Kenneth Scott Latourette. Kenneth Scott Latourette was not a historian of Baptists but rather a Baptist who was a historian of Christianity; he achieved wide recognition by virtue of the range of his work and the new perspectives that he offered.

For over fifty years, Latourette wrote extensively about the history of the Far East and the history of Christianity. He is best known for chronicling the expansion of Christianity throughout the world. He published over forty volumes that sold over one million copies. (1) His works have been translated into many languages.

Latourette was an ordained Baptist minister (1918); he taught a Baptist Sunday School and held an honorary position as an assistant pastor of Calvary Baptist Church in New Haven. The entry "Baptist" in the old Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church cites four American Baptism by name; Latourette is among those listed. (2) The editors of this distinguished English publication recognized Latourette's denominational affiliation as well as his historical scholarship. Latourette served on the American Baptist Foreign Mission Board for over twenty years and also served as president of the American Baptist Convention (1951-52). (3) His Baptist identity is clear. The task of this paper is thus primarily not to suggest what he taught us about Baptists, but rather what he taught us about the history of Christianity and what bearing his Baptist background had on this task.

Latourette's Life

Latourette (1884-1968) grew up in Oregon City, Oregon. In his autobiography, Beyond the Ranges, he described his religious background as "the conversion experience combined with daffy Scripture reading and memorization, hymn singing and prayer." Latourette did not dance, go to the theater or use regular playing cards; he also signed the total abstinence pledge, promising not to use alcoholic beverages. (4) Evangelical fervor and ethical piety remained permanent fixtures in Latourette's life.

Latourette credited his parents with shaping his positive view toward education. (5) He attended McMinnville College (renamed Linfield in 1922), sponsored by Oregon Baptists. He planned to follow his father in banking and law. But Latourette's involvement in religious organizations at college changed the course of his life. He served as president of the Y.M.C.A. and attended summer conferences designed for deepening spiritual commitment. (6) He encountered the Student Volunteer Movement for missions and accepted the famous argument of S.V.M.'s Robert E. Speer who held that the burden of proof rested on all Christians to show why they should not be missionaries. (7) Speer argued that the demand is in Scripture. Moreover, if Jesus came into the world with good news, Christians should be willing to leave their homes to take the gospel elsewhere. Latourette struggled with this claim but accepted it because it seemed to be a clear duty. (8)

To further his education, Latourette went to Yale, where he majored in history. He remained active in the Y.M.C.A. and the Yale Foreign Missionary Society. He earned the M.A. degree in 1907 and the Ph.D. in 1909, both in history. He then traveled for a year as a secretary for the Student Volunteer Movement. In 1910, he accepted an appointment to teach in Yale's missionary school at Changsha, Yale in China.

Amoebic dysentery cut short his missionary career. He returned to the United States in 1912 and taught at Reed College from 1914 to 1916 and at Denison University from 1916 to 1921. He moved to Yale in 1921, where he taught until his retirement in 1953 and where he lived until his death in 1968. The university would remain the context of his work throughout his life, but his research and teaching interests were shaped by his missionary commitment and his commitment to the Christian church around the world.

Latourette's academic efforts focused first on Asian history. He realized that Americans had little knowledge of the area where he had lived briefly. He wrote numerous articles about Asia and also published The Development of China and The Development of Japan, general college texts. (9) Latourette later published the definitive A History of Christian Missions in China and The Chinese: Their History and Culture and additional studies. (10) On the strength of these labors, Latourette was later elected president of the Far Eastern Association (1954-55) and also president of the American Historical Association (1949). He devoted the majority of his academic publications to the Far East during his first seventeen years of writing.

But Latourette's deep commitment to the missionary calling remained strong. Although illness prevented him from serving as a missionary, he turned his energies to chronicling the history of Christianity--and, in particular, its geographical spread. He offered a course in missions at Denison and "out of it eventually grew my major course at Yale" (11) and eventually his major work, History of the Expansion of Christianity, an exhaustive narrative (3,500 pages) of Christian missions in seven volumes. (12) Latourette's efforts led Scandinavian missiologist Olay Guttorm Myklebust to call him "the greatest missionary scholar that America has produced." (13)

To deliver his ideas in lecture format, Latourette produced several shorter works that provide fine summaries of his key themes in recounting Christian history. The Unquenchable Light revealed his belief in progress, and Anno Domini showed his confidence in Jesus' continuing influence in the world. The Emergence of a World Christian Community addressed the ecumenical movement, another of Latourette's passions. (14) Latourette's A History of Christianity provided an opportunity to implement his ideas for presenting the Christian story. This volume remains in print and has served to introduce thousands of students to the discipline over the past half century. (15) Latourette's final major publishing effort was a survey of Christianity in the recent past. He labeled it Christianity in a Revolutionary Age and told the story of the era 1800-1950 in as much detail as 2,500 pages would allow. (16)

Latourette's Proposals

Latourette made three important proposals for writing church history. If adopted, they would change the content and shape of church history writing.

