Did the Reformation Take a Wrong Turn in America?

Made in America: The Shaping of Modem American Evangelicalism, by Michael Scott Horton (Baker, 198 pp.; $13.95, hardcover). Reviewed by Robert W. Patterson, a minister of the Presbyterian Church in America, who serves as associate to the executive director of the National Association of Evangelicals.

One of the most peculiar facets of contemporary American life is the resilience of evangelical religion as the tide of secularization and modernity rolls on unabated. At the very time American society seems driven more and more by rampant materialism, extreme individualism, and blatant consumerism, evangelical religion, rather than diminishing, appears more popular than ever. Church attendance has reached new highs; Billy Graham ranks among the nation’s most respected persons; and Bibles sell several million copies a year.

These two apparently contradictory phenomena may baffle the social scientists, but a young Reformed Episcopal rector from Southern California, Michael Scott Horton, believes the two realities are not antithetical. In fact, in his new book, Made in America, Horton advances the thesis that American evangelicalism is uniquely an American product, shaped more by the American experience than by apostolic substance and the classic Reformation heritage. Because of its symbiotic relationship with American culture, evangelicalism has both contributed to and reflected the very forces of modernity and secularism over which evangelicals so frequently lament.

Abandoning The Puritans

Horton’s book is a refreshing alternative to the many that express anxiety over changing American society or lament a country that has drifted from its founding principles. Instead, Horton vents his concern over what he considers a bankrupt evangelicalism that has drifted from its theological and biblical roots. He challenges evangelicals to embark on a pilgrimage from a cultural evangelicalism to a more authentic variety that is both “in theory and practice a worthy successor to the apostolic faith.”

He begins by questioning the idea of a “Christian America,” a powerful idea that sustains the popular notion that secular humanists have recently hijacked the nation away from its religious past. While recognizing the Christian basis of the Puritan experiment in New England, Horton traces how very quickly (within a generation) the original vision of a Holy Commonwealth had become secularized. By the time of the American founding in 1776, the idea of a Christian nation was far from the minds of the founders, whether Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, or John Adams.

But Horton’s major concern is not with the country in general, but how quickly American evangelicals in particular abandoned the Puritan ideal, particularly its Calvinist theology and world view, and accommodated themselves to whatever the culture dictated.

Successive chapters examine how American individualism, pragmatism, consumerism, the pursuit of pleasure, sentimentality, relativism, and loss of community have shaped evangelical religion over the years. Whereas the Puritans and the Reformers before them championed a sovereign God to whom the entire world and all aspects of life were subject, evangelical religion increasingly narrowed its concern to the individual alone and his or her personal relationship with Jesus. The transition naturally led to secularization. Writes Horton: “We ourselves left the neighborhood of ideas and retreated into our own private ghetto, where evangelical religion has been aptly, though tragically, characterized as privately engaging but socially irrelevant.”

Pristine Abstractions

While Horton’s analysis is penetrating, the book possesses some flaws. First, nowhere does Horton define what he means by “modern evangelicalism”—a troubling omission in a day when scholars are wrestling with the difficulty of defining an increasingly diverse movement or family of movements. Much of Horton’s criticism is directed to the more visible elements of anti-institutional, popular Protestantism, whether the revivalists of the nineteenth century or the televangelists and megachurches of the twentieth. But these easy targets may not be a fair representation of the movement.

Failing to grapple with the complexities of evangelicalism today in turn leads Horton to uphold a pristine evangelicalism of the distant past that may never have existed. He clearly sees the Protestant Reformation and the New England Puritans as the ideal, but he fails to recognize that few evangelicals today trace their roots through New England to Westminster, Geneva, or Wittenberg. Horton may wish otherwise, but many evangelicals—especially those in the free church, holiness, and Pentecostal traditions—do not look to the magisterial Reformers for inspiration and therefore may not respond to his appeal to return to a faith they never shared.

Second, Horton does not acknowledge the extent to which even the New England Puritans and Jonathan Edwards represent a modification of the Reformation ideal. Although Calvinists, they had little appreciation for the Reformed emphasis on organic relationships (which recognized that God worked through communities and institutions) and were unable to maintain the Reformed balance between nature and grace. In practice, they adopted an Anabaptist piety and polity, framing Christianity primarily in terms of the individual’s relationship to God. Even Charles Hodge lamented how the Great Awakening proved disastrous for the institutional church, a key concern of the Reformers. While Horton sees the Second Great Awakening as a turning point, the Great Awakening of the eighteenth century may equally mark a departure from the Reformation toward a more secular society.

Third, those who do not share Horton’s love for the Five Points of Calvinism may find his constant harping on Arminianism excessive. Arminianism indeed represents certain shifts away from the Reformation, but Horton may be overstating its role in contributing to secularization. Elements in the Reformed community have also contributed to the process of secularization, and they, too, as much as the followers of John Wesley, need the self-examination called for by Horton.

