Beginning with this issue our annual book survey becomes semi-annual. We will continue surveying the previous year’s production of books on the Bible and on theology in a special spring issue. Our annual recommendation of choice evangelical books will also appear then. In a special fall issue, of which this is the first, we will be surveying recent releases on historical and related topics.
Because last spring we did not have room to survey books on North America, this issue includes a selection of those books that appeared over some eighteen months, all of 1974 and the first half of 1975. Books on the rest of the world, along with general titles that include North America along with other areas, are from the first six months of 1975; hence that section is much shorter in this issue.
Part I: North America
The enormous diversity of religion in North America is spread before the reader in our first group of books. Religions of America edited by Leo Rosten (Simon and Schuster) is a major updating and expansion of a work published in the 1950’s. Representatives of many of the larger groups answer pointed questions about their distinctives. Then a huge amount of data from various sources shows what the American people say they believe on a number of issues. There is also almanac-like coverage of institutions, holy days, and trends. A new edition, the sixth, of Handbook of Denominations by Frank Mead (Abingdon) has a narrower and deeper focus than the Rosten volume. It tries to present, impartially, information on as many distinct denominations as the author could find out about. In both books, much of the data is provided by more or less biased sources within the organizations.
The Yearbook of American and Canadian Churches edited by Constant Jacquet, Jr. (Abingdon), gives current addresses, statistics, and officers’ names for denominations and many other religious organizations. A potentially useful statistical book gives, as of 1971, the numbers of congregations and members in every U. S. country for fifty-three denominations; it covers roughtly four-fifths of the nation’s church members. The book is Churches and Church Membership in the United States by Douglas Johnson, Paul Picard, and Bernard Quinn (Glenmary Research Center).
Two collections of essays are especially noteworthy. Religion American Style edited by Patrick McNamara (Harper & Row) covers the various roles of the major religious traditions. Religious Movements in Contemporary America edited by Irving Zaretsky and Mark Leone (Princeton) focuses on in-depth studies growing out of personal observations of dozens of “marginal” groups (though the distinction between “marginal” and “mainline” should not be accepted uncritically). With more than 800 pages this volume is likely to have something of interest to everyone. It is a helpful companion to the more ideologically based books that systematically refute the “cults.” Religious America by Philip Garvin (McGraw-Hill) offers photographs and text related to the television series of the same name. Both conventional and exotic religious expressions are movingly portrayed.
The most comprehensive book to be mentioned in this survey is Religion in America by George Bedell, Leo Sandon, Jr., and Charles Wellborn (Macmillan). It is intended as a college text, uses various disciplinary approaches, includes documents to illustrate the narrative, avoids excessive detail, and covers the range of American religion without ignoring or overstressing the smaller groups.
THEMES Several books treat key aspects of American religious history from the beginnings. Going back even before the beginning, from the European point of view, is Teachings From the American Earth edited by Dennis Tedlock and Barbara Tedlock (Live-right/Norton). The writers are either American Indians or sympathetic observers; what they say shows the variety and comprehensiveness of Indian religion. A different kind of non-Christian religion is discussed from a variety of angles in American Civil Religion edited by Russell Richey and Donald Jones (Harper & Row). The celebrated 1967 essay by Bellah is reprinted, and then he offers a concluding essay responding to the discussion he sparked. In The Broken Covenant (Seabury), Robert Bellah discusses civil religion at even greater length, sees it as being in a time of trial, and calls for a renewal of dedication to the best aspects of what America has professed to be about. Christian theologians disagree among themselves over whether civil religion should be opposed or, within clearly defined limits, accepted or even endorsed. However all theologians agree that the ordinary American Christian, whether or not otherwise orthodox, is all too likely to blur the essential distinction between biblical and civil religion.
The prolific and provocative Martin Marty has written a uniquely constructed volume, The Pro and Con Book of Religious America: A Bicentennial Argument (Word). Half of the book tells what is right with the American spiritual heritage. Turn the book upside down, start reading from what had been the back, and you are told in matching chapters what is wrong with the spiritual heritage. (Do it the other way around if you want to end on the positive note.) Four other books (these to be read only from front to back) reflect on the American experience: Defining America: A Christian Critique of the American Dream by Robert Benne and Philip Hefner (Fortress), The Future of the American Past by Earl Brill (Seabury), The American Search For Soul by Robert Michaelsen (Louisiana State University), and Warning Fires: The Quest For Community in America by James Sellers (Seabury). Along these lines, but with more attention to contemporary matters, is the prolific evangelical writer James Hefley’s America: One Nation Under God (Victor). The Bicentennial is sure to stimulate more such books.