The Global Viewpoint

The driving force in Latourette's work was to help readers see Christian history from a global perspective. This was his great point. Over and over, he admonished readers to enlarge their horizons. As a historian of the Christian church, Latourette focused his efforts on the expansion of Christianity. The source of Latourette's perspective was his own missionary consciousness. (17) He translated the missionary's vision of evangelizing the world to the historian's vision of chronicling Christian expansion. All of Latourette's major writings clearly sought to introduce a global perspective into the writing of Christian history. He boldly pointed out the limited perspectives of the older church histories.

The horizons of nineteenth-century Protestant German historians of Christianity were limited ecclesiastically, geographically, and chronologically. Much effort was expended on the early centuries of Christianity, on the church in Western Europe in the Middle Ages, and on the Reformation and the rise of Protestantism, especially in Germany. However, as a rule only passing attention was paid to the Eastern Churches; the Roman Catholic Church since the Reformation was given far less space than was Protestantism; several surveys did not carry their story beyond the Peace of Westphalia (1648); interest was largely focused on Germany; Protestantism elsewhere in Europe was regarded as peripheral; and almost nothing was said of Christianity as it was developing in the Americas and of the planting of the faith in Australia, Africa south of the Sahara, and Asia. In other words, the perspective was distinctly provincial. (18)

This summary in many ways sets out Latourette's own program of research. He showed that traditional studies were limited to Western Europe.

Latourette believed that the geographical perspective needed to be changed. Europe should be included but so should the Americas, Australia, Africa, and Asia.

The global perspective is best illustrated by his book, A History of Christianity. In his discussions of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, the category of "missions" which constituted much of his life work virtually dropped from view. The table of contents gave no hint of distinction between sending (Western or older) churches and receiving (non-Western or younger) churches. There was no chapter on "nineteenth-century expansion" or on "twentieth-century missions." He was not blind to the remaining differences, but something greater than mission was in his vision, namely, world Christianity.

European scholars recognized and praised the shift in Latourette's approach. Ernst Benz judged that whereas earlier American church historians had largely followed European scholars, Latourette made a significant departure and began "a new epoch" in church history writing. (19) George H. Williams declared that Latourette had achieved a thoroughly ecumenical perspective in his history of Christianity. (20) Theodore Bachmann, one of Latourette's more perceptive interpreters noted that "traditional German Church historiography had been ... severely European and globally provincial. Latourette ... is the first American to produce a major compend of Christian history that gives both Continental Europe and also the Anglo-Saxon people their due." (21) And his perspective extended beyond the West to global Christianity. Searle Bates wrote that "no person has done so much in study and presentation of the missionary record of the Christian people as has Kenneth Scott Latourette." (22)

Latourette's confessional perspective was decidedly ecumenical. If the old German handbooks were preoccupied with Germany, they were also preoccupied with Lutheranism. Latourette determined to give attention to Roman Catholicism and to the Orthodox Churches as well as to Protestantism in his work. Two powerful ideas--missions and ecumenics--helped to shape Latourette's insistence on a more genuinely global and confessionally inclusive perspective.

The Recent Past

Latourette's second great proposal, which is a corollary of the first, was that the historian must give more attention to the recent past. Catholic historians tended to idealize the Middle Ages when the Roman Catholic influence was most significant. (23) Protestant historians tended to focus on the Reformation--as recovery of genuine Christianity. This pattern is clear in Philip Schaff's thought, who wrote in his History of the Christian Church: "The Reformation of the sixteenth century is, next to the introduction of Christianity, the greatest event in history." (24) Latourette, however, offered a totally new perspective and argued that historians should concentrate on the period since 1815.

