The New Old-Time Religion (Evangelicals)

What would Jonathan Edwards think of suburban Chicago's Willow Creek Community Church, where every weekend some 17,000 congregants arrive in their Chevy Tahoes and Toyota minivans to worship in the enormous brick-and-glass auditorium? More specifically, what would the 18th-century Puritan preacher who penned the fire-and-brimstone sermon "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God" make of "seeker-friendly" services that use "drama, multimedia, and contemporary music" to serve "individuals checking out what it really means to have a personal relationship with Jesus"? Gazing across the packed rows, would Edwards recognize the modern face of the religious movement that he played such a key role in launching?

On the 300th anniversary of the great theologian's birth, the questions are hardly academic. From Saddleback Church in Orange County, Calif., to Bellevue Baptist Church outside Memphis, evangelical megachurches dot the American landscape like the Wal-Marts, Home Depots, and other big-box stores that so many of them resemble. But this is only the most visible sign of the growing sway of evangelical Christianity, a tradition that includes both the Pentecostal and Southern Baptist churches, as well as an ever growing array of nondenominational and even some mainline Protestant congregations. From the White House and the halls of Congress to a vastly expanding spiritual self-help movement to the most vigorous Christian missionary effort in the developing world, the growing influence of evangelicalism is everywhere.

Today, according to a Gallup survey, roughly 4 out of 10 Americans identify themselves as evangelical or born-again Christians. And, as Boston College sociologist Alan Wolfe argues in his book The Transformation of American Religion, many characteristics of the evangelical style--its strongly personalist and therapeutic tendencies, its market-savvy approaches to expanding the flock, and even a certain theological fuzziness--have permeated other faith traditions in America, including Roman Catholicism and Judaism. Wolfe says, only half facetiously, "We are all evangelicals now."

Even so, many outside the tradition still tend to reduce evangelicals, and particularly prominent leaders and televangelists, to a conveniently dismissible stereotype: Bible-thumping, intolerant know-nothings. But when researchers focus on ordinary evangelicals, as University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill sociologist Christian Smith does in his book Christian America? What Evangelicals Really Want, they find "more diversity, complexity, and ambivalence than conventional wisdom would lead us to expect." Take Laura Camp, a 26-year-old aspiring opera singer in Cherry Hill, N.J. Strongly opposed to abortion and gay marriage, Camp doesn't think the Gospel should be twisted to suit contemporary mores. Still, says the evangelical, who recently moved from a United Methodist to a Baptist church: "It's not my job to condemn--the Holy Spirit will take care of that. My job is to have a growing relationship with God."

Which is very close to what Jonathan Edwards wanted, too. Yet what exactly does an 18th-century New England Puritan have to do with a phenomenon that transcends denominational lines and emphasizes born-again conversion, Christ's redemptive role, the unerring authority of the Bible, and a commitment to taking the Gospel to others? The answer, quite simply, is a lot. George Marsden, a University of Notre Dame historian and author of Jonathan Edwards: A Life, put the matter squarely at a recent Library of Congress symposium: American history "recounted without its religious history or Edwards is like Moby Dick without the whale."

The chosen. As a major promoter of the First Great Awakening, the religious revival that swept through the Colonies in the 1740s, Edwards modified his own highly orthodox Puritan-Calvinist heritage and unintentionally launched a new and distinctively American strain of Protestantism. That tradition became the dominant religious force in American culture and politics in the 19th century and up through the early 20th. Along the way, it touched just about every major social movement, from abolitionism to Prohibition. "It is the glory of American Christianity," says Nathan Hatch, provost of the University of Notre Dame and author of The Democratization of American Christianity, "and it is also the shame."

Starting in the late 19th century, however, waves of new immigrants and an assortment of intellectual challenges from Darwinism to "modernist" theology began edging evangelicals from their place at the center of American life. In reaction, a core of the faithful adopted a hypermoralistic, biblically literalist, and anti-intellectual stance that came to be known as fundamentalism. In the 1940s, more open-minded carriers of the torch, including Billy Graham and Carl F. H. Henry (founding editor of Christianity Today), broke with the bunker mentality and attempted to reconnect with the larger culture. Abandoning the apocalyptic scenarios of the fundamentalists and much of their anti-intellectual baggage, they broadened their appeal, often reaching out to Christians in mainline Protestant churches and even to Catholics. Fundamentalism didn't just disappear; many highly visible leaders and televangelists remain of that tendency. But it is now only one current within a larger movement. "We are back to a situation in which evangelicalism dominates our culture," says Wolfe. "But that doesn't mean `fundamentalist.' It means revivalist, personalist, therapeutic, entrepreneurial--the megachurch."

