You have not been recognized as a subscriber to Indiana Magazine of History online. About 189 words from this article are provided below; about 443 words remain.
 		 
If you are a individual subscriber to Indiana Magazine of History, you may:
• login here if you have already registered for online access.
• Or if you're already logged in register your subscription.
• Set up your online account for the first time.

If you are not a subscriber to Indiana Magazine of History, you can:
• subscribe here.
• Purchase a research pass to gain two hour access to the entire History Cooperative web site. You will have full access to current issues of Indiana Magazine of History.

Instititutions can:
• Subscribe to this journal and receive print and electronic issues.
• Activate your existing subscription so that we recognize your IP number ranges.
| Book Review | Indiana Magazine of History, 101.3 | The History Cooperative
101.3  
Journals link Search link Partners link Information link
September, 2005
Previous
Next
Indiana Magazine of History

Table of Contents
List journal issues
Home
Get a printer-friendly version of this page
 

Reviews

The Word in the World
Evangelical Writing, Publishing, and Reading in America, 1789–1880

By Candy Gunther Brown
(Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2004. Pp. xiv, 336. Illustrations, notes, bibliography, index. Clothbound, $59.95; paperbound, $19.95.)

In 1789 Thomas Coke opened the Methodist Book Concern, "the first publishing house in America to initiate the systematic printing and distribution of evangelical books" (p. 46). Nearly one hundred years later Harper & Brothers, a trade press with Methodist roots, published Indiana native General Lew Wallace's best-selling novel Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ. These two events bracket a century of publishing in the United States that firmly established the evangelical presence in the world of print. Candy Gunther Brown documents this phenomenon and demonstrates the importance of evangelical publishing in American Christianity. 1
      Brown defines nineteenth-century evangelicals as Christians who rejected both sacramental theology and liberal rationalistic theology in favor of a theology centered on "the Word," that is, the Bible. Thus, words became a powerful tool in fulfilling the evangelicals' mission of purifying the world and made their entrance into the publishing profession a natural step. . . .
There are about 443 more words in this article. Please log in (or, if you are not yet an authorized user, please go to the User Setup page) to gain full access rights. Or if you're already logged in register your subscription.