GROUPS A long tradition of writing about American religion according to its denominational composition is matched by a long tradition of complaints that this writing is dull and that it unduly slights the broader context. In general, more recent writers have tried to correct these faults. The Southern Baptist Convention and Its People, 1607–1972 by Robert Baker (Broadman) has more detail than most people would care to absorb in a few sittings but will serve well as a reference source on America’s second-largest (after Roman Catholicism) denomination. Divided We Stand: The Baptists in American Life by Bynum Shaw (Moore Publishing Co.) has fewer details and is more opinionated. Baptist history buffs will want to read it. The third-largest denomination, the United Methodist Church, together with its many antecedents is the subject of The Story of American Methodism by Frederick Norwood (Abingdon). Some reference is made to many of the Methodist bodies that are not part of the union.
Smaller religious groups tend to be either ignored historigraphically or covered far out of proportion to their size and influence. Hutterite Society by John Hostetler (Johns Hopkins University) is an excellent overview, describing the beginnings of the movement as a branch of sixteenth-century Anabaptism, their travails in central Europe and eventual settlement in Russia, and then their development in North America, to which they all emigrated in the 1870s. The book is illustrated and has charts that show the relationships among the various communes. It is a rare model of both detailed accuracy and readability. The Hutterites are growing, but America’s other well-known communal group, the highly unorthodox Shakers, are almost extinct, no doubt because of one of their tenets (celibacy). The Perfect Life by Doris Faber (Farrar, Straus and Giroux) is a popular, entirely uncritical overview. (An unusual book is The Gift to Be Simple by Robert Peters [Liveright/Norton], who writes poetically and biographically as if he were Ann Lee, founder of the Shakers, who was deemed the female counterpart to Christ.) The Shakers are one of three communal groups studied by sociologist John Whitworth in God’s Blueprints (Routledge and Regan Paul); the others are the Oneida Community and the Society of Brothers, a small twentieth-century group of German origin that recently entered into fellowship with one of the branches of Hutterites. Certainly the most striking book on the Shakers is Work and Worship which combines numerous photographs with text by Edward Andrews (New York Graphic Society).
The larger branch of surviving Anabaptists is the Mennonite family of denominations. Mennonites of Canada, 1786–1920 by Frank Epp (Macmillan of Canada) is an excellent, detailed study of all the many subdivisions. A History of the Mennonite Brethren Church by John Toews (Mennonite Brethren Publishing House) is about the third-largest Mennonite denomination, found mostly in western United States and Canada. A People of Two Kingdoms by James Juhnke (Faith and Life Press) is a study of the five largest of the nine or so Mennonite denominations represented in Kansas. South Central Frontiers by Paul Erb (Herald Press) gives more than 500 pages of information on the fifty or so surviving congregations in that area affiliated with the predominantly eastern (Old) Mennonite Church. If after reading all of this Mennonite history you want to know what they are like today, see Anabaptists Four Centuries Later by J. Howard Kauffman and Leland Harder (Herald Press), a sociological study based on responses by 3,500 representative members of four Mennonite bodies plus the somewhat related Brethren in Christ.
Although it has long been secular, through much of its history, beginning in 1701, Yale University played a major role in shaping American Protestantism. Hence we mention Yale, A History by Brooks Kelley (Yale).
Black religion is increasingly a subject for study, as is the rest of the black experience. A helpful collection of previously published writings is The Black Experience in Religion edited by C. Eric Lincoln (Doubleday). Both Soul-Force: African Heritage in Afro-American Religion by Leonard Barrett (Doubleday) and Black Belief: Folk Beliefs of Blacks in America and West Africa by Henry Mitchell (Harper & Row) focus on the influence of the African heritage in America. The influence of the American environment is examined in what has been hailed as a landmark study by Eugene Genovese, Roll, Jordan Roll: The World the Slaves Made (Pantheon), and in Black Religion and American Evangelicalism: White Protestants, Plantation Missions, and the Flowering of Negro Christianity, 1787–1865 by Milton Sernett (Scarecrow). A more localized study is Black Pastors and Leaders: Memphis, 1819–1972 by David Tucker (Memphis State University).
COLONIAL PERIOD As usual, the Puritans were the subject of a number of valuable studies. Even better, however, is the reprinting in two volumes of The Works of Jonathan Edwards (Banner of Truth). Nearly 1,900 double-column pages sell for $39.90 (instead of the $19.95 we previously stated, but still quite a bargain). Two books on America’s premier theologian are Jonathan Edwards: Theologian of the Heart by Harold Simonson (Eerdmans) and Jonathan Edwards: His Life and Influence edited by Charles Angoff (Fairleigh Dickinson University).