Consider the political arena. In addition to George W. Bush, whose conversion experience is arguably what set him on the road to politics in the first place, evangelicals in prominent places include the attorney general, the speaker of the House, and the House majority leader. Evangelical language and concerns, from faith-based social initiatives to attitudes toward abortion, same-sex unions, and America's relations with Israel, shape both the rhetoric and many of the policies of the current administration. And particularly since 9/11, evangelical notions about God's special covenant with the American people have contributed to a quasi-religious nationalism that casts America as the chosen nation engaged in a righteous struggle with evil.

The bottom line. Throughout most of American history, the evangelical constituency has tended to be, as Wheaton College historian Mark Noll points out, "more Democratic than Republican and relatively passive." But Supreme Court decisions on school prayer and abortion began to change that. Today, thanks to three decades of organizing efforts by the Christian right, most white evangelicals have come to be aligned with the Republican Party. In the last presidential election, 40 percent of Bush's votes came from religious conservatives. But not all evangelicals have ended up at the conservative end of the political spectrum. Theologically conservative African-American evangelicals and a minority of white evangelicals combine to make the evangelical perspective a force to be reckoned with inside the Democratic Party. Martin Luther King Jr. continues to be a beacon of evangelically inspired liberal activism, and President Jimmy Carter was every bit as open about his personal relationship with Jesus as George Bush is.

Whether they identify more closely with Republicans or Democrats, evangelicals are captive of neither party. "I am a registered Republican," says Laura Camp, "but I will vote for a non-Republican candidate who I think is trying to make changes in a positive way." One reason the last presidential election was so close, according to White House adviser Karl Rove, was a lower-than-expected turnout among evangelicals. And Gary Bauer, head of American Values, a conservative organization, provides what he thinks is the reason: "There are a disturbing number of people who feel that the [Republican] party is not fighting enough in areas like abortion and same-sex marriages." To shore up that constituency, the administration has been particularly aggressive in responding to evangelical concerns, both in its domestic policies (through judicial appointments and support for anti-gay-marriage legislation) and in foreign-policy initiatives that range from fighting AIDS to ending sex trafficking.

While most evangelicals would like to see Christian morality as the ruling ethos of the nation, they also believe Americans should be free to live the way they choose. "The bottom line," says North Carolina's Smith, "is that evangelicals subscribe to personal faith as paramount. . . . You can't shove religion down people's throats."

It's a common mistake to reduce evangelicals to their stands on political or social issues. Talk to individual evangelicals or their pastors, and you learn that they have higher priorities. Among his own, says Lon Solomon, pastor of the McLean Bible Church near Tysons Corner, Va., a megachurch that draws up to 10,000 people on Sundays, "abortion and homosexuality are minor concerns in our church. The bell we beat is that we must know Jesus. We are offering people a different and better way to live than secular America offers."

Awakenings. Evangelicalism is, in a way, a counterculture. Everything from the success of Christian pop and rock groups to the phenomenal sales of the "Left Behind" series of novels by Tim LaHaye and Jerry B. Jenkins attests to its drawing power. Because the great commission of evangelicals is to bring the "good news" to others, the matter of drawing power is crucial. It explains why evangelicals put so much money and energy into extensive social-service ministries, and why so many evangelical pastors strive to create "seeker-friendly" megachurches with nontraditional, multimedia services that reassure and entertain as much as they edify. It also explains why evangelical churches, particularly Southern Baptist and Pentecostal, now send far more missionaries abroad than mainline churches, reversing the pattern of the early 20th century.

While such accomplishments would have pleased Edwards--and fulfilled his optimistic predictions about the spread of Protestant Christianity--there is much that would have alarmed or simply puzzled him. Indeed, one way to make sense of contemporary evangelicalism is to consider how it has both hewed to and strayed from the path laid down by one of its most brilliant founding fathers.

