It’s not every day that a Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist-historian like Frances FitzGerald publishes a 752-page tome on the history of evangelicalism in America with a press like Simon & Schuster. The Evangelicals: The Struggle to Shape America is not a book filled with primary archival research and original interviews. Rather, it is a narrative synthesis of most of the major works (up until a few years ago) published on American evangelical history.
Its title, though, is misleading. The history is all aimed toward the purpose of understanding the “Christian right.” She explains in the Introduction:
The book is not a taxonomy or attempt to describe the entirety of evangelical life, but rather a history of the white evangelical movements necessary to understand the Christian right and its evangelical opponents that have emerged in recent years. (3)
I was delighted that the Gospel Coalition asked Barry Hankins, professor of history at Baylor University, to review the book.
( I buy virtually everything he writes. He has written biographies of J. Frank Norris and Francis Schaeffer; a history of the conservative resurgence/takeover in the Southern Baptist Convention, along with co-authoring [with his colleague Thomas Kidd] a history of Baptists in America; a documentary reader on the history of evangelicalism and fundamentalism, with a history of American evangelicalism, and [my favorite], Jesus and Gin, a look at evangelicalism and the start of the culture wars during the roaring 1920s.)
Hankins writes that FitzGerald’s book has now become the most exhaustive treatment of the Christian right (55% of the book’s narrative covers evangelicalism from Reagan to Obama).
Several years ago, Joe Carter made this observation:
Contrary to what many secularists claim–and many Christians believe–we evangelicals are not all that politically involved. Sure, like most Americans we talk a lot about politics, especially in an election season. But the claim that we are involved in actual political activities–lobbying, organizing, campaigning, etc.–would be difficult to support with actual evidence.
Hankins makes a similar point in his critique of FitzGerald’s thesis: “the typical evangelical isn’t all that political.” It is surprising how few historians have seen or said this.
He goes on:
The important things for most evangelicals are: (1) living godly lives; (2) raising their children to be committed, evangelical Christians; (3) being active in their local churches; and (4) evangelizing their neighbors. They talk about issues like abortion and gay marriage in Sunday school, and on Election Day 75 to 80 percent of them dutifully vote Republican, even if a pagan like Donald Trump is at the head of the ticket. They may even put a sign in their yard for the Republican congressman in their district. But the vast majority of evangelicals don’t march in the street, write letters to their congressmen and senators, run for the local school board, or attend Christian right rallies. They’re too busy being Christians, so they leave that to the Falwells, Roberstons, and Dobsons of the world.
This is where FitzGerald’s book falls down a bit. In covering the Christian right so thoroughly, The Evangelicals perpetuates the myth that evangelicalism and the Christian right became synonymous.
In part, FitzGerald seems to want to show that this was the case and that it was an unfortunate aberration, given the nearly three centuries of rich and robust evangelicalism that predated the Christian right.
On the other hand, however, part of the reason we need good history is to show that perceptions, especially those perpetuated by the media, need correction—that there’s more to a movement than its most visible, loud, and sometimes outrageous public figures.
When FitzGerald gets to the new evangelicals who broke ranks with the Christian right after 2008, she acknowledges, “These dissenters came from an evangelical constituency largely unknown to the rest of the country” (544). She even cites Mark Noll as suggesting they had been there all along “in international aid agencies, colleges and seminaries, denominations and independent churches” (544).
While not mentioning them by name, John Piper, Tim Keller, and The Gospel Coalition would fit this new evangelical category. These and others have succeeded in carving out a larger niche in the wake of the demise of the Christian right. “In other words,” FitzGerald writes a few pages later, “the Christian right had done its work all too well: it had managed to convince Americans that all evangelicals, if not all Christians, belonged to their movement. And many evangelicals wanted out” (559).
So in a history like this, one might ask, why not tell us what these other evangelicals were doing while the Christian right captured the Republican Party and sucked up all the attention of the media?
Thomas Kidd made a similar observation in his review of Steven Miller’s The Age of Evangelicalism:
Though his book is quite detailed, it is instructive to note what Miller leaves out, including some of the most dynamic (if still controversial) movements in the past four decades of evangelical life. These include the New Calvinism, the conservative resurgence in the Southern Baptist Convention, the global growth of evangelical and charismatic Christianity, and that worldwide expansion’s implications for missions, religious liberty, and trends in Methodism, Anglicanism, and other denominations. None of these developments garners more than allusions from Miller. Figures such as John Piper, Albert Mohler, and Wilfredo de Jesús do not appear in the index. Part of the reason for this neglect is that Miller has already covered a lot of ground in 166 pages, and he’s primarily telling a story of political Christian conservatism. Even though global charismatic revival, the New Calvinism, and the conservative resurgence have political implications, they do not fit as easily into Miller’s narrative. I am sure that leaders of these movements would say that while they have political opinions, they want to be known primarily for the gospel of Jesus Christ.
As long as historians continue to follow the media’s lead of viewing evangelicalism primarily through the lens of politics, readers will have a truncated view of who evangelicals are and how they operate.
The entirety of Hankins’s excellent review can be read here.
