American religious history

Review: Ordinary Heroes of Racial Justice

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Cover image of "Ordinary Heroes of Racial Justice" by Karen J. Johnson

Ordinary Heroes of Racial Justice

Ordinary Heroes of Racial Justice, Karen J. Johnson. IVP Academic (ISBN: 9781514009987) 2025.

Summary: Histories of five individuals and the communities they formed to pursue racial justice and reconciliation.

Heroes who do that to which we aspire are important as models. It’s even better when they are “ordinary,” because they offer hope that we can also be the change we want to see. Part of “ordinary” is understanding our heroes, both in their virtues and with all their warts. There is a difference between hagiography and good history.

Karen J. Johnson has written a history of four communities in the United States that pursued racial justice and reconciliation. She profiles the individual (in the first three) or pair of individuals (In the last instance) who formed these communities. Those profiled are Catherine de Hueck and the Friendship Houses of New York and Chicago, John Perkins and Mendenhall Ministries/Voice of Calvary in Mississippi, Clarence Jordan and Koinonia Farm in Americus, Georgia, and Raleigh Washington and Glen Kehrein at Rock of our Salvation/Circle Urban Ministries in the Austin neighborhood of Chicago.

Johnson is a historian of race and urban history and chair of the history department at Wheaton College. In addition, she and her husband lived for six years in the last of the four communities she profiles, albeit after the departure of its founders. She writes the book with three aims in mind. First, she writes about the recent racial past of the United States, identifying in these local histories larger, systemic patterns of racial dynamics, and how the church has been a part of these. Through the eyes of Catherine de Heuck, a Catholic refugee from Russia and naturalized citizen, we glimpse her vision of how Blacks were treated as second class citizens. John Perkins flees the racist South after his brother’s murder, then returns, having come to faith, to join the civil rights movement. He suffers and also models relocation, something he will preach.

Clarence Jordan challenges racial norms in establishing an interracial farm community at Koinonia Farm. As a Bible scholar, his Cotton Patch New Testament shows in the vernacular how the gospel goes against the grain of racism. Finally, when Raleigh and Paulette Washington joined Glen and Lonni Kehrein to build a multiracial congregation, they modeled how Black and White might live together in a recently integrated part of Chicago.

Second, Johnson models the work of doing history as a Christian with love, humility, and awe. She sees the hard work of piecing together a narrative from primary source material, on site visits, and interviews as a work of love, including love for the people whose lives you are narrating. This also means being honest. For example, former President Jimmy Carter claimed a long-standing relationship with Clarence Jordan. However, her search of various sources failed to confirm this relationship.

Third, Johnson believes the study of history with love, humility and awe leads to wisdom. In particular, it makes us aware that we live in a context. That context has been shaped by the past. And it shapes our default approaches to the present. She believes reading history in this way is worship and mind renewing (Romans 12:1-2).

As a good professor, she includes a “Questions and Implications” section at the conclusion of each chapter. These are not the vague, reflection questions you will find in some book. Rather, they reminded me of the essay questions I had to answer on college and seminary history exams. They forced me to formulate my own responses to the historical narrative. Your interaction with this text will be enhanced by taking some time to journal with these.

I appreciated this work for the quality of research Johnson invested. Her personal model of love, humility, and awe in writing about each of these ordinary heroes is evident throughout. She helped me appreciate the different forms of courage each exercised as well as the “long obedience” involved, punctuated with dry seasons and reverses. And I loved the carefully chosen images she included. For example, she includes an image of Clarence Jordan’s “shack” where he wrote his Cotton Patch translations and where he died. This work is a valuable resource for anyone committed to the long work of seeking racial justice.

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Disclosure of Material Connection: I received a complimentary copy of this book from the publisher for review.

Review: The Search for a Rational Faith

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Cover image for "The Search for a Rational Faith" by Daniel K. Williams

The Search for a Rational Faith

The Search for a Rational Faith, Daniel K Williams. Oxford University Press (ISBN: 9780197748039) 2026.