Thanks to Marsden's authoritative new biography, Jonathan Edwards: A Life, that path is now more clear. Running down its center is Edwards's overarching concern with the authentic religious experience. As a Calvinist born in 1703 into a family of Congregationalist ministers, he struggled mightily through his own conversion experience while attending Yale College. Like many who were exposed to Enlightenment ideas, he was troubled by his creed's insistence on a God whose sovereign will alone determined the eternal salvation or damnation of every human creature. After toying with other theological alternatives, Edwards was suddenly seized by the conviction that God was fair in "eternally disposing of men, according to his sovereign pleasure." It was the turning point of his life, leaving him forever convinced of the need for the "experiential" validation of faith.

In 1729, Edwards inherited the Northampton, Mass., pulpit of his widely revered grandfather, Solomon Stoddard. But from the beginning he felt uneasy about his grandfather's lax requirements for church membership. For that reason, Edwards found special value in the revival that he instigated in and around Northampton in 1734. His published account of this spiritual renewal became a major catalyst of the First Great Awakening of the 1740s, but Edwards had a more personal reason to value the 1734 revival: It provided an alternative means of establishing the spiritual authenticity of his congregants. In his later Treatise Concerning Religious Affections, Edwards would caution, however, that intense experience alone was insufficient, even dangerous, unless accompanied by reason, a close regard for Scripture, and a disciplined and regular church life. Eventually, many of his own parishioners began to chafe under Edwards's strictness, and they finally rebelled and dismissed him from his post. Unbowed, Edwards joined an Indian missionary community in Stockbridge, Mass., and for seven years, while preaching to the Mohawks, penned some of his greatest works. In 1757, Edwards accepted the presidency of the College of New Jersey, as Princeton was then called. But soon after his installation, his life was cut short by a smallpox inoculation that went bad.

Excesses. Had Edwards lived to witness the birth and early years of the American republic, he would have seen the excesses of the First Great Awakening become even more pronounced in the Second Great Awakening. Along with the demographic explosion that saw America grow from 2 1/2 million in 1776 to 20 million in 1845 came a huge expansion and transformation of the religious landscape, with the number of ministers per capita more than tripling. But these ministers belonged mainly to upstart and aggressively evangelizing churches, the Baptists, Methodists, Disciples of Christ, and assorted African-American churches of those and other denominations. All these new churches shared Edwards's conviction that revival was a central part of the religious experience. But all were populist, democratic, antielitist, and even anti-institutional to an extreme that would have horrified Edwards. This democratic revolution in American Protestantism established the lastingly populist character of evangelical Christianity. And its broad, folksy appeal is probably the single greatest reason that America became and remained the most religious of all modern industrial nations.

But Edwards was almost uncanny in anticipating how enthusiastic religion could go astray. Above all, he saw how certain developments could end up placing the individual (or worldly agendas), and not God, at the center of the religious experience. For Edwards, born into a clerical family, the existence of a genteel, well-educated, and authoritative clergy was almost an indispensable element of an orderly religious life and society. The Second Great Awakening shattered that ideal, opening the doors of the ministry to people from all rungs of society and often to people without any particular education or training for the ministry.

The anti-institutional tendencies of the awakening created other problems, including proliferating sectarianism. The Protestant Reformation had itself been a sectarian movement dividing European Christendom into two major camps. Protestants attacked Catholicism for institutional excesses and shifted the focus of religious life toward individual experience. But the leaders of Reformed Christianity--Martin Luther, John Calvin, and their heirs in America--believed their new churches required what Nathan Hatch calls the "ecclesiastical walls of liturgy, governance, theology, and instruction." The evangelical explosion of the early 19th century threatened to bring down those walls. As denominations subdivided into new denominations, offering frontier Americans an expanding menu of possibilities, the old, quasi-established denominations, Anglicanism and Congregationalism, lost their authority and following. And ministers of the new, upstart churches often behaved like shameless hucksters in their efforts to win over spiritual consumers.

Finally, changes in the character of the ministry and sectarian splintering both contributed to a growing vagueness about the bedrock principles of theology. In addition to the widespread rejection of Calvinism, perhaps the most radical challenge to theological authority was the democratic notion that the Bible could be read without help from established interpretive traditions. The danger is that the faithful could easily fall prey to any powerful reading of the Bible put forth by any charismatic minister or charlatan--or simply go with any reading that suited a believer's interests.

