Ever since Jacob Burckhardt dismissed him as “the first thoroughly dishonest historian of antiquity,” Eusebius has been an inviting target for students of the Constantinian era. At one time or another they have characterized him as a political propagandist, a good courtier, the shrewd and worldly adviser of the Emperor Constantine, the great publicist of the first Christian emperor, the first in a long succession of ecclesiastical politicians, the herald of Byzantinism, a political theologian, a political metaphysician, and a caesaropapist. It is obvious that these are not, in the main, neutral descriptions. Much traditional scholarship, sometimes with barely suppressed disdain, has regarded Eusebius as one who risked his orthodoxy and perhaps his character because of his zeal for the Constantinian establishment.

Michael Heyd's description of the period between the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries as one of transition between orthodoxy and enlightenment has particular application to the theological climate of Geneva, the birthplace of Reformed theology. François LaPlanche refers to this era in Geneva as one of “enlightened or liberal orthodoxy.” He defines such enlightened orthodoxy as a return to the biblical text unencumbered by the controversial language of Reformed scholasticism, with the primary goal of creating a practical form of theology that the average parishioner could understand. One of the most representative theologians of this period and one who was to a great extent responsible for educating an entire generation of “enlightened orthodox” theologians was Louis Tronchin (1629–1705).

The westward movement carried Americans to the banks of the Mississippi River by 1840, and in the following decade hardy pioneers began crossing the plains and mountains to settle on the Pacific coast. Gold was discovered at Sutter's Mill near present-day Sacramento on 24 January 1848, and the ensuing gold rush created a spectacle such as the world had never seen before.

The Religious Society of Friends, or Quakers, which originated in England in the middle of the seventeenth century, has gone through many changes. After the exuberant, expansive early years, most Friends entered a period of quietism, in which they waited patiently for divine direction and largely withdrew from the society around them. At the beginning of the nineteenth century the majority of Friends on both sides of the Atlantic embraced the evangelical movement which had taken hold in both the Anglican church and the newer Methodist denomination. While some Quakers were caught up in such ultra-evangelical activities as revivals and the holiness movement, others turned away and accepted the new liberalism which appeared in Protestantism.

G. K. Chesterton once remarked that all conservatism is based on the idea that if things are left alone, they will stay unchanged. Challenging this notion, he observed that a white post left alone soon becomes a black post; to maintain a white post one must always be painting it again—and, hence, always be having a revolution. Within evangelical Protestantism in late Victorian Canada a “revolution” of sorts took place in evangelical Protestantism's approach to conversion, the nature and consequences of which have been overlooked because the language of the parties involved has on the surface appeared to differ little from the revivalism which preceded it.