Jon Butler's "Becoming America" offers a new perspective on revolution. Instead of arguing for the conservatism or the radicalism of the American revolution, Butler argues that there was a fundamental revolution in practices before 1776. In Butler's opinion the years 1680 to 1770 saw a revolutionary transformatiion in which the American colonies became modern in five major ways: ethnic diversity, modern market economies, modern participatory politics, modern consumerism and religious pluralism. (2) The relationship of this silent revolution to 1776 was very complex, but it could be said that "the American Revolution of 1763-1789 can rightly be called the first modern revolution, THE model for the French Revolution of 1789 and subseqently" onwards. (227)

In many ways this is a fine introduction to pre-1776 America. Butler is concise and his use of the secondary literature is very thorough. Problems, however, start with his chapter on ethnic diversity (8-49). For a start ethnic diversity is not a hallmark of modernity. The fact that more than 90% of Japan and Korea are of the same ethnic group does not make them less "modern" than India or Indonesia. Butler also underplays America's linguistic uniformity, where English among whites was overwhelming, in contrast to still Gaelic Ireland and still Welsh Wales. Actually the most modern thing about America's population was not its diversity but the rise of international migration, a process whose causes Butler says relatively little (22-23, 29). His discussuion of the African-American experience leads to another problem. His account of 18th century slavery (36-49), slave poverty (86-88, 136, 139-40) and slave religion (215-24) is based on the most thorough and recent research. Yet it is segregated from the larger American experience, as if slavery was something that only happened to black people, and not to the larger society as a whole. In other words, it is insufficiently dialectical (the same goes for Butler's view of women).

What about the modernity of the American economy? Butler has no clear account of demography, even though the American colonies had the fastest population growth rate in the world. White Americans were easily the most prosperous people in the world and Butler is quite right to note their superior literacy (111) and healthier diet (134-38). On the other hand America was 5% urban, compared to 20% for pre-revolutionary France and higher still for England. Butler offers many examples of American modernity, such as the booming power of merchants (68-74), the growth of public buildings (164-70), the rise of literary clubs and freemasonry (174-84). But these were largely urban affairs. What about the vast rural majority? Although many have viewed pre-1776 America as a hub a capitalism, in one important way it was not. 70% of white Americans were independent farmers. In contrast only a fifth of Englishmen were. While it is true that farmers were more commerical in 1760 than in 1680 (53-54) it is not clear this makes them capitalist. Butler does not help by not defining or discussing what capitalism is. He states however that southern colonies took the lead in commericalizing agriculture (55-60). Since slave plantations were not as it turned out the wave of the future this complicates his definition of modernity, which is also not very well defined.

This chapter on religion is very good, since it is Butler's specialty as a historian, and there is much that will interest a beginning reader. Still, this is not a book that is as provacative or as original as it appears.

Jon Butler has a great combination of skills as a historian. He understands his subject matter, is an excellent writer from a wordsmithing & sentence/paragraph construction standpoint, and demonstrates the ability to organize his material so the reader doesn't get lost and knows where he/she is going. This book could have been a very dry long survey ... a book for college courses rather than the general, interested reader. Not that that would be bad, but it would confine the readership to those who browse through college bookstores instead of the corner bookstore. This book is well written enough to find its place in the latter, appealing to the scholar in us & to the trivia searcher in us. I highly recommend this book to the serious reader of American history.

Awash in a Sea of Faith is a book of its time. The intellectual and historiographical context of Jon Butler's revisionist history of religion in America is found in the camp that Jack Greene, Keith Thomas and David Hall have been preparing for some time now. This trend, which Butler perfects, is marked by a strong skepticism toward the influence of Puritanism in American culture, toward the major claims of American Protestantism, toward the basic dogmas of traditional American religious history and by a desire for historical and geographical egalitarianism. A pervasive skepticism is not the only component at the foundation of Butler's approach. His historical logic is partially guided by a continuous dialectic between the sacred and secular, elite and popular, the barren colonial landscape and the rise of sacred structures, orthodoxy and occultism. Considering the large and long religious historiographies in North America, Butler's approach starts with profoundly untraditional premises and assumptions. It should not surprise us, then, that Butler would arrive to untraditional conclusions. After all that is what revisionism is- to change the way we perceive history and to challenge some rusty assumptions. His main argument, that the Christianization of America came through a process of syncretism, would have not only alarmed Protestant leaders in the 19th century, but would also have worried religious historians in the 20th century. In his presentation of European Protestantism and its journey toward the America continent, Butler emphasizes occultism as a transforming force in religion and society. In doing this, he ignores the strength of the anti-idolatry Protestant movements that "cleaned out" many churches, the close relation between modern empiricism and Protestantism with its emphasis on the "Biblical evidence," and the influence of effective preaching on parishioners.

Considering that the word "holocaust" in the post World Wars is related with the Nazi's massacre of the Jews, Butler demonizes American Protestantism for its missionary zeal and for its emphasis on civil obedience among the African Americans. By doing this, Butler completely disregards the humanitarian impulse in their behalf, which was equally syncretic. And by assuming that African American ideology was secular before 1760 he contradicts his conclusion that "Slavery's destruction of African religious systems in America . . . . constituted cultural robbery. . . . of the most vicious sort." If we still ignore this contradiction, his analysis of the African-American mass movement into Protestant Christianity cannot explain how would the unsophisticated African religious systems could have been a match to Protestantism and to the complex life in American Slavery.

In revising the Great Awakenings Butler take luster out of these movements by emphasizing its conservatism and downplaying its egalitarianism. But here Butler's assumption falters in logic. He presumes that increase social status for the clergy and increment in church authority always meant conservatism. In the American religious context, where pluralism was the main characteristic, more leveled status to clergy, and more authority to non-state-churches (dissidents) meant egalitarianism- particularly compared with the European religious experience. Furthermore, by indicating that itinerant ministers opposed settled ministers selectively, he is not only ignoring their significance, but is also ignoring social forces that would naturally motivate the Itinerants to seek support and sympathy from some settled ministers while ignoring others. Curiously, Butler's analysis of American revivalism is distinguished by a robust defense to the Anglican Church, and a downplaying of dissent's strength and growth-, which is also a revision in traditional American religious history.

Throughout his entire book, but especially on the Antebellum Christianity, Butler always defines the practice of Alchemy, the curiosity for the gothic and the secret, and the believing in dreams and miracles as indication of spiritualism and witchcraft. Defining these religious experiences, which some orthodox leaders, have seen with suspicious eyes, may belie Butler's position of standardization-a secularized Protestant mainstream. At this point the reader would wonder why Butler includes the practice of alchemy with the believing in miracles, since science (to mention only two) was not as clearly define and not as evenly spread as it was a century later, and miracles have always been regarded as part of Christian beliefs. It may be that Butler needs this combination to highlight his point of Protestants' lack of purity and imprecision, which would have been impossible otherwise. Perhaps inexactitude is inbuilt in certain aspects of the study since Christianity is itself syncretic, thus invalidating any model of Christianity detached from "its" culture and historical setting.