   To pass over lightly the period since the Reformation gives the student the
   impression that nothing especially significant has occurred since that time
   and that Christianity is a waning force.... As a matter of fact the Gospel
   has never been quite so potent as in the past century and a half.... We
   need to reapportion the space and to see that particularly the ... past
   century and a half have their due. (25)

Latourette thus boldly and radically shifted the focus of Christian history. The crowning achievement of the church lay not in the earliest church, nor in the medieval period, nor the Reformation era, but in the most recent past. For him, church history's finest era really began in 1815; all else was prolegomena. (26)

Latourette's publications supported his proposals. His History of the Expansion of Christianity established his international reputation. Volume 1 described Christian expansion to A.D. 500. Latourette relied on Harnack's great study, The Mission and Expansion of Christianity in the First Three Centuries. (27) The second volume carried the story through the Middle Ages, and volume three advanced the story to 1800. A dramatic shift occurred in the narrative at this point. To tell the story of expansion in the nineteenth century, he wrote three more volumes, and for the twentieth century he wrote one more volume. Thus, he devoted four of seven volumes to the period since 1815. Latourette introduced much new material, but above all, he shaped a new way of thinking about the total sweep of the Christian story. (28)

Latourette reinforced his proposal to see a new pattern in periods of church history when he developed the phrase "the great century" to describe the nineteenth-century expansion. "Never before," he liked to say: never before had Christianity been as widespread; never before had so many missionaries been sent; never before had so much money been given for missions; never before had humanitarian efforts been as diverse and widespread. (29) Numerous historians adopted Latourette's "great century" idiom, including, for example, Frederick Norwood, Martin Marty, John Dillenberger, and Claude Welch. (30)

Latourette's second multivolume study, Christianity in a Revolutionary Age, devoted all five volumes to this era, and his text, A History of Christianity, devoted fully one-half of the book to developments since the Reformation and almost one-third to the era since 1815. This redistribution of materials represented a profoundly different way of thinking about the Christian story. As one analyst put it, "He made the study of the modern church respectable." (31) Another thought it was his greatest legacy. (32)

Christian History and Church History

Latourette made a distinction between traditional church history and the history of Christianity. In his mind, church history suggested the developments within the church that collectively constitute the institution: leadership and organization, worship and devotion, doctrine and heresy, and evangelization and mission. (33)

Latourette urged church historians to give fuller attention to the ways Christian ideas have engaged the culture and shaped history beyond the institutional church. He proposed that the discipline be renamed "History of Christianity," which would continue to include church history but would also describe Christian influences in the wider society. Latourette called this social dimension the effect of the environment. It went both ways: the environment affects the church, and the church affects the environment.

Latourette especially liked to point out humanitarian institutions created by Churches. This was his most common way of making the point that Christian influences reach far beyond the institutional church. He repeatedly reminded his readers that Christianity had brought good things to the rest of the world--schools, hospitals, orphanages--institutions that alleviate suffering and make people more independent.

He resisted the stereotype of the western missionary who simply undermined other cultures. Part of his response to this charge was to affirm practical ways missionaries had improved the lives of people in other cultures by bringing the best of western culture to them. (34) Latourette's thought contained a strong apologetic strand. One of his recurrent arguments was that Christianity should be embraced because of all the good it has done in the world.

Church historians have given some attention to society and church, noticeably where religion and law intersect and have a direct bearing on church practices. For example, church historians usually discuss the legal changes in the Roman Empire which shifted the church's position from a persecuted minority to a favored majority. Church historians must also address the conflicting policies of the pope and the emperor in the Middle Ages, and they must also account for new patterns of religious toleration in the modern European world. All of these experiences are external to the institutional church yet are so closely tied to church history that they must be introduced to make sense of the story of the church.

Culture also shapes moral values and practices, and church historians have selectively noted some of these influences. Christopher Dawson wrote many fruitful studies about religion and culture. (35) Moreover, when Latourette was writing, new research initiatives by students of church history had already extended well beyond traditional church history. (36) Sidney Mead strongly criticized Latourette for failing to under stand the work which the Chicago school of historians had been pursuing for a generation. He thought Latourette's perspective was not "new" at all. (37)

Latourette called for a systematic interpretation of external environmental factors in the general histories of Christianity, a component he found missing in traditional narrative texts. In fact, Latourette did not rectify the problem, nor have members of the guild generally taken up the call to integrate systematically the social and the institutional--the external and the internal--sides of Christian history. (38) The task would simply be too daunting.

Latourette's Presuppositions

Latourette's new proposals for church historians were far reaching and numerous. The presuppositions he carried into the task determined his outlook on church history. His convictions inevitably played an important part in his presentation.

