Preaching the Word.

In the early national era many Americans became intensely religious. American church membership, after declining during wartime, began to grow quickly in the 1790s. This trend continued to 1815 and well beyond: By 1850 probably 40 percent of Americans were church members, up from around 10 percent in 1790. In part this growth reflected the greater stability of the period: families returned to their pews as they resumed their previous lives. But this development was also a response to the efforts of religious leaders to recruit new members, rebuild their churches, and forge a Christian America. At the heart of this growth was the task of evangelization, that is, the preaching of the gospel. The Christian America that began to take shape during the early national era was evangelical in the sense that it was built by efforts to spread Christianity, and it devoted...