The Reverend Phillips Brooks, author of the beloved Christmas Carol, O Little Town of Bethlehem, was undeniably one of the most popular preachers of Gilded Age America. However, very few critical studies of his life and work exist. In this insightful book, Gillis J. Harp places Brooks's religious thought in its proper historical, cultural, and ecclesiastical contexts while clarifying the sources of Brooks's inspiration. The result is a fuller, richer portrait of this luminous figure and of this transitional era in American protestantism.

Gillis J. Harp is professor of history at Grove City College and the author of Positivist Republic: Auguste Comte and the Reconstruction of American Liberalism, 1865-1920.