The Tension Between Faith and History

Latourette's interpreters have observed an important tension in his work between his professional training and his personal Christian commitment. Latourette's Yale training in history emphasized the importance of chronicling events based on good evidence, as did the introduction to a church history course he took with Williston Walker. Walker's text reveals a historian who was careful to rely on the recorded sources. In short, Latourette was taught that "scientific" history must rest on human historical record. But Latourette also believed that a divine purpose guided the events of history. However, post-Enlightenment critical historical method ruled out providential intervention to explain the historical process. His critics pointed out that he never resolved this tension; it remained his central problem. (39)

Latourette's narrative sought to follow the canons of good history--retelling the story on the basis of good evidence. In his prefaces and summaries, however, Latourette revealed his personal convictions. Bowden observed an important shift in Latourette's assumptions in 1937. Latourette said that we must tell the story without looking for the supernatural, but in 1953, he noted that we cannot hope to write history without presuppositions. Bowden suggested that Latourette was showing some "epistemological refinement" between the writing of History of the Expansion of Christianity and A History of Christianity. (40)

For his presidential address to the American Historical Association, Latourette chose to present his understanding of the Christian view of history. Choosing such a topic for this academic setting elicited a sharply divided response. Latourette recalled that some Catholic priests praised the paper while other participants sharply criticized it, saying that they would have gone to church if they had wanted to hear such a speech. (41) Latourette sought to combine the historical record and his faith. Walls suggested that Latourette studied church history but made comments about it which satisfied neither historians nor theologians. (42) In Latourette's view, history serves the purposes of faith.

The Influence of Jesus

Latourette developed his philosophy of history around what he called the "influence of Jesus," the "force" which began Christianity and has shaped the many ways it has affected humankind. For him its importance was central. Responses to this "influence" take many forms. He believed that the variety of denominations are differing institutional responses to this influence. Latourette thought the influence of Jesus could be measured in three ways: (1) geographical spread, (2) numbers and sizes of new movements, and (3) influence on the culture beyond the church.

The criteria of spread and size are traditional; "influence" is more elusive. Yet, Latourette was prepared to assert the growing influence of Jesus in the world. (43) Speck rightly pointed out that use of "impulse of Jesus" language "was sufficiently elastic to serve both a historical and a supernatural explanation.... In effect, it gave his treatment Christian overtones." (44)

Latourette the Baptist

Welch Baptist David Eirwyn Morgan recalled that when he met Latourette, he identified himself as a Baptist. Latourette replied, "So am I." Morgan continued:

   Nobody ever boasted less of his denominational alignment, but no one was
   ever so proud of what was special value in his own tradition: as Dr. Ernest
   A. Payne said in his "Salute to Dr. Latourette" ... "He has been truly
   catholic and ecumenical in his appraisals and in his sympathies, but
   unswervingly loyal to his Baptist convictions." (45)

Morgan noted that Latourette's basic attitude and advice to students was "to have a thorough knowledge of one's own branch of the Church and loyalty to it, coupled with a recognition of its place in the Universal Church...." (46)

Most of what Latourette did with Baptist history was entirely conventional. He wrote general histories, and Baptists were given their due but no more than their due. Latourette sought to be detached in his judgment. Baptists, like all other denominations, should be recognized, but they were not singled out for special treatment. Despite his massive publishing record, Latourette wrote no Baptist history or any monograph on aspects of Baptist history (though he did write the Foreword to Robert G. Torbet's A History of the Baptists (47)). His writing interests lay in overcoming denominationalism through inclusive accounts of world Christianity.

In A History of Christianity Latourette drew on standard studies and repeated other historians' accounts of the Baptists, including the following ideas. Anabaptists contributed to the emergence of Baptists who were established in England in 1612. They were part of English nonconformity which included Independents and Quakers. Early Baptists divided between General and Particular positions on atonement. (48) Latourette then skipped ahead to describe some Baptists shifting to Unitarianism; Carey's missionary endeavors; Spurgeon's preaching; and the formation of the Free Will Baptists, the Baptist Union, and the Baptist World Alliance. (49)

When he turned to the American scene, Latourette reported Baptist growth through revivalism and emphasized conscious conversion and frontier preachers who spoke the language of the people. (50) He noted the formation in the United States of different groups of Baptists--including Scandinavian and black Baptist denominations. (51) Finally, Latourette gave attention to Baptist planting throughout the world and mentioned by name Germany, Norway, Sweden, Switzerland, Wales, Scotland, Russia, Canada, Austria, and South Africa. (52) Here his concern was clearly with the spread or expansion of the denomination. In his reference to Carey and the Baptist Missionary Society, the significant point is not that Carey was Baptist, but rather his and the society's contribution to missions. (53)

Latourette not only wrote Christian history; he was personally involved in shaping it in his own denomination. Northern (American after 1950) Baptists suffered a deep liberal-fundamentalist conflict during the 1920s. Latourette served on the convention's Baptist Mission Society Board from the early 1920s to 1955 and was its president, 1946-47. In his autobiography, He reported that "unhappy and at times bitter debate arose ... over the desire of the Fundamentalists to bring the Convention to their position." (54) The fundamentalists charged that the Mission Society was appointing missionaries who were not doctrinally sound. They, therefore, "demanded that creedal tests be applied. (55) Latourette recalled his reaction to the controversy: "I was sick at heart over the distrust and seeming denial of Christian love." (56) His strategy was to join neither the fundamentalists nor the liberals, but to stand on the principle that missionary candidates should interpret the Bible as they "believed the Holy Spirit directed." (57) His pragmatic approach to conflict did not resolve all of the problems; some conservatives left the denomination. Yet, his mediating position, resting on the conscience of each person, led the nominating committee to recommend Latourette for president of the American Baptist Convention, 1951-52.

