Historian J. Rixey Ruffin, assistant professor of history at the University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point (UWSP), has written a book, "A Paradise of Reason: William Bentley and Enlightenment Christianity in the Early Republic," published this month by the Oxford University Press, that examines the struggle of faith and reason as it unfolded during the eighteenth-century Enlightenment, or Age of Reason.

The struggle between faith and reason has been centuries in the making. Most studies of this conflict focus on the arguments between proponents of evolution and biblical literalism, an argument that emerged after the 19^th century work of Charles Darwin. But the tension between faith and reason was well in place even before then, argues Ruffin.

Drawing on the more than 1,000 sermons of William Bentley, a Congregationalist pastor in Salem, Massachusetts, from 1783 to 1819, Ruffin traces the effects of reason and science on the pressing theological questions of the day, namely the power of God, the means of salvation, and the attributes of Jesus. Navigating the demands of faith and reason involves much more than reconciling Genesis to Darwin.

"By shining a spotlight on William Bentley’s thought, Ruffin illuminates how a generation of Americans tried to reconcile the sometimes contradictory imperatives of Protestant Christianity, Enlightenment, and the Age of Revolution," said Jonathan D. Sassi, author of "A Republic of Righteousness: The Public Christianity of the Post-Revolutionary New England Clergy."

But this book is as much about the social and political effects of reasonable Christianity as it is about the intellectual or theological effects. Ruffin places these theological changes against the backdrop of an eighteenth-century mercantile America, examining in new detail the tangible consequences of this new thought on the sailors, the widows, the African-Americans, the artisans, and the merchants of Salem, and explaining the unlikely support of these New Englanders for southerner Thomas Jefferson.

By utilizing the tools of social, political and intellectual history, Ruffin has woven a story of unique historical complexity, and one that speaks to the negotiations and debates between faith and reason that continue even today.

Ruffin received his bachelor’s degree from the University of Virginia and his master’s and doctorate from the University of Delaware.

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