Niebuhr makes no mystery of the task he is undertaking which is "to interpret the meaning and spirit of American Christianity as a movement which finds its center in the faith in the kingdom of God," (xix). Niebuhr sees the American religious landscape as primarily Protestant as opposed to Catholic and the book is written from the Protestant perspective.

It is critical to an understanding of Niebuhr's The Kingdom of God that Christianity in America "must be understood as a movement rather than as an institution or series of institutions. It is gospel rather than law; it is more dynamic than static," (xxiv). It is also vital to the task that the reader of history understands this movement to be dialectical which "is expressed in worship and in work, in the direction toward God and the direction toward the world which is loved in God, in the pilgrimage toward the eternal kingdom and in the desire to make his will real on earth," (xxiv-xxv). And finally, to truly understand America's religious history and particularly Niebuhr's magnum opus, one must have "faith in a sovereign, living, loving God," (xxvi).

Just as he makes no mystery of his task, Niebuhr speaks with crystal clarity on the theme of his work that "Christianity, it appeared, could follow its grand line, avoiding the perils to right and left, if it remembered not only its goal but also its starting point and the middle of its course, the sovereignty of God and the revelation of his rule in Jesus Christ, crucified and risen from the dead," (xxiii).

What Niebuhr hopes to do then, is to reinterpret Puritanism and evangelicalism of the nineteenth century and to weigh it against the liberalism of his day, to find them all wanting, and then to call for a new orthodoxy. In saying this, it is necessary to emphasize that Niebuhr did not find them equally wanting for he was to sentence liberalism to a historical reference from which it would never be able to break free. For in the end, Niebuhr could find something in Puritanism and evangelicalism which could be dusted off, reclaimed and relieved anew. But for liberalism, Niebuhr said that it professed "A God without wrath brought men without sin into a kingdom without judgment through the ministrations of a Christ without a cross," (193).

When he looked at Puritanism, Niebuhr saw a rich and vibrant heritage of American religion. However, in liberalism he could see only the loss of religious heritage, (195). Niebuhr noted that "The coming kingdom of late liberalism, like heaven and senile orthodoxy, came to be a place not of liberty and glory but of material delights, the modern counterparts of those pleasures which it had laughed to scorn when it spoke of ancient superstitions," (196). Notice the use of the term "late" in speaking of liberalism. It is as if Niebuhr finds this movement already dead.

If so, Niebuhr's prophetic view of the present and future may not be as bright as his view of the past for liberalism would continue to limp along even through the present age. Thus, as Ronald Reagan was apt to say during his presidency, talk about his death, like the talk of the death of liberalism, is premature indeed! Conversely, that liberalism continues to limp along does not lessen the sharpness of Niebuhr's attack of it nor the fact that Niebuhr's critique of liberalism is more realistic than caricature.

We turn now to consider just what it is that Niebuhr means by the kingdom of God. Niebuhr rejects the Catholic notion of a "church-governed society," in favor of the Protestant ideal of "God's direct rule," (23). Here, God "governed all things immediately by the word of his mouth, and to him all political organizations, churches and individuals were directly responsible," (23). And yet, Niebuhr is quick to point out that the kingdom of God is not an ideal but a movement, (166-67). In this kingdom, God took and maintained the initiative. Humanity moved towards God only because God had already commenced to move towards humanity. It is no wonder then that even as denominations began to evolve that congregational integrity and independence also emerged. There would be no room for a pope in America or a "mother church."

The kingdom of God meant that the sovereignty of God was a fundamental starting point and from there one moved on to three further convictions: "Christian constitutionalism, the independence of the church, and the limitation or relativization of human sovereignty," (58).  The last of which would challenge the deep engrained idea of individualism -- one of the founding principles of the United States. It was in "these ways then, through insistence upon constitutionalism, upon the primacy and independence of the church and upon the limitation of all human power, the faith in the kingdom of God became a constructive thing in early America," (86-87).

             Americans are known for their propensity for signs. A short trip down any American road would so attest for our highways and byways are littered with signs of all shapes and sizes and containing various messages. It is in this vein that we could put a sign on Niebuhr's work under study here, "Caution, genius at work." For truly Niebuhr has performed a marvelous work and a wonder. His book is revisionist history at its best. Niebuhr looks at Puritanism which most Americans can also see through lenses of ridicule and loathing as portrayed in the movie "The Scarlet Letter," and finds there a vision of "The Kingdom of God." Niebuhr sees beyond the many countervailing forces in American society and lifts up a movement that is common to all -- that no matter what Protestants called themselves, each of them had in mind bringing the kingdom of God to earth.

            Niebuhr says that the Puritans were not as legalistic and narrow minded as we have thought them to be and as novelists and others have portrayed them. The burning of witches and the excesses of Cotton Matter and others were more aberrations than manifestations of Puritanism. The Puritans had in clear view a common notion of the kingdom of God that was more than a "cover story." These were not capitalists in religious clothing or imperialists in evangelist clothes. These people truly believed that God had brought them to America and they set about the task of erecting here a new nation under the sovereignty of God and dedicated to the proposition that the "kingdom of God is not a reign of terror but one of love, not of law but of liberty," (95). They also "believed that the new life, the establishment of God's law in the heart by love, was of such a sort that Christ lived in the Christian," (93).