It often comes as a surprise to learn that most contemporary Americans who think of themselves as “Irish” are, in fact, Protestant, not Catholic. While commentators generally agree that these Protestant Irish-Americans are descended mainly from the Irish who settled in the United States prior to the Famine, the story of how they became the Protestants they are is—this article argues—more complicated than first appears. To understand that story, however, one must correct for two historiographical biases. The first has to do with the presumed religiosity of the so-called “Scotch-Irish” in the pre-Famine period; the second involves taking “being Irish” into account in the post-Famine period only with dealing with Catholics, not Protestants. Once these biases are corrected, however, it becomes possible to develop an argument that simultaneously does two things: it provides a new perspective on the contribution made by the Irish (generally) to the rise of the Methodists and Baptists in the early nineteenth century, and it helps us to understand why so many American Protestants continue to retain an Irish identity despite the fact that their link to Ireland is now almost two centuries in the past.

Devotion to the Bible remains an underappreciated aspect of American religious life partly because it fails to generate controversy. This essay opens a window onto America's relationship with the Bible by exploring a controversial moment in the history of the Bible in America: the public reception of University of Chicago professor Edgar J. Goodspeed's American Translation (1923). Initially, at least, most Americans flatly rejected Goodspeed's impeccably credentialed attempt to cast the language of the Bible in contemporary “American” English. Accusations of the professor's irreligion, bad taste, vulgarity, and crass modernity emerged from nearly every quarter of the Protestant establishment (with the exception of some card-carrying theological modernists), testifying to a widespread but unexplored attachment to the notion of a traditional Bible in the early twentieth century. By examining this barrage of reaction, “Monkeying with the Bible” argues that Protestants, along with some others in 1920s America, believed that traditional biblical language was among the forces that helped stabilize the development of American civilization.

Between 1886 and 1931, Christian publishing houses in the United States offered an unprecedented biographical profile of the contemporary American evangelist as an unambiguously modern figure. Sold at tabernacle tents, Christian bookshops, and church fund-raisers, these texts simultaneously document concerns with the modern landscape as they regale readers with the styles and stories of headlining American Protestants, including Dwight Moody (1837–1899), Sam Jones (1847–1906), Reuben Archer Torrey (1856–1928), J. Wilbur Chapman (1859–1918), Rodney “Gipsy” Smith (1860–1947), Billy Sunday (1862–1935), and Baxter “Cyclone Mac” McClendon (1879–1935). Although it is not difficult to discern distinguishing marks and regional inflections within the anecdotal particularities of these men, the overarching structure and themes of their chronologies is consistent. The purpose of this essay is to produce the beginning of a collective biography of the turn-of-the-century preacher, highlighting the persistent paradigm represented in the promotional products of these preachers. Whereas previous historians have described these men as antiquated proponents of an “old time” religion, this article argues that their narratives reveal a strikingly modern man, poised in an engaged and contradictory conflict with his contemporary moment.