Ten Significant Books of the past Year

C.T.’s annual survey and evaluation.

People, their diversity of religious beliefs, styles of worship and living.

Most people are interested in other people. This survey of books published in North America from the middle of 1978 to the middle of 1979 concentrates on books that are about the people called Christians. Some of these Christians flourished long ago, but their influence remains pervasively with us, whether or not we know it. Others are still very much alive. Many are within the great tradition of orthodoxy, while others are on or outside the fringes. Some books, mentioned because they help to give perspective, are about those who follow non-Christian religions. The beliefs of people, particularly their religious beliefs, are very important and they are featured in many of the books in this survey. But also important are the ways that people worship and the manner in which they live their lives; books have been included that focus on these areas. I have not had space to mention all relevant books, and undoubtedly I missed some titles. Many thanks go to the publishers for their cooperation. Some of the books mentioned here already have had or will have fuller reviews published in our pages.

Before looking at the various topics—by time, place, or theme—into which most books readily fit, there are 10 titles to which I would like to call special attention. They are books that all theological libraries should acquire and major academic and public libraries will want them as well. Church and personal libraries can put at least some of them to good and repeated use.

Most people have become aware in recent years of a far greater number and diversity of religious denominations than they previously thought existed. While we have long had brief guides to most of the older groups that are somewhere in the Christian spectrum, we have until now lacked reasonably good information on most of the groups that arose in this century, including many that are well within the framework of historic orthodoxy as well as many that are very clearly outside it. With all the publicity about “cults” it is well to be reminded that not every unfamiliar group is bizarre and even those that are differ enormously among themselves. Henceforth, the names of Melton and Piepkorn will be associated with comprehensive descriptions of the beliefs of religious bodies in America, most of which have exact or close counterparts around the world.

The Encyclopedia of American Religions is a massive 1,200-page, two-volume work published by Consortium Books (P. O. Box 9001, Wilmington, NC 28401) and written entirely by J. Gordon Melton, a United Methodist pastor who has a Ph.D. in church history from Northwestern. He briefly presents what he has been able to learn about some 1,200 distinct groups. This excludes American Indian religions, because of their complexity, and the numerically far greater religious organizations such as magazine publishers, schools, evangelistic teams, or councils of churches that supplement the work of the primary groups. Melton finds 17 basic “families” but users are free to disagree. For example, Methodist and holiness churches are separated while Baptists and Churches of Christ are joined. Nevertheless, it is easy enough to use the index to find the group you want. Users will also find their own group is described far too briefly, complexities are smoothed out, and statements that were accurate a decade ago have not always been updated. But remember, this is the work of one person and he has been at it since the sixties. He has tried to be fair and accurate and his mistakes are not those of one who doesn’t care about detail. So far as I can tell, the book is generally accurate as far as it goes. He is particularly strong on his own Methodist family and also on spiritualists, witches, flying saucer groups, and the like.

Arthur Piepkorn died in 1973, but he had mostly completed the seven-volume work Profiles in Belief, which began to be published by Harper & Row in 1977. Unlike Melton, he includes religious bodies in Canada. Piepkorn was for many years before his death a professor of systematic theology at the Missouri Lutherans’ Concordia Seminary in St. Louis. He is somewhat more theologically oriented than Melton and the greater length of his work allows him to give more historical background to the major traditions. Both men keep their own theological convictions in the background, not because they do not have any but because they realize that beliefs must be taken seriously and treated respectfully. This is something that, generally speaking, previous compilers of encyclopedias of religious bodies have not been minded to do. Piepkorn’s first volume was on Eastern and Western Catholicism and his second featured Protestant families that started before 1800 (except the Quakers). This year a third book appeared that treats the holiness movement, the Pentecostals, and various evangelical and a few other groups that emerged since 1800. For no apparent reason these are presented in two “volumes” that are separately paginated and indexed but are bound together. Three more volumes are due, one on “New Thought” groups and two on non-Christians. There are important things about a group that often Piepkorn doesn’t tell, such as whether the membership is black, white, or mixed. A sociologist would certainly have written a different kind of encyclopedia than either Melton or Piepkorn, and maybe one should. But in the meantime these two mammoth works are available to compare with each other, to answer questions put to them by journalists, scholars, pastors, parents, rival evangelists, and a host of others who want to know approximately what a certain group is teaching, when it began, about how many members it has or at least claims, and sometimes the part of the continent where they are concentrated.

The Westminster Dictionary of Worship, edited by J. G. Davies (Westminster), was first published in Britain a few years ago and most of the contributors are British. Nevertheless, the volume is of international value. For active members of the traditional liturgical churches, much of the information is elementary, although even for them it can be helpful to have a convenient account of the historical origins of various customs and objects. Of course, for persons outside such churches this work will be of even more value in supplying authoritative, brief descriptions of candles, canonical hours, chalices, and the like. What is especially commendable is that worship is not understood solely in “high church” forms. Pentecostals, Plymouth Brethren, and many other groups have entries describing their worship and also their practices with regard to such acts as baptism. There are also articles summarizing worship in the other major religions. Since most related reference works focus on doctrines, it is especially good to have this volume on the practices of worship throughout Christendom.