Adaptable and improvisatory, emotionally engaging and sustaining, American evangelical religion has provided a most accessible spiritual home for a highly individualistic, egalitarian, and mobile people. But that doesn't mean that the kinds of things that worried Edwards in his day don't continue to present real and present dangers to the spiritual health of evangelicalism.

Evangelical scholars and intellectuals especially lament the decline of the evangelical mind since the generation of Edwards. During the last century in particular, says Wheaton College's Noll, "Christian reasoning as a whole, through use of the Bible, theology, and doctrine, simply hasn't measured up. The scandal of the evangelical thinking is that there is not enough of it, and that which exists is not up to the standards that Edwards established."

The fundamentalist turn in evangelicalism, in Noll's view, is a well-intentioned but inadequate response to challenges Edwards would have met more thoughtfully, with intelligence and religious conviction. In fact, if evangelicals had heeded Edwards's criticism of Enlightenment science and philosophy, they would have been less frightened by later scientific theories, like Darwinian evolutionary theory. More theologically informed readings of Scripture might also have discouraged the fundamentalists' use of biblical prophecy as what Noll calls "a complete and detailed preview of the end of the world"--often for dubious political purposes. Most evangelicals, for instance, have sensible reasons for their support of Israel, including respect for its democratic institutions. But fundamentalist zealots who base their uncritical support on end-times scenarios are so mechanistic in their use of Scripture that they view even President Bush's effort to negotiate a peace settlement as a betrayal of prophecy.

Unique. A little more Edwards-style caution might also temper the view of America as a redeemer nation with a special mission in the world, says Yale historian Harry Stout. Edwards believed that Christians worldwide, and not just Americans, had a unique place in the unfolding history of humankind's redemption. To the extent that Edwards acknowledged America's collective covenant with God, says Sang Hyun Lee of Princeton Theological Seminary, he believed that it was contingent upon the nation's actions--and particularly upon whether they were godly or not. Edwards did believe in evil and would have understood why Bush uses the word to describe terrorists. But any attempt to ascribe high moral purpose to all of America's actions would have invited the theologian's cautioning words.

For all the faults that Edwards might have found in them, however, contemporary evangelical Christians continue to exhibit a quality that he would have considered paramount: They are serious about their religion and seriously concerned about the authenticity of their faith. Listen to Nick Giordano, 46, a pork-industry lobbyist who lives in Northern Virginia and is a member of an evangelically oriented Episcopal congregation. This father of three prefers not to quibble about the label "evangelical" but says there is something about his practice of Christianity that demands taking the example of Christ seriously. "It's impossible to do that if you don't hang out with him, and you can't do that unless you read the Bible. And you don't hear from him through the Holy Spirit if you are selectively cutting things out of your Bible."

Such seriousness about the business of faith may be one reason why evangelical churches are expanding while many mainline Protestant churches shrink. "I think what is happening within the Christian world," says Solomon of McLean Bible Church, "is that going through the motions of being a Christian is something that is passe, outmoded, and no longer necessary. Increasingly, there is evangelicalism and secularism, and if you're not going to be evangelical, why play the game at all?"

Evangelical scholars such as Noll and Marsden find no fault with that seriousness. They would just like to see their fellow evangelicals play the game a bit more thoughtfully--and with a little more mindfulness of where they came from.

And particularly since 9/11, evangelical notions about God's special covenant with the American people have contributed to a quasi-religious nationalism that casts America as the chosen nation engaged in a righteous struggle with evil.

I would think that many would disagree with the as the chosen nation. Most of the evangelicals that I know that follow in the footsteps of Revd. Edwards and the Puritan traditions, would say that America is the nation that God has chosen to use to strike back at the religiously evil nations of the world, those who would be described in Revelation three as "them of the synagogue of Satan, which say they are Jews, and are not, but do lie;" keep in mind that the muslims think of themselves as the chosen of God, therefore the truer jews in a sense.

But few that I know think of this nation as one dedicated to the Lord and therefore one that “casts America as the chosen nation engaged in a righteous struggle with evil.”

