Holding on to the Faith: Confessional Traditions and American Christianity

Traditional ways of living the Christian faith—shaped and guided by confessional norms—exhibit remarkable staying power in American religious life. Holding On to the Faith addresses issues related to the persistence of confessional forms of Christianity in the face of utilitarian, democratic, evangelical American popular religious culture.

Douglas A. Sweeney is Professor of Church History and the History of Christian Thought and Director of the Carl F. H. Henry Center for Theological Understanding at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School. A specialist in American Christian history and theology, he has published books on the eighteenth-century minister Jonathan Edwards, the New England Theology, and evangelicalism. Charles Hambrick-Stowe, Academic Dean and Professor of Christian History at Northern Seminary, is the author of several books and numerous articles on American religious history from the colonial period through the nineteenth century.