Summary: Anglo-American efforts to make a reasoned defense of Christian faith amid the rise of Enlightenment reason.

It was not uncommon in campus ministry to encounter people who asserted that no thinking person could believe in Christianity. Daniel K. Williams argues that this is a reflection of secularization theory. That is, as Enlightenment rationalism advances, science progresses, and higher education becomes more accessible, religious belief will dwindle, especially among the educated. The problem is, while skeptics exist, college-educated Christians actually are more likely to attend church than those who are not. What is interesting is that many of these did not find reason and science to conflict with their faith. This is true to some extent in England and a greater extent in the United States, whereas secularization has advanced as expected in other parts of Europe. What is the difference?

Daniel K. Williams argues in his new book, The Search for a Rational Faith, that from the 1700’s to the present, there has been an Anglo-American effort concentrated in higher education and related intellectual circles to offer a reasoned defense of Christian belief, responding to Enlightenment challenges. He shows how courses on Christian evidences were a centerpiece of a college education until the early twentieth century. The books used in these courses could be found in the libraries of famous individuals throughout this time from John Adams to Alexander Hamilton.

Williams also traces how the content of these courses change over time. Puritans focused on classical proofs for God but believed conversion was a work of grace by God alone. However, Arminians made a place for human initiative and believed that rational evidences may help convince one to believe. Thus, until the rise of biblical criticism and Darwinist evolution in the mid nineteenth century, these evidences were widely embraced. They served as an intellectual foundation for the American Republic, argues, Williams.

As biblical criticism and Darwinism spread, apologists needed to adapt. Some engaged these theories, either trying to refute them, or adopt approaches that reconciled the theories to Christian belief. Williams traces a shift from historic, empirical evidences to those emphasizing the evidence of religious experience. Increasingly, the argument was for the value of Christianity in promoting American values. These changes even invaded Princeton Seminary, leading to an exodus of conservative scholars.

Williams then traces the parallel developments among conservatives and liberals in the mid-twentieth century. The Princeton exiles develop presuppositionalist apologetics, starting with belief in God, not as something proven, but assumed. This approach would shape the ministry of Francis Schaeffer with countercultural seekers and his subsequent books. Meanwhile liberals went from Reinhold Niebuhr’s neo-orthodoxy that argued that Christian belief alone made sense of human nature and history to a radical skepticism of the existence of God.

Finally, Williams traces the resurgence of Christian apologetics among evangelicals, even as liberalism was imploding, influenced by the works of C. S. Lewis, Timothy Keller, and on a more intellectual level, Alister McGrath and John Lennox and Craig Keener.

What is exceptional in this work is the history over four centuries of this apologetic enterprise. It was fascinating to learn of thinkers and their works throughout this history. It’s fascinating how some of them anticipate present day efforts. I also appreciated the exploration of the relationship of rational defenses of the faith to conversion. In most periods, Christian evidences seemed far more important in offering Christians a solid basis for confident assertion of their faith. Finally, I appreciate the tension his work reflects in differing approaches to Enlightenment rationalism. While some befriend rationalism, others recognize the incompatibility of man-centered reason with God’s revelatory and illuminating work.

Having worked among graduate students and faculty in the public setting, I certainly gained a great appreciation for approaches that addressed the challenges of science as well as the rise of post-modernity and critical theory in the humanities (the latter is not addressed here). But I would also have liked to see Williams gesture toward efforts that are not merely defensive, but bring to bear Christian premises, doctrines, and values in a constructive engagement with academic disciplines. I think of efforts by Christians in a variety of disciplines, including history, to think Christianly. Williams’ discipline of history is an example of such efforts by people like George Marsden, Mark Noll, and Harry S. Stout. For many, Abraham Kuyper’s rallying cry of “every square inch” has been a rallying cry for moving beyond a defensive posture.

What George Marsden did for understanding the relationship of Christianity to American higher education in The Soul of the American University, Williams has done for the apologetic enterprise. Not only does he offer this comprehensive history, he gives the lie to the secularization hypothesis. He shows how Christians through American history have offered a cogent, reasoned defense of the faith equipping generations of Christians for confident (and hopefully winsome) assertion of their faith. This is a great text for contemporary Christian apologists. There are lessons in this history as well as inspiration in learning of the shoulders on which they stand.