Those most like the Puritans would be those of the Ana Baptist denominations such as the Mennonites and Amish.

My opinion

Interesting article, thanks for the post.

Well, Edwards set the bar pretty high. He had quite an impressive mind. I would point to John Piper as a great example of an excellent contemporary scholar in the mold of Edwards (in fact he's a big fan of Edwards).

One more comment, for anyone interesting in reading some of Jonathan Edward's writings, I do suggest reading more than just the Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God sermon. Edwards' mind is better displayed in some of his other writings, in my opinion. If interested, here's a link: http://www.jonathanedwards.com/

The "fundamentals" movement of the early 20th Century was a reaction to liberalism and modernism from across the Protestant spectrum. The authors of the book, The Fundamentals, included Episcopalians, Baptists, Presbyterians, dispensationalists, Reformed believers, and others. These authors held to the historical Christian and Reformation doctrines. Where it did not deal with Protestant distinctives, such as the "solas," traditional Catholics and Eastern Orthodox believers would have no problem with the positions stated.

By the 1920s, the term "fundamentalism" became identified with a certain element within conservative Protestantism that emphasized personal holiness and the premillenial dispensational view of end times Bilical prophecy. The personal holiness area included areas on which the Bible is silent: smoking tobacco, moderate use of alcohol, social dancing, card playing, movie, stage, and (after 1950) television attendance, etc. While Christian liberty certainly permits people to avoid all these items, and health and morals can undoubtedly be improved by avoiding tobacco and indecent shows, certain traditions, notably the independent Baptist movement, the Churches of Christ, the Plymouth Brethren movement, and the Holiness churches, became almost Pharisaical in their condemnation of these matters. While the preachers promoted grace alone as the means of salvation, in practice, there developed a massive number of rules representing a sort of legalism.

The effect of the premillenial dispensational viewpoint, at least prior to the late 1970s, was to prevent many conservative Christians from getting involved in secular politics. Avoidance of politics was in effect a reaction against the outspoken liberalism of the modernist clergy, such as Walter Rauschenbusch and Bromley Oxnam, who held to a secularized version of postmillenialism. Although the liberals denied the Bible's historicity, accuracy, and even its authority, they believed that the promised Kingdom of God would arrive in part through the church's promotion of socialistic and centralizing legislation.

It is quite understandable that conservatives would oppose such un-Biblical doctrines. But the reaction of many, if not most, fundamentalists, was to develop an almost Manichean view of a world to be shunned in hope of a pre-Tribulation rapture to occur "any day now." From about the time of the Scopes trial to the founding of the Moral Majority, the fundamentalist churches were mostly quiescent on political matters. During this half-century, the Federal government assumed massive authority, the Supreme Court rejected "original intent" of the Founders for the "living document" theory of interpretation, cultural and legal barriers against sex outside of traditional marriage, divorce, and pornography were destroyed, and secular humanists took entire possession of the state education apparatus. Fighting a rear guard against these destructive trends were the Catholic Church (until the effects of Vatican II caused their withdrawal from these arenas) and a minority of conservative, non-dispensational Protestants, like Gresham Machen.

Emphasis on the fundamentals is crucial to the maintenance of orthodox belief. The movement termed fundamentalism among holders of these fundamental beliefs was disastrous for our country and Christian influence in American society.

The rationale that some church leaders give in not promoting evangelism is that the postmodern mindset is one that rejects the concept of absolute truth (except that this concept is an absoute truth!). In other words, exposition of the Gospel is inadequate for those people born after, say, 1964: the Generation Xers and the Millenials. Their argument is that you have to deal with people and the mindset.

I must wonder if evangelical Christianity is dividing between accomodationalist and non-accomodationalist wings. Many of the large independent churches, whether charismatic or not, seem to fall in the former category. Charismatic churches have not, as a rule, been ones to emphasize theology, emphasizing sentiment over learning. As a result, such churches are especially prone to accomodation. The latter group centers around denominations where conservatives either defeated the liberals (like the Southern Baptist Convention) or accomplished a successful secession from a liberal denomination (like the Presbyterian Church in America). Also included in the latter group are independent churches with ties to strongly conservative seminaries, like Dallas Theological Seminary.

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.