Also from Britain a related book, The Study of Liturgy, edited by Cheslyn Jones, Geoffrey Wainwright, and Edward Yarnold (Oxford), is different in key respects. Brief references are made to Protestant practices, but the focus is on Anglicanism and Catholicism. Instead of alphabetical entries there are some 60 articles of a few pages each. They are normally in historical order tracing liturgical development generally and then in detail for baptism, eucharist, ordination, the divine office, and the church year. This is intended finally as a book to launch serious study, with copious references to literature for further research. It will not be used as widely as the Westminster Dictionary of Worship, but it will be used far more intensively.

Perhaps the most inviting book just to sit down and read through among these initial 10 titles is Christianity in European History by William Clebsch (Oxford). In his preface, the author best explains what he is up to: “This book, then, ungrudgingly departs from the style of history that tries to tell something about as many important people and happenings as possible. Instead, it tells a good deal about the few people and happenings that best exemplify the various ways that European humanity has expressed itself through the forms and patterns of the Christian religion. Instead of bemoaning selectivity as a grim necessity, the book turns selectivity into a cheery virtue. Only by so doing can one write a little book of history about a big subject of history.… Beginners and experts alike can broaden their perspectives on life by imagining themselves sharing the circumstances and the humanity, the hopes and the fears, of the wide range of Christian experiences and styles of life here narrated.” If you have been turned off from reading histories that seemed too much like telephone directories, try Clebsch. We need more competent historians who are willing to venture forth in this way. Leave to dictionaries and encyclopedias the attempt to mention everything; write history as a story.

Speaking of such works, be sure to look for the brand new three-volume Encyclopedic Dictionary of Religion published by Corpus (P.O. Box 875, Palatine, IL 60067). There are some 25,000 articles in its nearly 4,000 pages. Since Catholics sponsored it, they are the focus of the work, but there are non-Catholics among the contributors. The nonpolemical tone will make this a widely usable tool for quick reference.

Another book that ranges selectively throughout the centuries of Christianity is Women of Spirit: Female Leadership in the Jewish and Christian Traditions, edited by Rosemary Ruether and Eleanor McLaughlin (Simon and Schuster). There are 15 essays, mostly by women college and seminary professors, on a range of topics such as women in early Christian communities, women in the holiness movement, liberated nuns throughout American history, and the struggle for priesthood in Episcopal and Catholic churches. This book also represents many others that are concerned with one of the less studied aspects of Christian history.

The third volume of Jaroslav Pelikan’s projected five-volume history of the development of doctrine appeared last year as The Growth of Medieval Theology (600–1300) (University of Chicago). Pelikan uses only 300 pages to provide a masterful, readable summary based upon years of careful study in the primary sources. Those who already appreciate medieval theology will of course welcome this volume. Those who think that nothing good happened between Augustine and Luther especially need to read it. One does not have to come away convinced that those theologians were right in order to applaud their effort to understand the teaching of the Scriptures in the context of the age in which they lived. We may have good reason to feel that they let culture have too much influence in shaping their theology, but then we must ask if future generations will view us similarly.

Leapfrogging from the Middle Ages to more recent times brings us to The Gospel in America: Themes in the Story of America’s Evangelicals by John Woodbridge, Mark Noll, and Nathan Hatch (Zondervan). There is no better historical overview of the bewildering variety in evangelicalism. The movement’s tangled roots, tempestuous quarrels, and contemporary challenges are ably sketched. The three authors, young evangelicals teaching respectively at Trinity, Wheaton, and Notre Dame, do not try to mention everything, so the book is not a complete survey. But for that reason it is much more readable and the various themes that they have written on, such as the role of the Bible and of revivalism, are important ones. They mix theological evaluations in with their historical reporting somewhat more than modern writers tend to do, but that will not offend a large part of their intended audience. They have written this book very much on the college and adult study group level; knowledge of church history and theological terminology is not presumed. The book can also serve as an introduction to outsiders who want to know more about this “born again” movement that is in the news.

Besides the study of women and of evangelicals, another comparatively new trend is books about blacks. The section below on Africa mentions many notable works and this is matched by studies of Afro-Americans. The most comprehensive of these is Black Religions in the New World by George Eaton Simpson (Columbia). It is the product of more than 40 years of research and field work throughout the hemisphere. Simpson tells of black religions in Middle and South America with obvious African ties, of blacks who joined the historic denominations that had begun among Europeans, and of the numerous exclusively black movements originating on this side of the Atlantic. He summarizes what has been learned for those who want to know a little, while his full documentation and bibliography direct the researcher to further sources.

G. Douglas Young is founder and president of the Institute of Holy Land Studies in Jerusalem. He has lived there since 1963.

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