Pilgrims In Their Own Land 500 Years of Religion in America Martin E. Marty 1984

You are bidding on this nice hard cover first edition of Pilgrims In Their Own Land, 500 Years of Religion in America, by Martin E. Marty.  It has a copyright date of 1984, and was published by Little, Brown, and Company.  It is a first edition, and is in very good condition, with only light wear at the corners and edges.  The spine and binding are good and all 500 pages including index are intact and in good condition.  Unfortunately, the paper dust jacket is not in as good of condition.  It is quite torn around the edges, and has many large chunks around the edges missing and torn off.  It has done a wonderful job of protecting the book, however, which is a very interesting read…
Martin Marty, renowned historian and writer of religion, explores in this fascinating and unparalleled account the people and events that carved the spiritual landscape of America.  In an enlightening narrative the follows the American people from their roots in Europe, Asia, and Africa right up to the present, Marty unfolds the integral role religion has played in shaping the philosophy, values, and laws Americans adhere to today.  In religious terms, America was, and in every way continues to be, “a new world.”  As Marty points out, “never before in history have so many different religious groups had to coexist.  Seldom have even several done so with so little bloodshed, even as the believers were able to hold to their faiths with integrity.”
To see how this happened, Marty takes the reader on a chronological pilgrimage through history that features vivid and candid accounts of the lives of the nation’s religious leaders.  Beginning with the native beliefs, the Pilgrims, Jonathan Edwards, the Calvinists, Lutheranism, the Catholicism of the early French and Spanish explorers, the conquerors and subsequent rise of missionaries, civil religions advocated by Franklin and Jefferson, the Quakers and the role of abolitionists during the Civil War, Marty moves on into the late nineteenth and then the early twentieth century, outlining the influence exerted by the early Catholic and Jewish immigrants, by Mary Baker-Brody and the Crhistian Scientists, and by smaller sects such as the Mormons and Seventh-Day Adventists.  Marty then proceeds to examine the lives and significance of contemporary spiritual leaders such as Billy Graham, Father Coughlin, Cardina Spellman, Thomas Merton, and Martin Luther King, Jr., as well as the impact of Eastern cults, the Moral Majority, and the rise of television evangelists. 
Although it focuses on the leaders of America’s spiritual pilgrims, Marty’s narrative reveals even more about the ideals of the people they have guided…