The American Revolution is a perennial topic for historians, but despite the constant output of books on that subject, there are few good, recent books on religion in the Revolution. Good, that is, in the sense that the book is suitable for undergraduates or general readers and that the author does not have an axe to grind in the style of Glenn Beck. Two new books promise to fill that gap.

The first book is T. H. Breen’s American Insurgents, American Patriots: The Revolution of the People, published this May. The book is not exactly about religion. It is a history of the Revolution from 1774 to 1776, in which Breen argues that the Revolution owes at least as much to the people of the “middling sort” as it does to the founding fathers. A key part of his argument is that the “young, evangelical” colonists started an insurgency because of their religious beliefs. Evangelical, mostly Calvinist religion taught them that their natural rights as Englishmen were in fact given by God; those rights came with God’s command to  preserve them. Religion also explained the duties that monarchs had to fulfill in order to be legitimate. For most people, then, the insurgency was an “appeal to heaven”—in both a Lockean and an evangelical sense. This argument runs throughout the book, but it is particularly the theme of chapter 9, “An Appeal to Heaven: Religion and Rights.”

The second is Thomas S. Kidd’s God of Liberty: A Religious History of the Revolution. This book is still forthcoming, due out in October. Kidd is a professor at Baylor University, and the author of The Great Awakening: The Roots of Evangelical Christianity in Colonial America (2007). If God of Liberty is of the same quality as The Great Awakening, then it promises to become the comprehensive history of religion in the Revolution. We’ll have a review when the book comes out.

Next year is the 400th anniversary of the King James Version of the Bible. The Baylor-based Institute for Studies of Religion will be hosting a conference on April 7th-9th.

So far, the conference organizers have confirmed the participation of quite an impressive list of historians and theologians, including Mark Noll, Philip Jenkins, N. T. Wright, Alister McGrath, and David Bebbington.

From the conference website:

Major conference themes will include the way that the King James Bible created a common literary and religious culture in the English-speaking world; the significance of vernacular translation for Christian growth and development; and the challenges posed by recent declines in biblical literacy and the end of the King James’s dominance as the Bible translation for English-speaking Christians.

So mark your calendars and clear your schedules! To quote one of my professors, this is “arguably the Christian academic conference of the upcoming year.”

Religion in America’s very own Paul Matzko has been accepted as a PhD student at Penn State, where he will continue his study of the history of religion. He will also be serving as a research assistant for Philip Jenkins and Thomas Kidd. Congratulations, Paul!

On October 1 and 2, Gordon College will be hosting a conference, looking back fifteen years to the publication of Mark Noll’s The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind. Noll and ten other scholars will be speaking. You can get the details from the Gordon College website.

The entire Religion in America crew—Paul and Jessica, Lincoln and Abby—will be attending the conference. If you’ll be there too, send us an e-mail and we’ll get together.

In a few days or weeks, we’ll be starting a new blog about the history of American religion. The blog will include book reviews, historiographical essays, photographs from historical sites, and essays based on primary sources. You can read more about the blog.

The two primary authors are Paul Matzko, a graduate student studying the history of post-Civil War religion, and Lincoln Mullen, a graduate student studying the history of colonial and antebellum religion. You can read more about the contributors.

This blog will eventually be located at religioninamerica.org. Check that space to see the blog when it’s released.