S. E. Ahlstrom

Sydney Eckman Ahlstrom (1919–1984) was an American historian. He was a Yale University professor and a specialist in the religious history of the United States.

Biography

Ahlstrom was born on December 16, 1919, in Cokato, Minnesota, the son of Joseph T. Ahlstrom (1878–1942) and Selma (Eckman) Ahlstrom (1881–1976), who were Swedish-American Lutherans. He graduated from Gustavus Adolphus College in St. Peter, Minnesota, with a Bachelor of Arts degree in 1941, and served in the US Army during the Second World War. He earned a master's degree at the University of Minnesota in 1946 and a Doctor of Philosophy degree at Harvard University in 1952. He was a Fulbright fellow at the University of Strasbourg, France, and an instructor at Harvard before joining Yale in 1954.

In 1973 he received the National Book Award in category Philosophy and Religion for ''A Religious History of the American People'' (1972)."National Book Awards – 1973"
National Book Foundation. Retrieved 2012-03-08.

He was elected a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1978. In 1979 he was awarded The Christian Century Award for the Decade's Most Outstanding Book on Religion.

At the time of his retirement from Yale in 1984 he held the position of Samuel Knight Professor of American History and Modern Religious History. He died on July 3, 1984, in New Haven, Connecticut.

Bibliography

Books

* ''A Religious History of the American People'' (1972; 2nd ed. 2004)
* ''The American frontier and the Protestant missionary response'' (1960)

Edited volumes

* ''An American reformation: A documentary history of Unitarian Christianity'', edited with Jonathan S. Carey (1998)
* ''Theology in America: The major Protestant voices from Puritanism to Neo-Orthodoxy'' (1967)

Representative articles

* "The Scottish Philosophy and American Theology," ''Church History,'' Vol. 24, No. 3 (Sep., 1955), pp. 257–27
in JSTOR
* "Continental Influence on American Christian Thought Since World War I," ''Church History,'' Vol. 27, No. 3 (Sept 1958), pp. 256–27
in JSTOR
* "Theology and the Present-Day Revival," ''Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science'' Vol. 332, Religion in American Society (Nov., 1960), pp. 20–3
in JSTOR
* "Thomas Hooker: Puritanism and Democratic Citizenship: A Preliminary Inquiry into Some Relationships of Religion and American Civic Responsibility," ''Church History,'' Vol. 32, No. 4 (Dec., 1963), pp. 415–43
in JSTOR
* "The Radical Turn in Theology and Ethics: Why It Occurred in 1960s," ''Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science'' Vol. 387, The Sixties: Radical Change in American Religion (Jan., 1970), pp. 1–1
in JSTOR
* "Religion, Revolution and the Rise of Modern Nationalism: Reflections on the American Experience," ''Church History,'' Vol. 44, No. 4 (Dec., 1975), pp. 492–50
in JSTOR
* "The Religious Dimension of American Aspirations," ''Review of Politics'' vol. 38, No. 3, Bicentennial Issue (Jul., 1976), pp. 332–34
in JSTOR
* "The Romantic Religious Revolution and the Dilemmas of Religious History The Romantic Religious Revolution and the Dilemmas of Religious History," ''Church History,'' Vol. 46, No. 2 (Jun., 1977), pp. 149–17
in JSTOR
* "The Problem of the History of Religion in America," ''Church History,'' Vol. 57, Supplement: Centennial Issue (1988), pp. 127–13
in JSTOR

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Ahlstrom, Sydney
1919 births
1984 deaths
20th-century American historians
American male non-fiction writers
20th-century American male writers
20th-century Lutherans
American historians of religion
American Lutherans
American people of Swedish descent
Fellows of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences
Gustavus Adolphus College alumni
Harvard University alumni
Historians from Minnesota
Lutheran scholars
National Book Award winners
People from Cokato, Minnesota
Presidents of the American Society of Church History
University of Minnesota alumni
Yale University faculty
United States Army personnel of World War II