A review of his presentation of Baptists for students shows that he wanted to explain (1) English origins and a few lines of development, (2) American growth, and (3) worldwide spread. (58) Latourette supplied almost no guidance into the distinctive thought and practices of the denomination. This tendency is a weakness noted throughout his work. He provided so many markers of where and when a group flourished but so little interpretative depth regarding the significance of the stories he told. (59)

Older confessional models of church history, he noted, focused on one denomination--e.g., Lutheran--following the Reformation. He is inclusive and Baptists get their due just as do a dozen other major denomination and countless smaller ones. Latourette's Baptist heritage with its lack of strong confessionalism may have contributed to freeing him to adopt an ecumenical posture in his methodology. In any case, few church histories have been so systematically inclusive--perhaps none was in Latourette's era. If this interpretation is correct, a kind of a-theological Baptist heritage was part of the explanation for his inclusive narrative.

Latourette's Findings

Latourette shaped his material into new interpretative patterns. The findings he drew from his research and reflection suggested new insights and elicited strong critical response.

Patterns of Christian History

Latourette discerned an overarching scheme in church history of ever-increasing advances followed by retreats of ever-weakening force. He likened this pattern to the ebb and flow of the tide. Thus, the church started well (to 500) but then suffered its greatest decline (500-950); it advanced further (950-1350) during the central Middle Ages and declined (1350-1500) during the demise of the Medieval Era. The Reformation stimulated another great advance (1500-1750), followed by its smallest retreat yet (1750-1815). Christianity enjoyed its greatest advance from 1815 to 1914. He characterized the era in which he wrote (1914-1945) as advance in the face of retreat.

Latourette could read countless books and string together the results of his research, but when he puts a framework in place, his interpretation suggested the inevitable triumph of the Christian faith. He affirmed that the influence of Jesus was growing, always emphasizing "advance."

Critics focused on this interpretation. No critics were sharper in their criticism than the theologians Reinhold Niebuhr and J. S. Whale. They thought Latourette had introduced a notion of western progress in place of biblical eschatology. (60) It is remarkable that a historian would make such optimistic claims when he was living through two world wars and a depression. Nash found one of his great weaknesses to be old-fashioned triumphalism. (61) Speck said that he selected and interpreted data in a way designed to underscore the vitality of Christianity. (62) Forman wrote that he was most criticized for his view of advance and retreat. Forman believed that his confidence in Christian triumph was his underlying faith in God. (63)

Optimism

Latourette remained undeterred. His view of the total sweep of Christian history led him to be very optimistic and also to hold a strong hope for its prospects in the future.

Whereas his defenders found Latourette's pattern to be a source of encouragement, many of his detractors seriously challenged this way of viewing history. These critics adopted secularization theory when they tried to explain what had happened to Christianity in Europe, and they popularized the notion of a post-Christian age in the 1960s.

Latourette rejected this notion. He argued that from a historical perspective, it was evident that there had never been a Christian age; hence the West could not be in a post-Christian age. Latourette said, moreover, that losses there should be balanced by great gains elsewhere in the world. He argued that the current age enjoyed a higher, not a smaller, percentage of Christians in the world than in any previous era. The present was not post-Christian; it was more Christian than ever before.

World Christianity: Missions and Ecumenics

Latourette wanted his readers to recognize a new stage of the church's history. It had become worldwide through the efforts of missionaries, and it was engaged in a level of cooperation never before achieved. Missions and ecumenics became his great theme.

Latourette remained enthusiastic about missions. The enterprise shaped his vocation in early life and fired his imagination as a writer. He wanted to recover this dimension of church history and give readers a consciousness of its achievements. The success of missions became one of the great criteria for Latourette's periods of advance. Speck faulted him for writing missionary history uncritically. He observed that Latourette "was too partial to the Church when he ignored the spiritual and cultural arrogance underlying the missionary enterprise and when he played down the damage missions did to foreign societies." (64)

Mission debates have been present throughout church history, but Latourette envisioned the grand sweep of the missionary enterprise positively and brought hundreds of sources together in one place to give readers a grand view of Christian expansion. Hogg concluded that Latourette "gave the history of missions, so long ignored in church history and the history of doctrine, status as an essential dimension of and indeed matrix for both. All else he did was an outgrowth of the implications, themes, or issues present within The Expansion." (65)

His perspectives on the proper content of Christian history derive from his missionary vision. Missiologist Andrew Walls observed that nothing like Latourette's Expansion had appeared before; and so far, it has had no obvious successor. (66)

The new Christian development widely celebrated in his day was the ecumenical movement. He personally served on ecumenical boards and worked for unity in the church. The movement was the driving force for the formation of the World Council of Churches and countless national councils and other church organizations designed to promote Christian unity.

