Christianity's Chronicler

The many-volumed histories that caused much of the sag in Victorian bookshelves have largely disappeared, but at least one U.S. historian still prefers to see his craft write large. He is Yale University's Kenneth Scott Latourette, 78, a precise, untiring Baptist minister, who has just overseen the publication of his 568-page The Twentieth Century Outside Europe (Harper & Row: $8.50), the fifth and final volume of a series entitled Christianity in a Revolutionary Age.

Latourette's latest book completes an awesome work that has been widely acclaimed as the best exposition so far of what has happened to Christian churches in the 19th and 20th centuries. Written in a prose that Latourette describes as "clear but unadorned," Twentieth Century is scrupulously impartial to Roman Catholics and Protestants, meticulously supported with statistics and footnotes. Latourette warms noticeably in treating the details of a favorite theme, the growth of Christian missions around the world. He is crisp, exact, and noncommittal in describing the great intellectual trends--the social gospel, the ecumenical movement, the liturgical revival--that have shaped Christianity since 1900.

A Potent Faith. But Latourette's Twentieth Century is more than a mere catalogue. Behind the facts and figures lurks his faith that human history is the story of salvation. Many of his Protestant contemporaries gloomily see the years since the French Revolution as a "post-Christian" age, in which the faith spread by the Apostles has been forced on the defensive. Looking instead at the worldwide missionary triumph of the churches, Latourette argues that "if the entire globe is taken into consideration, never had Christianity been as potent in the life of mankind as a whole as it was when these lines were written."

So comprehensive a project as Christianity in a Revolutionary Age might be the masterwork of a lesser historian. For Latourette, the series occupies only a modest corner in the personal five-foot shelf of books he has written or contributed to. In all, he has 88 titles to his credit, including a seven-volume history of Christianity from its beginnings until World War I. Historian Latourette is also that academic rarity--a specialist in two separate fields. Rivaling his fame as a chronicler of Christianity is his reputation as a leading Orientalist: he has written four books on China, including one of the standard U.S. undergraduate texts on the country's history and culture.

Historian Latourette originally intended to spread Christianity rather than write about it. Born in Oregon, he graduated from Linfield College, decided to become a missionary, but first went east for further study at Yale. He took a doctorate in Far Eastern history, and joined the university's fledgling Yale-in-China program, which supported a daughter college at Changsha. Latourette spent two years as a teacher in China, and returned to the U.S. because of poor health. He began his 41 years as a professor at the Yale Divinity School in 1921. Between classes, Latourette squeezed in an impressive variety of nonacademic chores: he was one of the founding fathers of the World Council of Churches, served as president of such divergent organizations as the American Historical Association and the American Baptist Convention.

"Avoid Wasting Time." An abstemious bachelor, Latourette met these responsibilities by keeping to a rigid work schedule that allowed him precisely one hour a day for walking. Yale legend has it that professors breakfasting at the Divinity School dining room know it is 8 o'clock when Latourette flips his copy of the New York Times to the editorial page. "That is just a myth," he says. "All I try to do is to avoid wasting time."

Latourette has wasted none, even after semiretiring to the status of professor emeritus in 1953. Now that Christianity in a Revolutionary Age is out of the way, he is busy bringing up to date his The Chinese, Their History and Culture. After that, he plans to tackle still more projects, including a new one-volume history of China.

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