In spite of these shortcomings, Made in America is indeed a worthwhile book. Because the book raises so many probing questions, it would have been enhanced with a chapter setting forth practical suggestions on where evangelicals go from here. This may not have been Horton’s intention, but one is left wondering how Horton would go about reforming the evangelicalism he finds wanting. Horton may not have given this much thought, possibly because he relies far too heavily on other writers, especially Christopher Lasch, Martin Marty, and Richard Hofstadter. But it is a task he should nevertheless embark on, possibly in other books, so that American evangelicalism might be increasingly shaped, not by the spirit of the age, but by the Spirit of God who forms through Word and sacrament a people who serve Christ and his kingdom.

Evangelical Cornucopia

The Variety of American Evangelicalism, Donald W. Dayton and Robert K. Johnston, eds. (University of Tennessee Press, $39.95, hardcover; InterVarsity Press, $ 19.95, paper; 285 pp.);Understanding Fundamentalism and Evangelicalism, by George M. Marsden (Eerdmans, x + 198 pp.; $12.95, paper). Reviewed by John G. Stackhouse, Jr., who teaches in the Department of Religion, University of Manitoba, Winnipeg, Canada.

“Defining evangelicalism has become one of the biggest problems in American religious historiography,” asserts Timothy Weber. Moreover, warns Robert Johnston, “the present contest over the definition of American evangelicalism has caused frustration, hostility, and increasingly, boredom.” These two volumes, however, do much to ease the frustration, to curb the hostility, and to interest readers.

Donald Dayton and Robert Johnston, of Northern Baptist and North Park Seminaries, respectively, have brought together reflections on American evangelicalism from a wide range of reputable scholars. They discuss the similarities and differences between evangelicalism and each of the following traditions: premillennialism, fundamentalism, Pentecostalism, Adventism, the holiness movement, restorationism, black religion, Baptists, pietism, Anabaptism, Reformed Protestantism, and Lutheranism. Indeed, a number of the essays use stereotypes of other traditions (for example, “pietism” is intellectually and socially passive, or “Anabaptism” is isolationist) to define their own, and the value of this volume lies perhaps as much in its authentic definitions of these various groups as in its definitions of evangelicalism.

Concluding essays by Dayton and Johnston, however, refocus the book squarely on the matter of definition. Dayton argues provocatively that the category “evangelical” is now useless: “Is there, for example, a line that binds ‘holiness churches’ closer to ‘Orthodox Presbyterians’ than to mainstream Methodists? If so, I fail to see it. What sense does it make to put Missouri Synod Lutherans and pentecostals in the same category?”

Johnston responds with a summary listing of a number of definitions of “evangelicalism” that he sees as coming down to a threefold pattern: “Evangelicals are those who believe the gospel is to be experienced personally, defined biblically, and communicated passionately.” While some would take issue with Johnston’s terse and lively formula (for instance, in seeing instead a fourfold pattern implicit therein of commitment to an authoritative Bible, a basic gospel message, personal holiness, and evangelism as the church’s chief mission), the unique glory of this book lies in enabling the reader to judge it and any other definition precisely by all of these “test cases.”

A Bird’S-Eye View

In his book, George Marsden of Duke University, one of the leading experts on American fundamentalism and evangelicalism, makes two quite different contributions to our understanding of these movements. The first part of the book reworks material presented elsewhere into a historical overview of the context out of which fundamentalism emerged in the first quarter of this century and of the “new evangelicalism” that succeeded it. Marsden provides both more and less here than he does in his book-length studies on these periods. The chapter covering 1870–1930 sets out what amounts to a history of American Protestantism in this time (reflecting its earlier form as a textbook chapter) while giving due attention to fundamentalism within this story. The chapter covering developments since 1930 deals with the new evangelical “denomination” from a bird’s-eye view rather than from the specific vantage point of the history of Fuller Theological Seminary (which he covered in Reforming Fundamentalism).

The second part of Marsden’s book includes five discrete essays: two on evangelicals and politics, two on evangelicals and science, and a concluding reflection on J. Gresham Machen (1881–1937), a pivotal figure whose career illustrates some of the broader themes covered in other essays. Marsden rightly focuses on the two topics of politics and science since these are the points at which evangelicalism has come into the most public prominence of late, and he illuminates these subjects with characteristic thoroughness and insight.

Leonard Sweet wrote recently that the study of the history of American evangelicalism has produced some of the best scholarship in American religious history in general. These two volumes proffer some of the ripened fruit of that scholarship. They go beyond clarifying intellectual issues per se, however. They challenge the attitude, pervasive among all sorts of evangelicals, that “our way” is “God’s way.” They advertise corrective and complementary riches available to us in other traditions. And they direct evangelicals to distinguish between “essentials” and “nonessentials,” so that appropriate attention will be paid to the crucial things, the things of the “evangel.”

Worship At The Relativist Shrine

The Search for God at Harvard, by Ari L. Goldman (Times Books/Random House, 283 pp.; $20, hardcover). Reviewed by Doug LeBlanc, a journalist based in Colorado Springs who writes frequently on religion and culture.