In the twentieth century, many Protestants became aware of their separation from one another as never before in their history and worked to heal their divisions. Latourette was deeply committed to this movement; indeed, Juhani Lindgren's 1990 exhaustive dissertation locates the heart of Latourette's life work in the unity of all Christians. (67) Latourette's personal, free-church piety led him to be comfortable with the growing evangelical community in the 1960s. He taught at the Winona Lake summer sessions for five years. On the other hand, it is ironic that throughout his life he was deeply committed to the more liberal World Council with its many efforts toward Christian unity. Protestantism was dividing along two tracks. Latourette managed to adopt a view that was inclusive of all Christians.

Conclusion

Latourette was one of the significant church historians of the twentieth century. He was a pioneer in informing American readers about Asia-especially China. He chronicled Christian history in multiple volumes. His account of Christian expansion was magisterial in its conception and execution. Latourette was bold in his thought-creating sweeping generalizations about advance and triumph which have not been followed by other historians.

His counsel to church historians to account for external factors and write a history of Christianity instead of limiting themselves to traditional church history has likewise generally fallen on deaf ears. But it appears that Latourette was on the right track when he urged historians to include modern missions in their accounts of church history. His great contribution is to give church historians who read him a new consciousness of the missionary enterprise, particularly in the recent past. Based on the efforts of missionaries, a worldwide community of Christians has emerged.

To convey adequately the place of the church in the world today, Latourette also underscored the ecumenical dimension of current Christianity in his writing. He insisted that church historians must tell the story of all Christians, in every part of the world, and throughout the entire course of Christian history.

(1.) Searle Bates, "Christian Historian: Doer of Christian History. In Memory of Kenneth Scott Latourette, 1884-1968," International Review of Missions 58, no. 231 (July, 1969): 319.

(2.) F. L. Cross and E. A. Livingstone, eds., Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church, 2nd ed. rev. (1974), s.v. "Baptists." Also noted are Adoniram Judson, Billy Graham, and Martin Luther King Jr.

(3.) Bates, 319.

(4.) Kenneth Scott Latourette, Beyond the Ranges, An Autobiography (Grand Rapids, Mich.: William B. Eerdmans, 1967), 15-16. This work and "My Guided Life," Frontiers of the Christian World Mission, ed. Wilbur C. Harr (New York: Harper, 1962), provide Latourette's two autobiographical recollections.

(5.) Beyond the Ranges, 14.

(6.) Ibid., 21. See Latourette's account of the Association in Kenneth Scott Latourette, World Service: A History of the Foreign Work and World Service of the Young Men's Christian Association of the United States and Canada (New York: Association Press, 1957), 37ff.

(7.) Robert E. Speer, "What Constitutes a Missionary Call, An Address at the Student Conferences in the Summer of 1902" (New York: Student Volunteer Movement for Foreign Missions, 1903).

(8.) Latourette, "My Guided Life," Frontiers of the Christian World Mission, ed. Wilbur C. Harr (New York: Harper, 1962), 285; see also Beyond the Ranges, 23.

(9.) Kenneth Scott Latourette, The Development of China (New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1917); and Kenneth Scott Latourette, The Development of Japan (New York: Macmillan, 1918; rev. 1947).

(10.) Kenneth Scott Latourette, A History of Christian Missions in China (New York: Macmillan, 1929; reprinted by Paragon in 1966 and by Russell and Russell in 1977); and Kenneth Scott Latourette, The Chinese: Their History and Culture (New York: Macmillan, 1934).

(11.) Beyond the Ranges, 54.

(12.) Kenneth Scott Latourette, A History of the Expansion of Christianity (New York: Harper and Brothers), vol. 1: The First Five Centuries (1937); vol. 2: The Thousand Years of Uncertainty (1938); vol. 3: Three Centuries of Advance (1939); vol. 4: The Great Century: A.D. 1800-A.D. 1914. Europe and the United States of America (1914); vol. 5: The Great Century: In the Americas, Australasia, and Africa. A.D. 1800-AD. 1914 (1943); vol. 6: The Great Century in Northern Africa and Asia. A.D. 1800-AD. 1914 (1944); vol. 7: Advance Through Storm. A.D. 1914 and After, with Concluding Generalizations (1945).

