Edwin Gaustad

Edwin Scott Gaustad (November 14, 1923 – March 25, 2011) was a Professor of History at the University of California, Riverside. He achieved fame with his study of the genealogy of religion in the United States, Historical atlas of religion in America. The 1972 edition of this work has been used in secular histories of Mainline Protestantism and the Emergent church movement (denominationalism) for decades, and his a Religious History of America was a standard text for college students. A graduate of Baylor University and Brown University, Gaustad dedicated his career to sharing his expansive research on religious history. Gaustad was President of the American Society of Church History. Gaustad died March 25, 2011 in Santa Fe, New Mexico at the age of 87.

Gaustad was born in Rowley, Iowa, but grew up in Houston, Texas. During the Second World War Gaustad served as a 1st Lieutenant in the Army Air Corps. From 1943-1945 he served in Italy as a bombardier and navigator on over 30 missions. Gaustad graduated from Baylor University in 1947 with a BA in history. In 1951, he went on to complete a PhD in religious studies at Brown University, concentrating on the history of religions. At Brown, Gaustad studied under Edmund Morgan, a historian of colonial America. Gaustad taught at Brown as an associate professor, before going on to Shorter College (1953-1957), University of Redlands (1957-1965), and finally University of California at Riverside (until his retirement in 1989). After his retirement, Gaustad became a professor emeritus at UC Riverside and a visiting professor at Baylor (1978), University of Richmond (1987), Princeton Seminary (1991–92), and Auburn University (1993).

Gaustad's first book was The Great Awakening in New England, published in 1957. In it he argued that the Great Awakening of Jonathan Edwards and George Whitfield was more than a religious phenomenon, impacting politics and intellectual life in America.

An running theme in Gaustad's scholarship was religious dissent in America. Touching on this subject, Gaustad wrote several biographies on significant figures including Roger Williams, George Berkeley, Thomas Jefferson, and Benjamin Franklin. In addition to his biographies, Gaustad wrote several histories of religion in America, including Dissent in American Religion (1973), Faith of Our Fathers: Religion and the New Nation (1987), andA Religious History of America (2002). One of his most impressive projects was the Historical Atlas of Religion in America, published in 1962, 1976, and again in 2001.

In addition to his academic labors, Gaustad was also politically active on occasion. In the late 1980s, Gaustad joined expert witnesses from the landmark libel case Lee v. Duddy in publishing their testimonies. Gaustad himself was not asked to testify at the trial, but wrote the essay that concluded compilation, to which John Gordon Melton, John Albert Saliba, Eugene Van Ness Goetchius, Rodney Stark, and H. Newton Malony contributed. In his concluding essay, Gaustad defended the American tradition of the local church, remarking that

The history of Christianity is replete with examples of those groups who, especially in their early years, manifest a zealous assurance and unique strength that seems strikingly different from the casual or inherited religious affiliation all around them. To persecute this zeal is to rob Christianity of the reforming impetus that it has always required... From my observation, I conclude that the Local Church stands in the tradition of evangelical Christianity, of the Protestant emphasis on biblical authority, of the great Christian mystics’ and pietists’ concern for the inner life, of the millennia-old expectation of a New Age, and of born-again, experiential religion. They meet together, pray together, sing and study together, and grow together. They labor to be loyal to their particular vision of the Christian life. It seems enough. It also sounds very much like the free exercise of religion.

In 1998, he publicly opposed Rep. Ernest Istook's proposed constitutional amendment to permit forms of government-sponsored prayer and tax-financed religious activities. Gaustad came up with the slogan "Istook is Mistook," a phrase that would become popular in the campaign against the amendment.

Gaustad also served as an expert witness in 2002 for the Federal court case Glassroth v. Moore, which concerned the placement of a stone Ten Commandments monument in the rotunda of the Heflin-Torbert Judicial Building in Montgomery, Alabama. In his testimony, Gaustad referenced Thomas Jefferson's "undying anxiety of anything that would bring church and state together." Gaustad concluded that moving the monument from the courthouse to private propertyAccording to Americans United for the Separation of Church and State, his testimony was significant for their case against Moore.

Gaustad was a prolific writer that believed in the separation of church and state education. However, he still thought that both were important, even saying that the Great Awakening not only helped religion, but also helped the thought process in America. He is quoted to have said that "Religion involves both the heart and the mind. Education, likewise, involves both the heart and the mind."He believed that education and religion were wonderful things—just not when one puts them together.

Religious dissent

According to the Baptist History & Heritage Society, Gaustad's work influenced "a new generation of baptist historians."

At a time when many Baptists in America turned their backs on their denomination’s freedom legacy, Gaustad clearly and consistently articulated Baptists’ historical foundations of religious liberty and church/state separation. Gaustad reminded Baptists and the world that the American commitment to religious liberty and church/state separation enshrined in the First Amendment was first articulated and put into practice by Roger Williams and other early Baptists. He dedicated his voice and pen to the preservation of the best of Baptist principles, and demonstrated time and timeagain that American history cannot be fully understood apart from inclusion of the religious dimension of the American story.

Throughout his scholarship, Gaustad sought to remind Americans that understanding religious dissent is necessary both for understanding and for living the America's religious experience. In Dissent in American Religion, Gaustad wrote that "In the first century, amidst a plethora of fresh dissent, the sober counsel was 'Test everything; hold fast what is good.' It is sober counsel for every century, and every generation." Moreover, he strove to communicate the lesson learned from Thomas Jefferson, that, "Americans need to be so bound together, bound by sentiment and hope, by values and civility--bound by something more than a network of interstate highways."

Gaustad is remembered as one of the foremost historians of religion in America, but his friends and colleagues noted that he was also "a gracious scholar, always taking time to help others —which is the mark of a truly great man.”

Gaustad held a lifelong love for Baylor University and often taught there as a visiting professor. On several occasions, he also lectured for the J.M. Dawson Institute of Church-State Studies. His friends and colleagues remembered him as a humble, unassuming man. When he died he left his scholarly library and personal papers to Baylor's Central Libraries Special Collections. The collection is housed in Moody Library as a scholar's collection. Most of the books in his collection pertain to church history and American history, and his personal papers include manuscripts, correspondence, and his research notes. These papers will remain sealed until 2022.