| Book Review | The Journal of American History, 95.3

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| Book Review | The Journal of American History, 95.3 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

God's Ambassadors: A History of the Christian Clergy in America. By E. Brooks Holifield. (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2007. x, 356 pp. $30.00, ISBN 978-0-8028-0381-8.)
This able survey of the Christian ministry, both Protestant and Roman Catholic (with a dash of Eastern Orthodoxy as well), endeavors to be true to the maddening complexity of the subject. This is no easy task, and the reader can only reflect in amazement as the author wrestles with an often unruly herd that rides off, as often as not, in many contrary directions.	1
While E. Brooks Holifield's subject area is America, he cannot write off the dominating influence of Europe and the ancient heritage on the American story. Fidelity to that history and to the scriptural patterns, particularly of the New Testament, could not guarantee or predict what would follow; it would only ensure that the account of the Christian ministry in America could not be a simple or monochromatic one.	2
The author presents his chapters in a roughly chronological order, with the second chapter ("A Bounded Authority, 1493–1699") having the longest sweep. With careful attention to Spanish and French missions in North America, he avoids another hackneyed "it all began in Jamestown" story. His third chapter (which covers 1700–1791) focuses on the issues of clerical quality and clerical shortages. One might expect more attention to the American Revolution and the U.S. Constitution and the clerical roles—or contentions—therein.	. . .

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