Mine Eyes Have Seen the Glory,by Randall Balmer. A three-part series, airing nationally onPBSMay 11, 18, 25. Check local listings for time. Reviewed by John G. Stackhouse, Jr., associate professor of religion, the University of Manitoba, Winnipeg, Canada.
It is not news for evangelicals to be on TV. What is noteworthy is a three-part documentary on public television that teaches a general audience about evangelicalism. Randall Balmer, a religion professor at Columbia University and author of the popular book of the same title, hosts “Mine Eyes Have Seen the Glory,” a personal journey into the evangelical subculture.
The series is a vivid and extensive travelogue. Balmer takes viewers from Chicago to rural Mississippi, from California to West Virginia, from the Pacific Northwest to the Iowa heartland, and from upstate New York to deep, southern Georgia. He visits a colorful range of institutions: a rock concert, a Hispanic church, a summer camp, a film studio, and the Christian Booksellers Association convention, among others. And he narrates some illuminating background on evangelicalism, from the eighteenth-century Great Awakening to the Scopes “evolution” trial of 1925.
Balmer is an attractive host. He listens carefully—indeed, among the highlights of the series are the interviews with people who have been filled with the Spirit and then recount that experience with disarming lucidity and sincerity. Balmer appears to be a trustworthy guide, and we want to believe that the powerful images he presents do, in fact, combine to form a portrait of American evangelicalism.
But do they? Early on, Balmer offers common descriptors of evangelicalism: conversion experience, belief in the inerrancy of the Bible, codes of conduct, concern for end times, and populism. But in the rest of the series he points to these themes too rarely to draw together the whirl of sights and sounds. If the program wants to emphasize the uniformity in “evangelicalism,” then it needs to show how all of these institutions in fact fit together in some sociologically significant way. Yet, if diversity is the theme, then it must explain why it characterizes all these varieties as an identifiable subculture.
While the series covers considerable ground—and no presentation can be exhaustive—it leaves out elements that ought to round out the picture. While mention is made of the importance of preaching, for instance, the only preachers we see are from the “ranting” school, whether white or black, whether slick TV evangelists or down-home amateurs.
The quest for personal holiness comes across in this presentation as a joyless legalism. No one testifies to the common evangelical discipline and delight of the daily “quiet time.” And no appreciation is expressed for the mission-oriented rationale for such self-denial. Indeed, the typical evangelical concern for personal evangelism appears only rarely and usually as an example of reprehensible religious chauvinism. Moreover, the entire foreign missions enterprise, so crucial to evangelical self-understanding, does not appear at all.
Balmer is interested in the unusual, but that interest also creates distortion.
Balmer’s acerbic criticism, furthermore, seems to vary directly with the degree to which the institution in question is significant in his own experience of evangelicalism. Thus he marginalizes what are at least important constituents of mainstream evangelicalism. He is most appreciative of southern black Pentecostals, of West Virginia camp meeting attendees, and of the evangelical Pentecostal Episcopalians in Georgia. He is hardest on northern, middle-class evangelicals.
The show, then, is ambitious and engaging. But, regrettably, it does not completely satisfy. In the last scene, Balmer is remarkably candid about his desire to remain faithful to his background. Had Professor Balmer explained better what evangelicalism is, we might resonate better with his ambivalence toward it. Without more attention to and interpretation of the mainstreams of American evangelicalism, though, his portrait remains a kaleidoscope. What is “the glory” that Balmer’s “eyes have seen?”
