As Harold Bell Wright’s novel God and the Groceryman (1927)—a sequel to The Calling of Dan Matthews—opens, Dan appears as a millionaire miner in Kansas City. Having accumulated sufficient wealth, he promotes “a practical Christianity” aimed at saving America “by the worship of God” in the imaginary Ozarks city of Westover. In the novel, the word church appears 450 times, but the term mainly highlights how the main character’s ministry has little to do with institutional Christianity. The words denomination and denominational appear 318 times in the novel, but Wright uses them in a negative sense, which reflects his Restorationist aversion to sectarianism. God and the Groceryman echoes Wright’s Social Gospel, as well as the anti-creedal impulse of the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ), to which he belonged. This paper discusses Wright’s idea of civil religion, as opposed to doctrinal religion.
John Han (Sat,) studied this question.