(13.) Olay Guttorm Myklebust, The Study of Missions in Theological Education (Oslo: Egede Institute, 1957), 2:83.

(14.) Kenneth Scott Latourette, The Unquenchable Light (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1941); Anno Domini: Jesus, History and God (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1940); The Emergence of a World Christian Community (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1949).

(15.) Kenneth Scott Latourette, A History of Christianity (New York: Harper, 1953). This was one of Latourette's most successful publications. (Beyond the Ranges, 129.)

(16.) Kenneth Scott Latourette, Christianity in a Revolutionary Age: A History of Christianity in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries (New York: Harper), vol. 1: The Nineteenth Century in Europe. Background and the Roman Catholic Phase (1958); vol. 2: The Nineteenth Century in Europe. The Protestant and Eastern Churches (1959); vol. 3: The Nineteenth Century Outside Europe. The Americas, the Pacific, Asia, and Africa (1961); vol. 4: The Twentieth Century in Europe. The Roman Catholic, Protestant, and Eastern Churches (1961); vol. 5: The Twentieth Century Outside Europe. The Americas, the Pacific, Asia, and Africa: The Emerging Worm Christian Community (1962).

(17.) Richard W. Pointer, "Kenneth Scott Latourette," Historians of the Christian Tradition in their Methodology and Influence on Western Thought, ed. Michael Bauman and Martin I. Klauber (Nashville: Broadman and Holman, 1995), 416.

(18.) Kenneth Scott Latourette, Christianity in a Revolutionary Age. vol. 2: The Nineteenth Century in Europe (New York: Harper, 1959), 58-59.

(19.) Ernst Benz, "Weltgeschichte-Kirkengeschichte-Missionsgeschichte: Die Kirkengeschichtsschreibung Kenneth Scott Latourette," Kirkengeschichte in Okumenischer Sicht (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1961), 15.

(20.) George H. Williams, "A Century of Church History at Harvard, 1857-1957," Harvard Divinity School Bulletin 23 (April 25, 1958): 85-102.

(21.) E. Theodore Bachmann, "Kenneth Scott Latourette: Historian and Friend," Frontiers of the Christian World Mission, ed. Wilbur Christian Herr (New York: Harper, 1962), 270-71.

(22.) Bates, 317.

(23.) See Joseph Lortz, A History of the Church, adapted by Edwin G. Kaiser from the 5th and 6th German editions (Milwaukee: Bruce, 1939); and Philip Hughes, A History of the Church, 3 vols., rev. ed. (New York: Sheed and Word), 1949.

(24.) Philip Schaff, A History of the Christian Church, 2nd ed. rev. , vol. 7, Modern Christianity: The German Reformation (Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co. 1910), 1.

(25.) Kenneth Scott Latourette, "The Place of Church History in the Training of Missionaries," The Life of the Church, vol. 4 of the Madras Series (New York: International Missionary Council, 1939), 257.

(26.) See Kenneth Scott Latourette, "New Perspectives in Church History," The Journal of Religion 21 (October, 1941): 440.

(27.) Compare Adolf Harnack, The Mission and Expansion of Christianity in the First Three Centuries, trans. James Moffatt, 2 vols., 2nd ed. rev. (New York: G.P. Putnam's Sons, 1908).

(28.) As Roland Bainton observed, the books "improved as they advanced." Roland Bainton, "In Memoriam," Church History 38, no. 1 (March 1969): 121.

(29.) See Latourette, The Unquenchable Light, 112-23.

(30.) See Frederick A. Norwood, The Development of Modern Christianity Since 1500 (New York: Abingdon, 1956); 5; Martin Marry, A Short History of Christianity (New York: Doubleday, 1959), 317, 320; and John Dillenberger and Claude Welch, Protestant Christianity: Interpreted Through the Development (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1954), 147-48.

(31.) "Latourette: Optimistic Historian," Christian Century 86, no. 3 (January 15, 1969): 70.

(32.) Pointer, 423.

(33.) Latourette, "The Plate of Church History," 255-56.

(34.) Latourette, The Emergence of a Worm Christian Community, 37. Latourette also gave credit to Christianity for science, democracy, and the expansion of Europe: see Christianity in a Revolutionary Age, 1:116ff.

(35.) See, for example, Christopher Dawson, The Historic Reality of Christian Culture (New York: Harper Torchbooks, 1965); Religion and Culture: The Gifford Lectures, 1947 (Cleveland: Meridian Books, 1962); Religion and the Rise of Western Culture: The Gifford Lectures, 1948-1949 (Garden City, New York: Image Books, 1958).

