John Williamson Nevin, American Theologian

This is an intellectual biography of a neglected figure in the history of theology in America, John Williamson Nevin. Nevin was a central figure in the so-called Mercerberg School of theology, which, during the middle decades of the nineteenth century, ran counter to the mainstream of Protestant thought, and was significantly influenced by German philosophy, theology, and history.

This study of the life and thought of John Williamson Nevin (1803-1886) offers a revised interpretation of an important nineteenth-century religious thinker. Along with the historian, Phillip Schaff, Nevin was a leading exponent of what became known as the Mercersburg Movement, named for the college and theological seminary of the German Reformed Church located in Mercersburg, Pennsylvania. The story is a neglected aspect of American studies. Wentz provides a kind of post-modern perspective on Nevin, presenting him as a distinctively American thinker, rather than as a reactionary romantic. Although influenced by German philosophy, historical studies, and theology, Nevin''s thought was a profound response to the American public context of his day. He was, in many respects, a public theologian, judging the prevailing development of American Christianity as a new religion that was fashioning its own disintegration and that of American culture at large. Nevin''s reinterpretation of catholicity in the American context opened the way for a radical understanding of religion and of American public life.