

Harper has produced a very valuable book, highly useful for the study of a variety of American religious groups across a wide spectrum of American religious history. There are two problems with it, both involving the title. Consider that neither the title nor subtitle of the book announces its primary content. This is a historiographical study. To be sure, each author offers some historical information about the assigned topic, but the great virtue of the book is not the historical analysis but the often thoughtful review of the studies published on the topic, roughly since the 1950s. The editor may have believed that the phrase in the subtitle, “Perspectives on the Past,” sends the historiographical message but it would have been much better to be explicit.

The second problem is the term “denominational.” The editor's original plan for this volume was to republish William Warren Sweet's classic four-volume Religion on the American Frontier, updating the sources and including historiographical essays on each of Sweet's big four denominations: Baptists, Presbyterians, Congregationalists, and Methodists. The Alabama Press persuaded the editor to create “a single volume of historiographical essays on American denominations” (ix). Unfortunately, the editor decided to use the term “denomination.” Only four of the nine chapters are strictly speaking about denominations. Neither American Catholicism nor Mormonism are denominations, and the other three chapters deal with denominations in a general sense. American religion is in the midst of a sea change from denominational or Church history to religious history. The editor notes that but might have been well advised to launch his book into the new seas and call it what it is: a historiographical study of American religious life at the dawn of the twenty-first century.

These comments are caveats of regret because the editor's decisions may have limited the audience for the book. Once students interested in modern American religious life pick it up they are in for a treat. While it is true of virtually every multi-author volume that the quality of research and writing varies, the reality of this volume is that the editor chose very able people, many of whom have made serious personal contributions to their subjects. Their credentials suggest they are highly informed and the content of the chapters confirms it. Each author divided the assigned subject into several specific topics that are most helpful in identifying those which have received the most scholarly attention and in revealing areas open for future work.

Koehlinger's essay on American Catholicism opens the book and Hankins's on evangelicalism concludes it. Harper does not explain his location of these chapters, but it may be because each subject raises the issue of denominationalism. Koehlinger begins her work with a thoughtful discussion of the use of the term “denomination” to describe American Catholicism, and points out that the use or rejection of the term identifies the two poles of scholarship on American Catholicism through the 1980s: Catholic exceptionalism and American assimilation. She uses these two topics to construct the initial part of her historiography (9). She concludes her study with seven areas where Catholic distinctiveness has received substantial scholarly attention: transnational Catholic identity; the parish as the central institution of Catholic identity; celibacy and monasticism in congregations of vowed religious; Catholic sexuality, particularly the prohibition against contraception; sacramentalism and Catholic devotional practices; anti-Catholicism; and Latino presence, perspectives, and traditions. She also identifies four areas where scholarship is breaking new ground: children and childhood in Catholicism, Catholic bodies, Catholic arts and literature, and the African American Catholic experience.

If American Catholicism is not universally considered a denomination, neither is evangelicalism. However, it has often been identified with groups within denominations and has formed groups which Harper claims “often act like denominations” (3). Hankins points out that the vast majority of the work on twentieth century American evangelicalism has been produced since 1980. The seminal historiographical synthesis was George Marsden's Fundamentalism and American Culture: The Shaping of American Evangelicalism, 1870–1925, which was published that year. Hankins argues that the historiography of American evangelicalism is the reverse of the historiographies of many subjects, because it begins with a synthesis which has been followed by a variety of monographs. Hankins's specific topics are instructive: the Marsden Paradigm; Evangelicals, Gender, and Race; Evangelical Biographies and Regional Studies; the Christian Right; Evangelicals and Science; and premillennial prophecy belief.

Readers will doubtless turn first to the chapter on the subject of their primary interest. While that is an expected use of the book, readers would greatly benefit by turning to other parts of the book in order to put the scholarly work on their favorite subject into the broader perspective of American religious history.