Studies of Puritan literature, preaching, sacraments, and politics, respectively, are: The American Body Imagination edited by Sacvan Bercovitch (Cambridge), Power and the Pulpit in Puritan New England by Emory Elliott (Princeton), The Covenant Sealed: The Development of Puritan Sacramental Theology in Old and New England, 1570–1720 by E. Brooks Holifield (Yale), and Kings, Commoners, and Colonists: Puritan Politics in Old and New England, 1603–1660 by Selma Williams (Atheneum).
Two of the leading Puritan theologians are introduced in Increase Mather by Mason Lowance, Jr. (Twayne), and The Shape of the Puritan Mind: The Thought of Samuel Willard by Ernest Lowrie (Yale). Two notable local studies are Salem Possessed: The Social Origins of Witchcraft by Paul Boyer and Stephen Nissenbaum (Harvard) and A New England Church: 1730–1834 (Bedford, Massachusetts) by Ina Mansur (Bond Wheelwright).
To represent the colonies outside New England there is a popular biography, William Penn: Apostle of Dissentby Hans Fantel (William Morrow).
THE NINETEENTH CENTURY A rather superficial, undiscriminating survey of a major strand of American religion is The Bible Belt Mystique by C. Dwight Dorough (Westminster). Nineteenth-century evangelicals, cultists, and charlatans are blended together with twentieth-century counterparts from the author’s own experience. More scholarly are And They All Sang Hallelujah: Plain-Folk Camp-Meeting Religion, 1800–1845 by Dickson Bruce, Jr. (University of Tennessee) and No Foot of Land: Folklore of American Methodist Itinerants by Donald Byrne, Jr. (Scarecrow). (On this subject, compare the pertinent chapters in The Eager Feet by J. Edwin Orr [Moody], which treats evangelical awakenings worldwide, 1790–1830.)
One major branch of evangelistic Protestantism is generally known as “holiness” and seeks to perpetuate the early Wesleyan emphases. A Guide to the Study of the Holiness Movement by Charles Edwin Jones (Scarecrow) is a massive 900-page bibliographical tool, carefully classified by denominations. The same author and publisher have also issued an authoritative narrative history, Perfectionist Persuasion: The Holiness Movement and American Methodism, 1867–1936. One of the earlier holiness preachers can be read for himself in Five Sermons and a Tract by Luther Lee (Holrad House).
Religious participation in social action is related in The Abolitionists by Merton Dillon (Northern Illinois University), Purity Crusade: Sexual Morality and Social Control, 1868–1900 by Donald Pivar (Greenwood), and Medicine Man to Missionary: Missionaries as Agents of Change among the Indians of Southern Ontario, 1784–1867 by Elizabeth Graham (Peter Martin Associates).
Biographies of six evangelical leaders of the century are Unvanquished Puritan: A Portrait of Lyman Beecher by Stuart Henry (Eerdmans), Calvinism Versus Democracy: Timothy Dwight and the Origins of American Evangelical Orthodoxy by Stephen Berk (Archon), which is an important reminder of the New England as well as frontier origins of “revivalism,” The Life and Labours of Asahel Nettleton by Bennet Tyler and Andrew Bonar (Banner of Truth, a reprint), The Theological Development of Edwards Amasa Park: Last of the “Consistent Calvinists” by Anthony Cecil, Jr. (Scholars’ Press), The Life and Letters of James Henley Thornwell by B. M. Palmer (Banner of Truth, a reprint), and John Winebrenner: Nineteenth Century Reformer by Richard Kern (Central Publishing House).
Institutional histories that span the nineteenth and twentieth centuries include: Women Who Carried the Good News by Eleanor Hull (Judson) and Multiplying the Witness by Lawrence Slaght (Judson), each about an agency that is now part of the American Baptist Churches, Taylor University: The First 125 Years by William Ringenberg (Eerdmans), Chautauqua by Theodore Morrison (University of Chicago), Two Centuries of Methodist Concern by James Brawley (Vantage), about the thirteen United Methodist colleges for blacks, and The African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church by William Walls, published by the denomination.
In addition to the varieties of evangelicalism, America has been a fertile recipient and spawner of countless other forms of religious expression. Martin John Spaulding by Thomas Spaulding (Consortium Press) is a study of one of the leading Catholics in mid-century when his denomination had, starting from a very small colonial base, become the largest. Meanwhile many New Englanders were radically abandoning the faith of their fathers. Thoreau: Mystic, Prophet, Ecologist by William Wolf (Pilgrim Press) and Liberals Among the Orthodox: Unitarian Beginnings in New York City, 1819–1839 by Walter Kring (Beacon) describe examples.
