In most areas where Christianity was confronted during the four centuries after the Hegira by Islam the Christian religion suffered setbacks or was eclipsed in some measure, but it did not disappear. In North Africa, however, Christianity was not merely eclipsed, it was supplanted. Tertullian, the “Father of Latin Christianity,” had labored in North Africa during the latter years of the second century and the early years of the third. Victor I (189–99), the first bishop of Rome to write in Latin, and, according to Prof. G. LaPiana the first “Pope,” had been North African in origin.

The confused and tumultuous circumstances surrounding the election to the papacy of Urban VI, its corollaries, the subsequent defection of thirteen of the cardinals, their election of a rival pontiff, and the ensuing years of dismal division within the Church—these form the general background to this tract, which is a product, therefore, of the immense outburst of polemical writing occasioned by the onset, in 1378, of the Great Schism. The more immediate circumstances surrounding it are the failure by 1403 of the French withdrawal of obedience from the Avignonese pope to produce a settlement of the Schism, the breakdown of all subsequent negotiations between the rival pontiffs, and finally the convocation, by dissident cardinals from both camps, of a general council which was to meet at Pisa in March, 1409.

It has by and large been characteristic of the current resurgence of Anabaptist studies to understand the Anabaptist movement as an integral part of the Reformation. Thus the two terms presently used to designate the framework of the radical dissent of the 16th century— Roland H. Bainton's now classic “Left Wing” and, more recently, George H. Williams' “Radical Reformation”—suggest a positive relationship with the mainstream Reformation. There is widespread consensus among scholars, particularly in America, that Anabaptism concurred with the Reformation on the major points of Protestant doctrine and dissented merely on secondary issues, such as baptism, the church, or political authority, around which centered indeed most of the theological polemics between the Anabaptists and the Reformers.

The relationship between Christianity and the Enlightenment presents a subtle and difficult problem. No historian has as yet fully answered the important question of how the world view of the eighteenth century is related to that of traditional Christianity. It is certain, however, that the deism of that century rejected traditional Christianity as superstitious and denied Christianity a monopoly upon religious truth. The many formal parallels which can be drawn between Enlightenment and Christianity cannot obscure this fact. From the point of view of historical Christianity, both Protestant and Catholic, the faith of the Enlightenment was blasphemy. It did away with a personal God, it admitted no supernatural above the natural, it denied the relevance of Christ's redemptive task in this world. This essay attempts to discover whether traditional Christian thought itself did not make a contribution to the Enlightenment.

Turner has no mention of “Lutherans” on the frontier, and Paxson disregards them. Marcus Lee Hansen, better than any other historian, secular or ecclesiastical, has seen the importance of Lutheran immigration, Scandinavian and German, for its relation to the westward movement and the frontier.However, his suggestion that a survey be inaugurated of the source materials in the libraries of theological institutions and in the archives of church headquarters, has not been carried out. A synthesis, too, of the various immigrant movements must be made. Perhaps then the writer of a general work in the history of American Christianity or even the writers of a textbook in American history will see the significance of the Lutheran immigrants on the frontier.

In the history of Protestant Christianity, sectarian movements have often served to bridge the gulfs which have opened between conventional forms of religious life and new secular aspirations among the lower classes. The emergence of the Labor Church movement in England during the closing decade of the last century may be seen in part as an attempt at such a reconciliation. For it was dedicated to the idea that the emancipation of the working classes from capitalism was a religious movement, that the improvement of social conditions was as important as the development of personal character. And yet its leader, John Trevor, repudiated the dogmatic implications of the sectidea and viewed the Labor Church as a search for a truly free religion. In fact it quickly severed all ties with the traditional faith and embarked on a quest for radically new religious meaning.