John Williamson Nevin

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. Richard 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.