ABSTRACT
This chapter explains the importance of realizing the environment of the first seventy years in the history of American religion that has left profound traces upon its contemporary character. There was little chance for a religion of pessimism in an America which was discovering a new world of amazing riches every day, an America which could take to its bosom all the weary and give them not merely rest, but also hope for themselves. Unitarianism was a widespread compromise which enabled the comfortable to associate a religion in which dogma was reduced to a minimum with a full recognition, largely born of the lingering fears inspired by the French Revolution, of the social danger of infidelity. The chapter suggests that the reconciliation of the Roman Church with Americanism was largely the result of the interplay of three factors. It has emphasized emotion at the expense of mind.