Several major essays and a long bibliography make up The Rise of Adventism: A Commentary on the Social and Religious Ferment of Mid-Nineteenth Century America edited by Edwin Gaustad (Harper & Row).
A far more deviationist American movement is Mormonism. Its major school, Brigham Young University, published four books of special interest. A Believing People edited by Richard Cracroft and Neal Lambert is an anthology of Mormon writings in both prose (including diaries) and poetry. Charles C. Rich by Leonard Arrington is the biography of a nineteenth-century leader who served as one of the group’s twelve apostles for almost forty years. Joseph Smith’s Translation of the Bible: A History and Commentary by Robert Matthews is a thorough critical examination of the version accepted as authoritative by the smaller Missouri-based branch of Mormonism but only as helpful by the larger Utah-based branch. Brigham Young University: The First One Hundred Years edited by Ernest Wilkinson is projected for three volumes, of which the first, covering 1870–1920, runs 600 pages!
A group that is almost as extreme, Jehovah’s Witnesses, is the subject of an appreciative survey by an outsider in The Witnesses by Chandler Sterling (Regnery).
Spanish-Americans are one of America’s largest minorities and perhaps the least written about religiously. Two books give responsible treatments of certain nineteenth-and twentieth-century developments: The Religious Dimension in Hispanic Los Angeles: A Protestant Case Study by Clifton Holland (William Carey) discusses almost all Protestant groups, and Iglesia Presbiteriana: A History of Presbyterians and Mexican Americans in the Southwest by R. Douglas Brackenridge and Francisco Garcia-Treto (Trinity University) is limited to one denomination.
THE TWENTIETH CENTURY Theauthors of books dealing with contemporary expressions of Christianity are likely to be either passionate advocates or detractors or professedly (not necessarily actually) detached social scientists. Both kinds of books are, generally speaking, more suitable as source materials for future historians than as balanced portrayals. In the meantime they can be used to inspire, to warn, and to provoke reflection.
Something of the range of evangelicalism is indicated by the following books. The Young Evangelicals by Richard Quebedeaux (Harper & Row) is about a certain style, endorsed by the author, of doctrine and practice that straddles the blurred border between the more and less orthodox wings of Protestantism. At another border, also blurred, that between orthodoxy and secular political extremism, is a hostile account by Gary Clabaugh, Thunder on the Right: The Protestant Fundamentalists (Nelson-Hall). A quite different kind of fundamentalism, one that is basically rural, is portrayed in quotations, photographs, and line drawings in Revival! by Eleanor Dickinson and Barbara Benziger (Harper & Row). Another portion of the spectrum is discussed in Washington: Christians in the Corridors of Power by James Hefley and Edward Plowman (Tyndale). This is the book for those who wondered whether there are any Christian politicians or bureaucrats and for those who despair that there are but they don’t act like it. Especially noteworthy for its balanced presentation of a growing, controversial movement within Christianity is The Charismatic Movement edited by Michael Hamilton (Eerdmans). Worthwhile reflections on the varieties of a largely evangelical activity are offered in Model of Religious Broadcasting by J. Harold Ellens (Eerdmans). The story of Key ’73 is told by its leaders in Yesterday, Today, and Forever edited by T. A. Raedeke (Baker). Back to Jesus by Peter Michelmore (Fawcett) is one more journalistic overview of the Jesus movement. Everybody’s Afraid in the Ghetto by Keith Phillips (Regal) is a very good report of certain inner city ministries.
Turning from books about major segments to more specific institutional studies we have Community in a Black Pentecostal Church (in Pittsburgh) by anthropologist Melvin Williams (University of Pittsburgh). Beyond the Cross and the Switchblade by David Wilkerson (Chosen/Revell) tells what has happened in an important ministry since its initial wide publicity. God’s Forever Family by Jack Sparks (Zondervan) is about the comparatively long-lived “Jesus people” organization, the Christian World Liberation Front, based in Berkeley, California. The old “Jesus” organizations are still very much alive. Attesting to this are Ten Fastest-Growing Southern Baptist Sunday Schools by Eugene Skelton (Broadman), Ten at the Top by Lee Lesback (New Hope Press) on ten large Assemblies of God congregations, World’s Largest Sunday School by Elmer Towns (Nelson), on First Baptist Church of Hammond, Indiana, and, stressing quality rather than size, Three Churches in Renewal (one each in Arizona, California, and Washington) by Lawrence Richards (Zondervan). Much more staid expressions of orthodoxy are reported in Reformed Thought and Experience in a New World: A Study of the Christian Reformed Church and its American Environment, 1890–1918 by H. Zwaanstra (Eerdmans) and God’s Covenant Faithfulness edited by Gertrude Hoeksema (Kregal), on the twenty-congregation Protestant Reformed denomination.
