In this work, W. Clark Gilpin proposes that American theological scholarship has become responsible to a threefold public: the churches, the academic community, and civil society. The author approaches this goal indirectly, by investigating the historic social roles of Protestant theologians and the educational institutions in which they have pursued their scholarship and teaching. Ranging from analyses of the New England puritan Cotton Mather to contemporary theologians as "public intellectuals," the author asserts that we find out what theology "is" by asking what theologians "do".