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Mark A. Noll. America's God: From Jonathan Edwards to Abraham Lincoln.
Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002.

Thai Protestantism stands, historically, at the confluence of two vast rivers, Asian and Western, and the further back in time we go the more clearly we can distinguish the Western, missionary sources of contemporary Protestantism in Thailand. The great majority of Protestant missionaries serving in Thailand, until after World War II, came from the United States, which means that the study of Thai Protestant church history requires a strong grounding in American church history as well. A firm knowledge of American church history is especially important to understanding the origins and growth of the Thai church from its beginnings virtually to World War II. Those seeking an understanding of the nineteenth-century American sources of Thai church history would do well to begin with Mark Noll's America's God.

Noll focuses on the development of American theology from the 1790s, after the end of the American Revolution, through the 1850s to the eve of the American Civil War. America's God is more than a study of theology in a narrow sense. Noll describes how the churches of post-colonial America went about adapting themselves to their new socio-cultural situation after the Revolution. Where colonial American society had built itself around patronage and deference, post-colonial society developed a republican, egalitarian ethos that self-consciously did away with the traditional European model of the state-sponsored, established church. In many cases, church leaders themselves promoted disestablishment, and one of Noll's themes is that the American churches contributed significantly to the creation of the American republican community and its ethos. Republicanism was not something foisted on unwilling churches nor did it mean that the churches discarded everything from their past; Noll describes, rather, how the American church retained, for example, a strong Protestant emphasis on the centrality of the Scriptures.

Noll's central thesis, well and persuasively presented, is that after 1790 the American churches reconfigured their theologies along republican lines. They increasingly rejected the older Calvinist theological portrait of a stern, judgmental

As valuable as America's God is to understanding the American sources of Thai Protestant church history, it also contributes to a more general historical and theological understanding of the process of contextualization. We tend to forget in this age of the American imperium that the United States is not a Western nation in the same sense as Germany, France, or even Britain. It is still a "new nation," which has undergone and continues to undergo a process of self-invention; what Noll describes is how the American churches played a role in that process as they adapted themselves to the new post-revolutionary social and culture context. He shows how the different denominations went about the process of contextualization in different ways and at different speeds and, yet, participated in a common process that resulted in an identifiably American theology. He also describes, however, how American evangelical churches then failed to re-contextualize themselves in the 1850s and, more blatantly, after the Civil War. He points out that in the era when the evangelical theologians were producing a massive and creative theological literature that dominated the American scene, they were also engaged in intense internecine disputations and seemed more intent in attacking each other than in developing more positive theologies for the churches.

The ultimate tragedy Noll describes in America's God, however, is not the American theologians' failure to move beyond contentious apologetics directed at other theologians, and it is not the failure to recontextualize American theologies for later generations. He describes, rather, the way in which pro-slavery Southern

In terms of Thai church history, Noll provides an excellent description of the ideological and theological worldview that the first generations of American Protestant missionaries brought with them to nineteenth-century Siam. It was a contentious ideological-theological mixture, which the missionaries, irrespective of their particular denominational affiliation, would have seen as being both scriptural and commonsensical. Noll describes it as a combination of theological republicanism, philosophical commonsense realism, and the Bible, which played an important role in determining how the missionaries in Siam structured their work, understood Thai society and religion, and framed the activities they carried out. If we want to understand why the Thai Protestant churches have evolved in the directions they have, it is necessary to understand the ideological-theological world view their founders, the missionaries, brought with them to Siam. Noll's America's God is an invaluable tool for achieving that understanding.

This is a book that many audiences will want to read. American Christians of all backgrounds can learn a great deal about our theological heritage, not all of it comfortable or comforting. Given the dominant political role of the United States in our world and the relationship of religion to government, especially today, America's God is a timely book for understanding how Americans, including their political leaders, understand religion and the Christian faith. Those who are interested in and involved with the contextualization of the Christian faith will find this an important book, one that suggests that contextualization of the Christian faith poses dangers as well as gives hope to churches in "non-Christian" contexts. Students of the American missionary movement, finally and as stated above, will want to use this book to help them understand "where the missionaries were coming from." Noll's America's God

Nigel J. Brailey, "The Origins of the Siamese Forward Movement in Western Laos, 1850-92." Ph.D. dissertation, University of London, 1968.

