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Deconstructing Evangelicalism Deconstructing Evangelicalism: Conservative Protestantism in the Age of Billy Graham by D.G. Hart Baker, 2004 224 pp. $21.99

A few years ago, I joined the local Young Life Committee. Our job was to raise money and prayerfully support the work of the local Young Life leader, whose job was to meet unchurched high school students and eventually introduce them to Jesus.

The committee was composed of a variety of church-committed people—Presbyterians, Episcopalians, Baptists, Evangelical Free. Some of our churches had vibrant youth groups, others did not. But we all recognized that as vital as the local church is, it doesn't do all things well. Comparatively speaking, Young Life does very few things well. But in one area, it shines—it has a stellar track record at helping kids who would not darken the doors of a church meet Jesus Christ for the first time.

And so this disparate group of churchgoers gathered regularly to pray and to plan for this unique ministry. We no doubt exemplified traits that would suggest to scholars that we were "evangelicals," and few of us would have shunned the label. But that's not what we were about. We were just some church people who wanted to make sure unchurched young people in our community heard about Jesus, and we thought this parachurch ministry did a good job at that.

This is the heart of evangelicalism: It arises out of the church. It is local. It is voluntary. It is purposeful. It is driven by love of Jesus and concern for those who don't know his love. It is the dimension of evangelicalism that scholars are wise to keep in mind when they talk about "the evangelical movement."

Darryl Hart, in Deconstructing Evangelicalism, seems to recognize, at least now and then, that this is the real evangelicalism. But here, as in so many books in this genre, the term evangelicalism tends toward abstraction that confuses as much as it clarifies. Ironically, Hart, who argues that "evangelicalism" is indeed an abstraction, seems unable to escape the abstraction for long.

This is not to dismiss his largely cogent analysis. I never hear or read Hart without coming away stimulated. He seems especially fond of tweaking establishment evangelicalism, and as a card-carrying member of that establishment, I find the tweaking invigorating, even if, in the end, I sometimes have to disagree.

Hart makes two arguments in this book. The first part examines "the scholarly construction of evangelicalism" of the last 25 years, especially in the areas of history and social science. He explains why evangelicalism as currently used became a useful category for journalists, scholars, and believing Protestants, and why it is an inadequate category.

The second part of the book explores evangelicalism as a post-World War II religious movement, one fashioned by the likes of Billy Graham, Carl Henry, Harold John Ockenga, and others. Hart argues that this "movement" has fragmented, and concludes that because it is fragmenting, it is dying. In these chapters, Hart attempts "to show how, without a self-conscious notion about ministry, a common theology, and a coherent understanding of worship, evangelicalism has deconstructed." But what he offers here "is also an argument about the damage the construction of evangelicalism has done to historic Christianity."

I don't have much to say about the first argument, since I'm only a journalist. I'll let scholars of evangelicalism reply to these concerns. In the course of this argument, however, Hart writes about Christianity Today's role in helping construct a neo-evangelical identity, and his account needs some fine-tuning.

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