Communalism has always been a part of Christianity and has always been easier to write about. A wide range of doctrinal stances is covered in New Christian Communities edited by Michael Zeik (Roth Publishing) and Running Free: New Life in Community by Richard Rodes (Judson). The report of a summer’s journey to numerous Hutterite historical sites in Europe is told in For the Sake of Divine Truth by Jacob Kleinsasser et al. (Plough).
Meanwhile, there is still the majority “mainstream” of Protestantism, greatly underrepresented among the books that have come to our attention. Moment of Truth For Protestant America: Interchurch Campaigns Following World War One by Eldon Ernst (Scholars’ Press) is a fine study of an early ecumenical social-action endeavor that proved to be controversial. So it has always been. The Prophetic Clergy by Harold Quinley (Wiley) is a sociological study based on responses from 1,500 pastors in nine California denominations. Gideon’s Gang by Jeffrey Hadden and Charles Longino, Jr. (Pilgrim Press), is about a socially activist congregation in Dayton, Ohio. An extremely critical history of the National Council of Churches (from the 1908 origin of its predecessor Federal Council) is provided by C. Gregg Singer in The Unholy Alliance (Arlington). The American Spirit in Theology is a title that could be applied to various contenders, such as revivalism. But Randolph Miller uses it to embrace an empiricist-process stream from William James through Dewey, Whitehead, and their disciples (Pilgrim Press).
American Catholicism by George Devine (Prentice-Hall) is a brief overview of the country’s largest religious body as it undergoes major changes in our time. These Priests Stay: The American Catholic Clergy in Crisis by Paul Wilkes (Simon and Schuster) tells the stories of ten men who didn’t do what so many, though far from a majority, of their colleagues did. The Catholic Cult of the Paraclete by Joseph Fichter (Sheed and Ward) is about the charismatic movement. In A Catholic Looksat Billy Graham Jesuit Charles Dullea is largely appreciative (Paulist). The Commonweal and American Catholicism by Rodger Van Allen (Fortress) is about a fifty-year old lay-edited magazine and its influence. The Academic Melting Pot by Stephen Steinberg (McGraw-Hill) compares the different paths that Catholics and Jews have taken in higher education. Secrecy in the Church by journalist Richard Ostling (Harper & Row) complains mainly, but not only, about excessive secrecy by Catholic leaders.
One of the most distinctive features of the United States is the relation between its religion and its government. God, Caesar and the Constitution: The Court as Referee of Church-State Confrontation by Leo Pfeffer (Beacon) is a major study of the Supreme Court and how its decisions, especially in this century, affect churches and their roles with regard to the family, the military, the schools, and “blue laws.” With Sovereign Reverence by Harold Fey is about the first twenty-five years of Americans United for Separation of Church and State, founded in 1947, and is distributed by that organization. In Freedom Under Siege the well-known atheist Madalyn Murray O’Hair makes a responsible attempt to document her belief that church and state are not separate enough (Tarcher). Uphill For Peace by E. Raymond Wilson is a long history of the Friends Committee on National Legislation, founded in 1943, the Quaker group that until recently was the only officially registered religious lobby (Friends United Press).
In Cults and the Occult in the Age of Aquarius, Edmond Gruss gives a brief useful refutation of about a dozen of the older and newer deviations from historic Christianity (Baker or Presbyterian and Reformed). John Sladek gives a secular, humorous, informed put-down of “strange sciences and occult beliefs” in The New Apocrypha (Stein and Day). Those who think hardly anybody really holds such beliefs need only consult a large book from a major publisher, Putnam, entitled PSI, the Other World Catalogue: The Comprehensive Guide to the Dimensions of Psychic Phenomena by June and Nicholas Regush. There may be an increase in skepticism, but it seems more than matched by the increase in credulity. A different kind of deviation is reported and opposed in The Gay Church by Ronald Enroth and Gerald Jamison (Eerdmans). There may not be more practicing homosexuals than before, but there is certainly more openness about it; one sign of this is the formation of scores of homosexual congregations.