Harvard Divinity School has long been regarded with a certain suspicion by evangelicals. If mainline Protestantism has strayed from its roots, there is no more vivid example of the crisis than Harvard.

The college itself was founded in 1636 for educating Puritan ministers. But by the nineteenth century, as Goldman writes, “Harvard Divinity was for all purposes an arm of the Unitarian church and served as a principal training ground for its ministers and church leaders.” The Divinity School is not captive only to Unitarians these days, but it will not give Fuller or Gordon-Conwell any competition for evangelical trust.

This book of reportage and autobiography by Ari Goldman, one of two full-time religion writers for the New York Times, will confirm some of evangelicals’ worst fears about what passes for theology at Harvard. It also demonstrates, however, that even Harvard Divinity School is not devoid of serious biblical scholarship.

As a Times religion writer, Goldman covers faith with a healthy curiosity. It helps that Goldman not only is an Orthodox Jew, but proudly observant of Orthodox laws. Goldman wrote the book after studying religion full-time during 1985 at the Divinity School. Goldman suggested the year of study to improve his understanding, and treatment, of religions other than Judaism.

The Search for God at Harvard is a sometimes amusing, often sobering, but never boring account of the pre-eminent seminary in mainline Protestantism (with the University of Chicago Divinity School being the only other serious contender for the position). Goldman captures the “Div School”—as some students call it—in all its relativist and “politically correct” glory. His tone is ironic, but never mocking.

In one tragic scene, a Christian Scientist student is snickered at by her classmates (excluding Goldman) because she reads the resurrection of Lazarus as proof of eternal life. Literalism is, perhaps, the only sin at the Div School, where gay students dance openly with their lovers at a social in the Refectory.

Goldman also reports on feminist rage, unabashed syncretism, and students’ desperate attempts to find the sacred amid the mundane. Goldman himself agrees with Divinity School professor Diana Eck’s contention that “If you know [only] one religion … you don’t know any.”

“I see God in language, as well as in being,” says Ann, a lifelong Unitarian. This is Ann’s sense of sacrament: “In some ways, working with words substitutes for a prayer life. When I do The New York Times crossword puzzle, for example, I feel an emptying of conscious thought, free associations. It leaves me in a better place.”

Goldman leaves his year at Harvard with a better understanding and a strange new respect for Buddhism, Hinduism, Christianity, even Islam. He accepts certain claims far too uncritically, such as one student’s certainty that the Hindu deity Krishna is mentioned with seeming approval in the Book of Esther. Even so, he exhibits tolerance and compassion toward believers, and he maintains a keen sense of his own identity. Goldman shows that the Div School, for all its glib rejection of anything perceived as fundamentalist, cannot destroy the faith of a person anchored in truth.

Indeed, an education in the theological crucible that is Harvard Divinity School should be ideal training for ministry in the wildly eclectic culture of mainline Protestantism. A student who enters and leaves Harvard Divinity as an evangelical will be able to withstand almost anything else from mainline Protestantism.

Deconstructing Reconstruction

Theonomy: A Reformed Critique, edited by William S. Barker and W. Robert Godfrey (Zondervan, 413 pp.; $15.95, paper). Reviewed by Bruce Barron, author of The Health and Wealth Gospel.

A handful of Christian Reconstructionists, advocating the application of biblical law (“theonomy”) to all of modern society, have carved out a niche for themselves on the evangelical landscape. The surest sign that they have “arrived” is Zondervan’s interest in publishing this book of essays by 16 Westminster Seminary faculty professors who take theonomy very seriously.

The essays cover a variety of topics, as befits the wide-ranging implications of theonomy: biblical exegesis, eschatology, church history, political theory. Almost every chapter takes the obligatory jab at theonomists’ rigid insistence on reviving Old Testament penal sanctions. But despite disagreement on many specifics, the authors generally appreciate theonomy’s effort to relate biblical law to the modern world.

The writers’ familiarity with theonomy is inconsistent—understandably so, since the theory is complex and frequently misinterpreted. Two essays on the relation of law and gospel miss the point completely, as they fail to address specifically whether Old Testament civil law remains binding under the New Covenant. On the other hand, John Frame and Vern Poythress have a solid grasp of theonomy, and their lucid essays pinpoint the theory’s crucial weakness: its exegesis, especially regarding the relation between Old and New Testaments, is dependent on debatable interpretive frameworks and “inordinately dogmatic claims.”

Those who consider theonomy a wild aberration will fault the Westminster professors for taking it too seriously, as the authors patiently scrutinize theonomy’s use of Scripture and church history in great detail, identifying strengths as well as weaknesses. On the whole, however, this volume strikes a proper balance. Beneath the uncompromising rhetoric and dogmatism to which theonomy is prone lies a treasure of serious scholarship and provocative challenges that can help Christians re-examine their social and political thinking.

This book will help move Christians beyond ridiculing theonomy and toward responsible appropriation of its positive insights.

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