Customer Reviews

Standing Against the Whirlwind : Evangelical Episcopalians in Nineteenth-Century America (Religion in America)

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Dr, Butler has taken a little known era and party of the Episcopal Church and given us a very readable and flowing description of the time and mind-set of a wing of the Church which few have studied and, of which, some have never heard. Her genuis is for telling the story through the ministry of one Evangelical Bishop, Charles Pettit McIlvanie, and uses his own articles, books and letters to relate his thoughts and the motivations behind his actions. Some consider her a "revisionist", but that term cannot be justly applied since she is probably the first historian to tell this enthralling story in detail. Church history is not a reader's delight, BUT Dr. Butler makes it managable and even enjoyable. Being a doctoral discertation developed into a book it bares none of the usual academic meanderings common to such works. My only criticism is Dr. Butler's seeming inability to stick to a chronological stream, Individuals are sometimes quoted prior to their introduction into the story line - a small flaw in an otherwise brilliant piece of historical prose. I advise buying it used as no book of 270 pages should command such a price as this one does new.