To keep things in balance, lest one think that exotic beliefs have run off with the country, two carefully structured, representative, and statistically laden social-scientific studies; Commitment on Campus: Changes in Religion and Values Over Five Decades by Dean Hoge (Westminster) and Responses to Religion: Studies in the Social Psychology of Religious Belief by Gary Marshall (University Press of Kansas).
TWENTIETH-CENTURY BIOGRAPHY AND AUTOBIOGRAPHY There are so many books in this category, many of persons who are well known, others of persons who should be better known, that we must be unfairly terse.
Widely known religious figures: Charles Fillmore by Hugh D’Andraede (Harper & Row), on the founder of Unity School of Christianity; The Divine Yes by E. Stanley Jones (Abingdon) missionary-author; Search For The Beloved Community: The Thinking of Martin Luther King, Jr. by Kenneth Smith and Ira Zepp, Jr. (Judson); Never Far From Home by John Knox (Word), New Testament professor; To See the Kingdom: The Theological Vision of H. Richard Niebuhr by James Fowler (Abingdon); The Legacy of Reinhold Niebuhr edited by Nathan Scott, Jr. (University of Chicago); Man Alive! by Virginia Cason (Freedom House), on H. M. S. Richards, Adventist broadcaster; The Church and I by Frank Sheed (Doubleday), lay Catholic publisher-author; and Prophet of Reunion by Charles Angell and Charles LaFontaine (Seabury), on Paul Wattson, early promoter of Anglican-Catholic reunion.
Several books on America’s best-known monk appeared, including two with the same title: Thomas Merton: A Bibliography by Frank Dell’Isola (Kent State University) and by Marquita Breit (Scarecrow). Others are Thomas Merton, Monk, edited by Patrick Hart (Sheed and Ward) and Thomas Merton: The Man and His Work by Dennis McInerny (Consortium).
Many of the following books by evangelicals are more testimonies or memoirs than formal biographies. The World’s Strongest Man by Paul Anderson, weightlifter (Victor); There’s a Snake in My Garden by Jill Briscoe, minister’s wife (Zondervan); It’s Good to Know by Randy Bullock, actor (Mott Media); Walking and Leaping by Merlin Carothers, minister-author (Logos); Through It All by Andrae Crouch, singer (Word); William Culbertson: Man of God by Warren Wiersbe, on the late head of Moody Bible Institute (Moody); Tell It to the Mafia by Joe Donato, ex-criminal (Logos); These Strange Ashes by Elisabeth Elliot, missionary-author (Harper & Row); Why I Fight For a Christian America by Billy James Hargis, anti-Communist activist (Nelson); How to Live Like a King’s Kid by Harold Hill, businessman (Logos); Hansi’s New Life by Maria Anne Hirschmann, ex-Nazi (Revell); Letters to an Unborn Child by David Ireland, paralyzed family counselor (Harper & Row); Just Mahalia, Baby by Laurraine Goreau, on Mahalia Jackson, singer (Word); Disciple in Prison by Robert A. Johnson, converted murderer (Tidings); The Dino Story by Dino Kartsonakis, pianist (Revell); The Quiet Prince by Edwin Groenhoff, on Mel Larson, Evangelical Free Church leader (His International Service); Crying For My Mother by Wesley Nelson, Evangelical Covenant Church leader (Covenant); Yet Another Voice by Norman McDaniel, ex-POW in Vietnam (Hawthorn); One More Time by Don Musgraves, ex-prisoner (Bethany Fellowship); J. Frank Norris by Roy Falls, on the fundamentalist leader and published by the author; Payday Everyday by Robert G. Lee, Southern Baptist leader (Broadman); Miracle at City Hall by Al Palmquist, policeman (Bethany Fellowship); Praising God on the Las Vegas Strip by Jim Reid, on his unique ministry in Nevada (Zondervan); Confessions of a Conservative Evangelical by Jack Rogers, Fuller Seminary professor (Westminster); The Emancipation of Robert Sadler by Robert Sadler, black minister (Bethany Fellowship); Ivan Spencer by Marion Meloon, on the leading Elim Fellowship churchman (Logos); Oh, Kim! My Son! My Son! by Frank Stellema, on a young-teen cancer victim (Vantage); God Is My Record by James L. Sullivan, Southern Baptist leader (Broadman); Daws by Betty Lee Skinner, on the founder of the Navigators, Dawson Trotman (Zondervan); While It Is Day by Elton Trueblood, professor-author (Harper & Row); and The Devil Loves a Shining Mark by Jim Vaus, ex-underworld figure (Word).