(36.) James Ward Smith and H. Leland Jamison, eds. of the landmark A Critical Bibliography of Religion in America, vol. 4 of Religion in American Life (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1961), document much research on the connection of religion with economics, law, politics, the arts, and so forth.

(37.) Sidney E. Mead, "Reinterpretation in American Church History," Reinterpretation in American Church History, ed. Jerald C. Brauer (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1968), 169-170.

(38.) Sociologist Rodney Stark has produced a study of the early church that seeks to integrate the insights of church historians and sociologists. But his work is a recent notable exception. See Rodney Stark, The Rise of Christianity (San Francisco: Harper Collins Publishers, 1997).

(39.) Andrew Walls, "A History of the Expansion of Christianity Reconsidered: The Legacy of George E. Day" (New Haven, Conn.: Yale Divinity School Library Occasional Publication no. 8, 1996), 7; also Bates, 318, Pointer, 420; and William Richey Hogg, "The Legacy of Kenneth Scott Latourette," Occasional Bulletin of Missionary Research 2, no. 3 (July 1978): 76.

(40.) Henry Warner Bowden, "Modern Developments in the Interpretation of Church History," Historical Magazine of the Protestant Episcopal Church 43, no. 2 (June 1974): 109-11.

(41.) Kenneth Scott Latourette, "The Christian Understanding of History," American Historical Review 54 (1949): 159-76; see also Latourette, Beyond the Ranges, 115.

(42.) Walls, 7.

(43.) Latourette, History of the Expansion of Christianity, 7, 417-18. See also Andrew Walls's stimulating essay, "A History of the Expansion of Christianity Reconsidered" (fn. 39), which explored these three criteria, giving each a theological content.

(44.) William A. Speck, "Kenneth Scott Latourette's Vocation as Christian Historian," Christian Scholar's Review 4, no. 4 (1975): 293.

(45.) David Eirwyn Morgan, "Kenneth Scott Latourette 1884-1968: A Tribute," Baptist Quarterly 23, no. 3 (July 1969): 100.

(46.) Ibid., 100.

(47.) Kenneth Scott Latourette, "Foreword," in Robert G. Torbet's A History of the Baptists (Philadelphia: Judson Press), 1950.

(48.) Latourette, A History of Christianity, 779, 818, 1180-81.

(49.) Ibid., 1005, 1037, 1182.

(50.) Ibid., 1036, 1180, 1234.

(51.) Ibid., 1248, 1251. He also noted two structural developments-the organization of the Baptist Education Board and the Baptist Young People's Union. See pages 1252 and 1256.

(52.) Ibid., 1138, 1144, 1147, 1153, 1190, 1196, 1122, 1400, 1281, 1296, and 1306.

(53.) Ibid., 1033.

(54.) Latourette, Beyond the Ranges, 121.

(55.) Ibid.

(56.) Ibid, 122.

(57.) Ibid.

(58.) To be sure, Latourette added more to the story in Christianity in a Revolutionary Age, but his factual "what" and "when" approach remained.

(59.) See Lee M. Nash, "A Tribute: Kenneth Scott Latourette (1884-1968)," Fides et Historia 1 (Spring 1969): 15-16.

(60.) J. S. Whale, review of A History of Christianity, vol. 7: Advance through Storm, A.D. 1914 and After, with Concluding Generalizations by Kenneth Scott Latourette in International Review of Missions 34 (1945): 429, and Reinhold Niebuhr, "Christ the Hope of the World: What Has History to Say," Religion in Life 3 (1954): 335.

(61.) Nash, 15.

(62.) Speck, 298.

(63.) Charles Forman, "Chiefly Because of Our Faith in God: A Tribute to Kenneth Scott Latourette, 1884-1968," Foundations 12, no. 3 (July-September, 1969): 211.

(64.) Speck, 298.

(65.) William Richey Hogg, "The Legacy of Kenneth Scott Latourette," Occasional Bulletin of Missionary Research 2, no. 3 (July 1978): 78.

(66.) Walls, 2. Thankfully, we do have a new map of the Christian world in David Barrett's World Christian Encyclopedia, 2nd ed., 2 vols. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001). But this compilation lacks the narrative power that struck Walls and other readers of The Expansion.

(67.) Johani Lindgren, Unity of all Christians in Love and Mission: The Ecumenical Method of Kenneth Scott Latourette (Helsinki: Suomalainen Tiedeakatemia, 1990). This dissertation is copyrighted by the Annales Academiae Scientiarum Fennicae, Dissertationes Humanarum Litterarum 54.

William L. Pitts is professor of religion, Baylor University, Waco, Texas.