The Kingdom of God in America

"Richard Niebuhr in his The Social Sources of Denominationalism pointed out that cleavages in the social structure between rich and poor, North and South, and so on, impressed themselves upon the structure of church life. This was the sociological approach to church history. In this book he sets forth the complementary and more significant fact that religion has fashioned the social structure. The ideal of the kingdom of God built the holy commonwealths of New England, provided the core of the 'social gospel', and is the cardinal ingredient even in American secular idealism today." (Roland H. Bainton)