Part Ii: Largely Outside North America
SPECIAL TOPICS J. Edwin Orr has long been associated with the study of evangelical awakenings. He defines them as movements “of the Holy Spirit bringing about a revival of New Testament Christianity in the Church of Christ and in its related community.” Recently he has issued The Eager Feet (Moody), about awakenings from 1790 to 1830 in Europe and North America, with some reference to activities in other parts. The “other parts” are covered in considerable detail for the nineteenth and twentieth centuries in a series of five books by Orr published by Bethany Fellowship as Evangelical Awakenings.Each is characterized by attention to detail with thorough documentation, a long bibliography, and an index of names. The importance of these studies (the last two still to come) is great.
A different aspect of Christianity is studied comprehensively in Protestant Church Music: A History by Friedrich Blume et al. (Norton). Although not quite the definitive study claimed by the publisher, it is nevertheless a major work useful for both reading and reference. It is well illustrated and indexed and has a very extensive classified bibliography of articles and books.
The Drama of the Martyrs makes available 104 engravings, some rather gruesome, by Jan Luyken (1649–1712) covering atrocities from the apostles up to the engraver’s own time. A large percentage depict the various ways in which Anabaptists were tortured by professing fellow Christians. The book is available only from Mennonite Historical Associates (2215 Mill Stream Road, Lancaster, Pa. 17602; $6.45).
Two-thirds of Communalism: From Its Origins to the Twentieth Century by Kenneth Rexroth (Seabury) treats examples from the Reformation to the present, both religious and secular.
The Dominicans by William Hinnebusch (Alba) briefly chronicles a major Roman Catholic order.
A helpful survey with reflections on Christian exorcism over the centuries is provided by Roger Baker in Binding the Devil (Hawthorn).
Ten essays in honor of Albert Outler fittingly reflect the diversity and unity of the prominent Methodist historical theologian’s active career: Our Common History as Christians edited by John Deschner, Leroy Howe, and Klaus Penzel (Oxford).
For those interested in scholarly treatments of the history of various kinds of niillenarian movements, there are three noteworthy titles: Disaster and the Millennium by Michael Barkun (Yale), Antichrist and the Millennium by E. R. Chamberlin (Dutton), and Respectable Folly by Clarke Garrett (Johns Hopkins).
EARLY AND MEDIEVAL A helpful book on Christianity in the Roman World by R. A. Markus (Scribners) conveys the flavor of the first centuries of the Church rather than burdening the reader with merely a succession of immediately forgotten names and dates. Includes seventy-four well-selected photographs. Another scholar has produced a book on a narrower theme that is equally appealing to the curious non-specialist: Historians in the Middle Ages by Beryl Smalley (Scribners). Nearly a hundred photographs enhance it. Of more specialized interest are Photius and the Carolingians by Richard Haugh (Nordland) and The Franciscan Concept of Mission in the High Middle Ages by E. Randolph Daniel (University Press of Kentucky). Of contemporary interest is a book focusing on ethics from the biblical through medieval periods, Homosexuality and the Western Christian Tradition by Derrick Bailey (Archon, reprinting a twenty-year-old British book). One Thousand Years edited by Richard DeMolen (Houghton Mifflin) has five specialists addressing major aspects of Western Europe in the Middle Ages in a way that conveys the broad trends to the general reader.
Of special note is Europe’s Inner Demons by Norman Cohn (Basic). His thesis is that the widespread belief by both friend and foe “that there really was a secret society of witches, or else a pagan cult which was so interpreted by the Church” is insupportable; “when scrutinized, the historical evidence simply dissolves.” The literary tradition of this fantasy is traced from the second century (when curiously, key elements of it were first attributed by pagans to Christians) through the Middle Ages. Cohn’s study cannot be ignored by any who want to speak responsibly about occultism and opposition to it.
REFORMATION In Search of God and Self by Donald Wilcox (Houghton Mifflin) is an introduction to Renaissance and Reformation history. It gives the basic aspects of the social, economic, and political developments but focuses, properly, on the intellectual (including theological) ferment of the age. Richard DeMolen has gathered eight specially written essays on The Meaning of the Renaissance and Reformation (Houghton Mifflin) that show the diversity of the period. Historians, like others, have a tendency to impose artificially unifying labels or interpretations.
The Anabaptist Story by William Estep (Eerdmans) is thoroughly revised from its first edition of twelve years ago. It is readable and authoritative. The Anabaptists along with all sorts of others who are lumped together as “radicals” can be read for themselves in Christianity and Revolution edited by Lowell Zuck (Temple University). Fifty-two documents from throughout Western Europe, 1520–1650, are conveniently collected. The increased interest in the Anabaptists and the willingness of the politically backed Reformation traditions to regard them with respect is symbolized by the launching of a series called Sixteenth Century Bibliography with Hans Hillerbrand’s A Bibliography of Anabautism, 1520–1630: A Sequel, 1962–1974. It updates his major bibliography, published in 1962.
