Kinnaman- Outside Reading

Jon Butler’s Awash in a Sea of Faith: Jon Butler’s objective, in Awash in a Sea of Faith, is to give reason for the turnabout in American religious life. Butler’s thesis contends that Americans were not obligated to emerge as a “Christian nation”, especially due to the conflicting nature of colonial European religious heritage. Christian authorities looked upon the New World and its settlers as seemingly incapable of having Christianity imposed upon them. Jon Butler’s argument is centered around the endeavor for American Christianization dating from the colonial era to 1865. Butler’s understanding is that people have a plethora of divergent beliefs, inclusive of irreligion. Butler aims to capture the way in which Christians sought religion in the American wilderness and what concepts the Christians accepted to be true. 

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