2 of 16

That said, however, I can turn to the relatively easy task of responding to the themes in the first section of the book. I hope I may be forgiven for writing from a British perspective and as a "mere Christian" in (C.S. Lewis's sense) who eschews labels.

Noll's historical work has always been comparative in a way which complements the efforts of comparative sociologists. Though the present book focuses on the United States, there are constant sidelong glances at the wider universe of comparison, especially Canada, because Noll is acutely aware that you do not understand the United States unless you understand the way it both resembles and differs from other Anglophone societies, and also have a sense of the historical trails of persons and ideas from all of northern Europe, including Protestant Ireland. That means grasping the meaning of evangelical in the Anglo-American sense and of Evangelisch in the German sense, and returning to sources in Lutheran pietism (where the book begins) as well as in Swiss, Dutch, English, and Scots Calvinism.

Of course, such an understanding is utterly remote from the self-consciousness of ordinary Americans, which seems to depend on seeing their whole vast continent as self-contained, created ex nihilo with only a mythic "history," and shorn of such reference points in cultural space as might require engagement with "the other." That is America's great strength, though it has rather somber implications for anyone like Noll who attempts to address "fellow Americans" from the vantage point of history without myth and even recommends the modest "other" across the U.S-Canadian border. (Of course, American intellectuals know this well enough, but they are mostly not evangelicals, and that is precisely Noll's problem: how to bridge the gulf between them and Middle America).

The most significant "other," of course, from the point of view of understanding America—and evangelicalism—is Britain, in spite of the fact that Britain offers sharper contrasts than either Canada or Australia. What Britain and the United States share is law, language, politics, and ethos, as well as the association between a burgeoning evangelicalism and an early dawn of modernity. Where they differ relates to the separation of Church and state, the dissociation of religion from territory, the extent and role of voluntarism and pluralism, and the balance of power between metropolitan centers and provincial peripheries. It is these differences in combination which bear on the conspicuous difference in degree and kind of secularization.

The crucial reason why Britain is America's "significant other" when it comes to thinking about religion in general, and evangelicalism in particular, lies in the staggered succession of their respective empires. In the British case that begins in the Anglo-Caribbean in 1656 and ends up three centuries later in anglophone Africa (and certain "points east"). In the contemporary American case it involves a global irradiation specially evident in the Pacific rim and Latin America. One is, of course, not supposed to refer to these massive realities, except by way of excoriation, or else to identify—falsely—the misfortune of global evangelical expansion with the misfortune of imperialism. All the same, there is an obvious association between evangelicalism and the Franco-German Creole—English—which is now the global dialect. So when Noll recommends his critique of American evangelical politics by reference to the worldwide upsurge of evangelical political activity, it is these mere realities which provide the essential background.

next page... |  2 of 16

share this page