RaveThe AtlanticAn important new book ... Argues convincingly that the quest for Christian America is a perennial national obsession, ... Sutton offers copious evidence ... Illustrates why mainstream U.S. historians have finally begun to take the political significance of American Christianity more seriously ... Doesn’t flinch from the worse ... Sutton’s book could spur such reflection, even though it does not offer easy answers about what comes next ... Sutton stops short of making predictions. He closes the book, instead, with a stirring reminder: What happens next is up to us.
Patrick Parr
PositiveThe Christian CenturyMost illuminating is the book’s treatment of King’s intellectual development. As others have shown, he was a serial plagiarizer of course papers. Parr offers extensive documentation of this problematic practice as well as some speculation about why King might have engaged in it, not to mention how he avoided getting caught ... Parr’s book does not mount an especially ambitious argument. But he has done some impressive digging in the historical record and there is no doubt that scholars writing about King will find The Seminarian useful. The book should also attract students and faculty at seminaries and divinity schools, who will be interested not only in the particularities of King’s experience at Crozer but also in the fascinating picture that emerges of a mid-20th-century theological education.
