Strangers and Pilgrims on the Earth

As in other histories, the history of Christianity has certain key turning-points after which the flow of historical events is profoundly transformed. Some of these moments of transition-well expressed by the Greek term kairos-are immediately pellucid to the student of church history: the Constantinian Revolution, the rise of the heresy of Islam, the Reformation, the Great Awakening. While not as immediately obvious as these turning-points, the sailing for America in 1620 of those whom historians have called the Pilgrims needs to be reckoned as a key event in the story of both the American nation and American Christianity. To be sure, there are some today who dispute its central role in the founding of America, yet generations of historians have accorded it a key place in that story, and it is in line with this older interpretation that this book of essays has been written. The various essays in this anniversary volume remember the manifold details of this historic voyage in an attempt to inform and even inspire the modern Christian as he or she seeks to be a faithful pilgrim to that heavenly country that was ever in the mind of the men and women whom these essays recall.