Sponsor of the series is The Center for Reformation Research (6477 San Bonita Ave., St. Louis, Mo. 63105). Other projected volumes will list various categories of the Center’s own holdings as well as independent bibliographical projects.
More specialized works include a brief study, much of it in the subject’s own words, of Luther on Justification by Robin Leaver (Concordia); King James by Antonia Fraser (Knopf), with numerous illustrations; and Peter Martyr by Marvin Anderson (B. De Graaf/Publishers [Box 6, Nieuwkoop, Netherlands]). The last is a thorough study in English of the last twenty years of the ministry of Pietro Vermigli (1499–1562), a Reformed theologian with considerable influence in England and northern Europe.
Two books of note begin with the Reformation and continue coverage down to the present. A History of Christian Thought, Volume III by Justo González (Abingdon) completes a major survey by a Cuban Protestant who now teaches at a U.S. seminary. It is to be hoped that the publisher will soon issue a one-volume paperback edition for classroom use. Rome and Canterbury Through Four Centuries by Bernard and Margaret Pawley (Seabury) is on the now thawing relations between the Church of Rome and the Church of England. An American epilogue supplements the book for readers on this side of the Atlantic.
EUROPE SINCE THE REFORMATION From Enlightenment to Revolution by Eric Voegelin (Duke University) is a history of political ideas demonstrating the spiritual crisis underlying purportedly secular thought. The widespread rejection of Christianity that began in the eighteenth century in the name of progress carried within it the seeds of the horrors of twentieth-century totalitarianism.
More specialized are Class and Religion in the Late Victorian City by Hugh McLeod (Archon), about London 1880–1914; History of the Free Presbyterian Church of Scotland, 1893–1970 edited by A. McPherson and published by the denomination; and The Herrnhuterian Pietism in the Baltic by Valdis Mezezers (Christopher).
William Barclay: A Spiritual Autobiography (Eerdmans) is about the well-known commentator. Biographies of other prominent religious leaders are The Lives of Philip and Matthew Henry by J. B. Williams (Banner of Truth), reprinting originally separate studies of the famous commentator and his father, Our Friend, Jacques Maritain by Julie Kernan (Doubleday), The Religion of Isaac Newton by Frank Manuel (Oxford), Charles Raven by F. W. Dillistone (Eerdmans), J. C. Ryle edited by Peter Toon (Reiner), Shaftesbury, The Great Reformer by Georgina Battiscombe (Houghton Mifflin), and Suenens: A Portrait by Elizabeth Hamilton (Doubleday). An anthology of Cardinal Newman’s voluminous writings is now available in an American edition, A Newman Treasury, edited by Charles Frederick Harrold (Arlington).
Documents by and about Christians in Communist lands are collected in The Church in Today’s Catacombs, edited by Sergui Grossu (Arlington).
ASIA, AFRICA, LATIN AMERICA Much of the American understanding of other peoples has been mediated through missionaries and their children. Distinguished historian John Fairbank has edited The Missionary Enterprise in China and America (Harvard) not only to contribute to the history of Christianity in the world’s largest country but also to show the missionary’s roles in shaping American attitudes.
Specialized studies by scholars include People Movements in the Punjab by Frederick and Margaret Stock (William Carey), largely on what is now Pakistan; A New Day in Madras by Amirtharaj Nelson (William Carey), on Protestantism in one of India’s major cities; Church and State in Tonga by Sione Latukefu (University Press of Hawaii), on nineteenth-century developments in the now independent Pacific island group; Eden Revival by David Beckmann (Concordia), on Independent (non-missionary) churches in Ghana; A Younger Church in Search of Maturity by Paul Pierson (Trinity University), on Brazilian Presbyterianism from 1910 to 1959; and Trance, Healing, and Hallucination by Felicitas Goodman, Jeannette Henney, and Esther Pressel (Wiley), field studies of spiritist, tongues-speaking groups in the West Indies island of St. Vincent, in Sao Paulo, Brazil, and in the Yucatán peninsula of Mexico.
Kidnapped by Karl and Debbie Dortzbach (Harper & Row) is the story of the abduction last year of an Orthodox Presbyterian missionary in Ethiopia and the successful negotiations for her release. In Famine He Shall Redeem Thee by Malcolm and Enid Forsberg (Sudan Interior Mission) tells about relief efforts in the same country.