It probably needs to be made clear from the beginning that the "Western Laos" in the title of Brailey's groundbreaking study does not refer to the modern nation of Laos but to modern-day northern Thailand. As not a few readers already know, the northern Thai were widely known in the nineteenth century as the "Lao" and their territory referred to as "Laos." For some readers, the term "forward movement" may also be somewhat obscure, it being a somewhat old-fashioned way to refer to the full incorporation of historical Siam's semi-independent northern tributary states into the Siamese state. This thesis, thus, describes in considerable detail the early stages of the process by which the Siamese central government transformed the northern principalities into provinces, a process that directly involved the Laos Mission and its churches and had a fundamental impact on their development.

In spite of its age, Brailey's "Origins of the Siamese Forward Movement" remains one of a handful of English-language studies on the history of nineteenth-century northern Siam, and even it is not actually a history of the North as such. The dissertation is a study in Siamese political and diplomatic history, however prominently events in northern Siam are featured. It focuses, furthermore, on the three "western Laos" states of Chiang Mai, Lamphun, and Lampang to the exclusion of Phrae and Nan; and, in fact, it gives by far-and-away the bulk of its attention to Chiang Mai. Those who are interested in northern Thai history, thus, have to "extract" that story from the one Brailey tells. The thesis also describes, necessarily, the history of British diplomatic relations with Siam and Burma, which relations involved not only the British Foreign Office in London and its consular officers in Bangkok and, later, in Chiang Mai, but also officers of the British Government of India and British officials in Burma and even Singapore. Brailey, in sum, tells a complex story involving factions in Bangkok, in Chiang Mai, and among the various British governments and officials. It is a political and diplomatic story with

On the whole, Brailey tells the story well, although he seems to be of the school that holds that doctoral dissertations are to be mined rather than read. His prose is not exactly ponderous and certainly not self-important, but it is bland, pedestrian, and sometimes fails to communicate his stories and make his points as clearly as they could be communicated and made. A saving grace is that he has included a very helpful set of tabl es listing the names of the kings of Siam, princes of Chiang Mai, the numerous Siamese envoys (commissioners) to Chiang Mai, and various Siamese government officials and British consular representatives. Without those lists, one would get quickly lost in the details of negotiations, contending parties, particular events, and appointments of officials. Even with them, this is a slow read. But if the reader is motivated and persistent, a great deal of information on nineteenth-century northern Siam is there for the taking.

There are things to complain about. The author has a nasty habit of referring only to the month in which an event occurred, not infrequently leaving entirely obscure the year of the event. Most British officials are referred to only by their initials rather than full first names. At other times, the author refers to a new official holding an office without telling us that there had been a change, a new British vice-consul in Chiang Mai being mentioned without the former one being dispensed with or a new Siamese Foreign Minister discussed without the reader's knowing that the former minister had retired. Brailey uses a rather unusual transcription system, which means that we are left with some strange spellings for Thai names, such as "Jularlonggon" for King Chulalongkorn. The difficulty is that if those using Brailey wants to refer to more obscure figures mentioned by him, it is difficult to transcribe his spellings into ones that will be more widely recognized and acceptable.

Brailey's dissertation, nonetheless, is a key secondary work for the study of northern Thai missionary and church history. The author makes substantial use of missionary records, and he gives due consideration to the role of the Laos Mission in the history of Siam's incorporation of the northern principalities into the Siamese nation-state. He places events in northern Thai church history in their larger political context, helping us to understand how changes in the political climate in Bangkok

Brailey's " Siamese Forward Movement" is, in sum, a specialist work, which is essential for those who want to understand nineteenth-century northern Thai political, economic, and church history.