Reviews, Interviews, News, Commentaries, Excerpts, My Top 5 Books, Wilson's Bookmarks, Book AwardsA Historian Decries Evangelicals' Power Politics—on Both Left and Right
We are neck deep in yet another general election season, and religion is again playing a prime role in shaping the political conversation. Despite the focus both campaigns have given to the flagging economy, issues of religious value and liberty continue to simmer below the surface. And evangelicals again find themselves in the thick of things, whether it's evangelical colleges suing the federal government over mandated coverage of birth control, an evangelical congressman injudiciously clarifying his unyielding stance on abortion, or the entire evangelical electorate facing the (overwhelmingly likely) prospect of giving the lion's share of its vote to a prominent Mormon bishop instead of to the only avowed Protestant on either ticket. Love them or hate them, no one can doubt that American evangelicals are an enmeshed feature of American politics.
Especially since the 1976 election of "born again" Baptist Jimmy Carter, a great many books have been written trying to understand the quality and character of evangelical activism in American public life. The latest such book comes from Wesleyan scholar Kenneth J. Collins, who explores what he sees as an evolving evangelical relationship to power over the past century. In Power, Politics, and the Fragmentation of Evangelicalism: From the Scopes Trial to the Obama Administration (IVP Academic), Collins considers American evangelical participation in politics since the early 20th century, arguing that evangelicals during this span effectively exchanged a broad and healthy pursuit of cultural influence (positive power) for a narrow and divisive quest for worldly political power (negative power). This shift has resulted in an evangelical public witness that's been both deeply compromised and hopelessly fragmented.
False Dichotomy
In his serviceable narrative of American evangelicalism, Collins posits that 19th-century evangelicals, refined by the revival fires of the Second Great Awakening, amassed a great stash of cultural capital that they used beneficently to shape societal mores, institutions, and cultural practices. These latter-day evangelicals stand as models of "positive" power, and conspicuously reflect many key Wesleyan ideals. But Collins contends that, as they entered the 20th century, evangelicals dramatically lost their cultural standing, turning toward a "negative," more coercive brand of power as a way to reassert their once-prominent public voices and to reestablish cultural relevance. As they did, they began to mistake the secular political realm for the kingdom of God.
Various factors contributed to the decline of evangelical cultural influence, but none for Collins was more important or more smothering than the rapidly growing bureaucracy of the federal government. From early 20th-century progressives to New Deal liberals, from Lyndon Johnson's "Great Society" to Barack Obama's Affordable Care Act, Collins paints a darkly disturbing picture of an ever-swelling, liberty-sucking secular state that effectively "displaced" traditional Protestant authority through its ambitions to reach into every dimension of human life. For Collins, the ideological splintering of evangelicalism and its resort to coercive power politics was, at least in part, a misguided and corrupting response to the expanding reach of government muscle.
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Chris Johnson
I read this book twice and was so excited by its thesis that I googled the book to see what other people were saying. That’s when I ran across this weird CT review. The author of the review, Jay Green, used inflammatory language in his title, that is, such words as “decries” and “contempt,” to describe this carefully argued book by Collins. Good grief! Besides failing to understand the basic thesis of the book, as others have already indicated, Green marched along with other factual errors as well, especially in terms of the important topic of power. In fact, this review and web page have been so sloppily assembled that CT and Green did not even take the trouble get the title of the book right! There is no “Obama Divide” book out there.
Joshua Toepper
WOW. After finishing Dr. Collin's book last week and posting my view here (http://seedbed.com/feed/seedbed-summary-of-power-politics-and-the-fragment ation-of-evangelicalism-by-kenneth-collins), i can say unequivocally, that Jay Green is the one who read the book with an agenda. Dr. Collins presents a balanced and fair assessment that simply pushes on Calvinistic ( Covenantal) post millennial eschatologies. I agree with other comments; shame on you CT.
Dan Wells
It appears that Collins' book was likely written, among other reasons, to foster better relations between Calvinist and Wesleyan evangelicals, and to give Wesleyans their place at the table, so to speak, in a historiography that often leaves them out. Well, Jay Green’s oddly constructed, “lecturing” review has set all of this back by about a decade. Failing to understand political philosophy, in general, as well as the work of Father Richard John Neuhaus, in particular, Green who has never written a book on anything, mistakenly thinks any pointed criticism of government immediately makes you a libertarian or a tea-party advocate! Sheer nonsense. The worst, however, was when at the end of his “review” Green actually began to lecture Collins on how to be a better Wesleyan! That Christianity Today endorses such stuff is mind-boggling.
Jay Green
I am sorry that Ken Collins feels that my review so grossly misrepresented him and his work. I am even sorrier if what he says is true: that I have so profoundly misunderstood his argument that my review constitutes a caricature. I am human and prone to error. However, I stand by the claims I make in the review. Let me be clear that my two main critiques I offer neither one were intended to suggest that these aspects of his book constituted his main argument. I'm sorry if this impression was left. I do owe Ken Collins an apology for the "Teavangelical" comment, which, in hindsight, seems unhelpful and inappropriate. I did not mean to suggest that Professor Collins is a libertarian (I know nothing of his politics). I was trying to say that his book, even if indirectly, seemed to be making a libertarian-sounding argument by pressing so hard against the modern liberal state's "overreach." Thus, a subplot in his book had the effect (in my view) of speaking louder than the main.
Robert Rogers
It was a privilege to read this book before it was published. As I read it, I knew that some people would focus on certain statements or chapters in the book and try to present Collins as advocating a certain form of political philosophy rather than seeing the big picture of his theological argument. It never crossed my mind that a professor from a Christian college would grossly misinterpret his agenda, and in doing so, misrepresent the author. This is exactly what Green has done. As one who knows Kenneth Collins, and has had conversations with him concerning his political concerns, let me stress that he is by no means a Libertarian or a Tea Party advocate. Collins’s main concern for writing this book is that Christians understand that they are to ultimately live by the gospel…NOT political ideologies. The reviewer has made such a misrepresentation of the author that one can tell that he just doesn’t understand Collins's over-all argument. Shame on CT for publishing such nonsense.