Essays from a conference held in 1986 at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington, D.C.

Includes bibliographical references.

Introduction: The academic revolution and American religious thought / Michael L. Lacey -- Religion and American intellectual history, 1945-1985 : reflections on an uneasy relationship / Henry F. May -- Evangelicals and the scientific culture : an overview / George M. Marsden -- An enthusiasm for humanity : the social emphasis in religion and its accommodation in Protestant theology / William McGuire King -- John Dewey, American theology, and scientific politics / Bruce Kuklick -- The Niebuhr brothers and the liberal Protestant heritage / Richard Wrightman Fox -- Justification by verification : the scientific challenge to the moral authority of Christianity in modern America / David A. Hollinger -- On the scientific study of religion in the United States, 1870-1980 / Murray G. Murphey -- On the intellectual marginality of American theology / Van A. Harvey -- Afterword: Theology, public discourse, and the American tradition / David Tracy.

Concerned primarily with relations between Protestant Christianity and the main currents in secular intellectual life over the course of the past century, the essays in this volume disclose the persistence, complexity, and fragility of religious thought in the new university dominated intellectual environment of the modern period. Arguing that three important patterns of response emerged from the challenges to religious belief posed by nineteenth-century science and scholarship--the traditionalist, the naturalist, and the modernist responses--the volume is organized to bring out the continuing interplay of reciprocal influences among them. The contributors show that a dialectic between naturalistic and religious points of view has contributed significantly to the character and style of modern American thought. -- Publisher.