Christian Nurture.

Horace Bushnell (1802-1876), minister and theologian, is sometimes called “the father of American religious liberalism.” Influenced by Emerson, Coleridge, and Schleiermacher, the controversial Bushnell thoroughly critiqued the emphasis on the conversion experience so popular among the Christian revivalists of his time.Christian Nurture was the first of his more controversial publications. The book contains one of Bushnell’s most stringent denunciations of the views of his evangelical contemporaries on the process of becoming a follower of Christ. Becoming a Christian did not happen overnight in a burst of emotion, he argued; instead, one must train oneself up in the ways of the church as long as one lives, and only then can one claim the title “Christian.” In particular, Bushnell advises parents to train up their children in the faith from the beginning of their lives.

Kathleen O’Bannon
CCEL Staff