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Encyclopedia Of Evangelicalism
Randall Balmer
Westminster John Knox, 664 pages, $29.95

To a deep-rooted evangelical, Randall Balmer's Encyclopedia of Evangelicalism reads like a family album. The brief, cross-referenced entries invite hunts after alma maters, favorite authors, personal heroes, and other close kin.

The encyclopedia might read like a family album to readers outside the evangelical tradition, too, but not in the best sense. Some of Balmer's portraits are sketchy, and some theological and institutional bloodlines are hard to trace. Readers must wonder what caused these flaws—the author's method, the scope of the project, or evangelicalism itself?

Evangelicals emerge in this book as a colorful and varied crew. Musician John Fischer appears next to flannelgraph, 18th-century Methodist John Fletcher, and Focus on the Family. Billy Graham receives a whole page—but so does Sam Bowers, Imperial Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan in the 1960s. Balmer acknowledges that he has defined evangelicalism "rather broadly," possibly more broadly than many people featured in the book would prefer.

The bulk of the nearly 3,000 entries are individuals or institutions, though Balmer also throws in a few events (Great Awakening, prayer breakfasts), terms (born again, sanctification), and wild cards, like the entry on just—as in "Lord, we just wanna thank you."

Overall it is an impressive achievement for one scholar (most don't have the boldness to edit an encyclopedia, let alone write one). And naturally, the pool is deepest in the author's area of specialty: contemporary evangelical subculture. Every Christian pop band that made it onto any chart in the 1980s makes a showing in this book, as do Thomas Kinkade, W.W.J.D., and Kurt Warner.

Balmer, a professor of American religion at Columbia University (and a CT contributing editor), only uneasily claims this crew as his family. Evangelicalism is, as he notes in another book, his father's religion, and he sometimes struggles to love it. Still, he takes no particular glee in exposing family skeletons, and he skillfully uses terms and categories of thought that evangelicals themselves use.

Balmer's insider perspective should make this book palatable, even fun, for most evangelical readers. We remember sword drills and Amy Grant's "Baby, Baby" video. When Balmer points out that the Southern Baptist practice of scheduling revivals months in advance would make Jonathan Edwards spin in his grave, we know enough to chuckle.

Some of the references that appeal to evangelical insiders might render the book confusing to others. Inherent challenges of the encyclopedia genre don't help. By nature, an encyclopedia offers snapshots rather than a coherent narrative. Also, by nature, an encyclopedia tends to be descriptive rather than prescriptive—more like a catalogue of wildflowers in a field than a list of plants for a formal garden. Furthermore, a single-author encyclopedia inevitably reflects the author's quirks.

This all contributes to a tangle that could trip up any reader in spots. Editorial quirkiness and subject sprawl do not unduly mar Balmer's evangelical family portrait—though some readers may chafe at the inclusion of Christians for Biblical Equality but exclusion of the Council on Biblical Manhood and Womanhood, or wonder why the Newsboys merit an entry while the New International Version does not.

The greater flaw of this book is its vagueness regarding the structure of the evangelical family tree. Balmer's reluctance (or inability) to clearly define either the core or the boundaries of evangelicalism hampers the book's effectiveness, particularly if the reader is not an evangelical.

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January 2003, Vol. 47, No. 1