READING LIBERAL THEOLOGY

Gary Dorrien has presented to all who have an interest in religion, and religious ideas especially, a magnificent piece of scholarship. These three volumes on liberal theology in the United States have value in the massive amount of writings they bring under study and into the mainstream of American intellectual history. To that extent they address a historiographical gap; conservative thinking in the long evangelical tradition down to the contemporary "religious right" has received greater attention. Liberal theology, as Dorrien treats it, interconnects with a wide range of ideas'in philosophy, science, and history most importantly, and other topical maters like feminism and race. This trilogy should attract the attention of intellectual historians not only for its rich content but also for the suggestions it has for this discipline itself; that is, for practicing intellectual history and recognizing some of the contrasting approaches to its subject matter. © 2011 Cambridge University Press.