BOOKNOTES 549

brought improvement. The peace churches, while attempting to gain absolute

deferments, agreed that pacifists owed some form of nonmilitary service to a
nation under a conscription law.
Swarthmore College J. WILLIAM FROST
Swarthmore, Pennsylvania

The Politics of Military Rule in Brazil, Ί964-85. By THOMAS E. SKIDMORE.

;
New York: Oxford University Press, 1988. xi + 420 pp. $29.95.
This study of the Brazilian military's experiment with a "national security
state" during the years when Brazil's Catholic church achieved a heroic
witness as "the only center of institutional opposition" (p. 135) to the national
repression is not a history of the achievement of that witness. Except for a few
references to the labors of Dom Helder Cámara and Cardinal Arns and to
church action on behalf of the regime's victims, Skidmore's discussion of
church opposition to the generals is confined to four pages (pp. 135-138).
Church historians interested in the development of the Brazilian church are
advised to read elsewhere (Skidmore's own recommendations are reliable).
Still, the book is helpful for historians of the Latin American church because
it admirably details and analyzes the dark reality in which the Brazilian
church discovered its present identity and mission.
Many readers of this journal will be put off by Skidmore's extended
treatment of macroeconomic issues. However, because economics and politics
are so important for the Latin American church and because Skidmore's
discussion of them is so illuminating and pertinent to the situation of other
Latin American nations, the historian of the Latin American church will
benefit amply from a careful reading of this impressively well researched
book. Its argument is punctuated with notes constituting a quarter of its
length.
Southern Methodist University ROBERT L. BRECKENRIDGE
Dallas, Texas

The Seminary in the City: A Study of New York Theological Seminary. By

ROBERT W. PAZMIÑO. Lanham, Maryland: University Press of America,
1988. χ 4- 135 pp. $20.50 cloth; $10.25 paper.
The Seminary in the City describes the educational thought and work of
George W. Webber, who began his presidency of New York Theological
Seminary in 1969. In particular, it explores the relationship between
Webber's ideas, intentions, and commitments in the context of the issues that
confronted theological education in the United States from 1969 through
1975. Under Webber's leadership the Seminary sought a reform in ministe-
550 C H U R C H HISTORY

rial education by emphasizing contextual and field-based education that

included laity and clergy as well as seminarians.
Pazmiño's work is divided into four chapters. The first deals with
theological education in the postwar period. The second covers historical
developments at New York Theological Seminary during changing times.
The third chapter specifically focuses on the educational thought of Webber.
The final section deals with Webber's contribution to the continuing
discussion regarding theological education and the implications of his thought
and his New York "experiment." The book is well documented and will be of
special interest to those interested in innovative theological education in
urban areas.
Andrews University GEORGE R. KNIGHT
Berrien Springs, Michigan

Das Christentum in Nordamerika: Glaube und Religionsfreiheit in vier

Jahrhunderten. By SIDNEY E. MEAD. Translated by JOHANNES HEN-
NING. Edited by KLAUS PENZEL. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht,
1987. 275 pp. D M 4 8 .
Publisher and editor should be commended for providing this translation of
Sidney Mead's The Lively Experiment (1963). Mead's trenchant essays have
been justly appreciated in the states. They should now prove nearly as useful
for Germans, Austrians, and Swiss who desire some kind of purchase on the
Christianity that so obviously, but also mysteriously, shapes the American
presence in the world. If Mead's essays—nearly innocent as they are of
women, blacks, Pentecostals, postbellum evangelicals, and even Roman
Catholics—now seem a little dated, they still usefully illuminate an impor-
tant, if not necessarily the central, religious tradition of the United States.
Penzel's introduction is helpful ("In his essays, Mead presents himself as an
heir of the Enlightenment and not of the Reformation, or, as William Warren
Sweet, of the great American revivals of the nineteenth century" [p. 9]). A
substantial appendix, in which Penzel outlines the story since the 1930s,
makes good use of commentary by de Tocqueville, Schaff, and Bonhoeffer on
America. Like Mead, Penzel is strongest on the old Protestants, yet he also
fills in well for Catholics, blacks, southern and sectarian Protestants, and
(with special insight) Lutherans. He also reflects, more thoughtfully even
than Mead, on the effects of "Americanization" on the substance of Chris-
tianity itself.

Wheaton College MARK A.t N O L L

Wheaton, Illinois
 ^ s
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