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Disclosure of Material Connection: I received a complimentary copy of this book from the publisher for review.

Review: The Log College

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Cover image of "The Log College" by Archibald Alexander

The Log College, Archibald Alexander. Banner of Truth Trust

Summary: Biographical sketches of William Tennant and his students, with accounts of the revivals under their ministries.

Until 1727, ministers in the Presbyterian Church in the American colonies could only obtain theological training at Harvard or Yale, or back in England. And because of a divide among Presbyterians occasioned by the revivals of which George Whitefield was a leading figure, those were not preferred schools for those on the “New Light” side of the divide. In 1727, William Tennant, Sr. established a seminary on the banks of the Neshaminy, where Warminster, Pennsylvania is now located. The facilities were plain, a twenty by twenty foot cabin, located a mile from the church Tennant served as pastor. Aspiring ministers, awakened in the revivals came to study there until Tennant died in 1746.

Log College Building
Log College Building, By Engraved by Snyder – Presbyterian Historical Society, Philadelphia, Pa., Public Domain, via Wikipedia

This reprint of a work by Princeton seminary professor Archibald Alexander offers biographical sketches of a number of the graduates. Alexander incorporates into these sketches first hand accounts of revivals under the ministries of these graduates. In addition to information about the founding of the Log College, Alexander profiles William Tennant, Sr, his sons Gilbert (over four chapters), John, William, Jr., and Charles. Samuel and John Blair, Samuel Finley, William Robinson, John Rowland, and Charles Beatty.

Two institutions succeeded the Log College. The more significant of these was the College of New Jersey, which became Princeton University and Seminary The other was the New London School, located near Philadelphia. Alexander provides chapters on the beginnings of both of these.

Even before the elder Tennant died, a controversy contributed to the founding of both of these institutions. The Presbyterian Synod of Philadelphia did not consider the Log College to offer a sufficient education, despite the vital ministries of many and in 1739 refused to recognize the credentials of Log Cabin graduates. Many had been ordained in the Presbytery of New Brunswick, in New Jersey, which separated for a period of time over this issue. Their response was to start the College of New Jersey to address the educational deficiencies. A number of Log College graduates were on the board and Samuel Finley later served as President. Meanwhile, The Synod started its own school at New London, near Philadelphia.

One of the things this account does is give accounts of a number of revivals in the mid-Atlantic states. The first-person extracts give an immediacy to the account. As in the ministry of Edwards, it is not the rhetorical skills of ministers. Rather, we note a Spirit-given concern over the state of one’s soul, leading to repentance and the granting of an assured faith in the work of Christ.

Another striking observation. Most of those profiled died young. In their 20’s, 30’s, or 40’s. Consumption (tuberculosis) took many of them. However, the hard work of these people who burned brightly for a short time hastened the deaths of many.

Finally, it is fascinating to reflect on the fruit of William Tennant’s little Log College. Not only were the students he taught and mentored instrumental in the Awakenings of the 1700’s. They also laid the groundwork for Princeton Seminary as a bastion of Reformed education during the nineteenth and early twentieth century. The Log College had a far greater impact in pre-revolutionary American history than it’s modest physical footprint.

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Disclosure of Material Connection: I received a complimentary copy of this book from the publisher for review.

Review: Songs I Love To Sing

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Songs I Love to Sing, Edith L. Blumhofer (foreword by Fernando Ortega). Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co.: 2023.

Summary: A history of the ministry of Billy Graham, focused on the music, the key roles of Cliff Barrows and George Beverly Shea, and the wider influence of the musical practices of the Crusades.

On Sunday evenings as a youth, I remember listening to The Hour of Decision with my father on an old Bakelite radio. We would gather around the television when his Crusades began to be broadcast on TV. I attended crusades in Cleveland in 1972 and Columbus in 1993. At least twice, I remember associate evangelists Lane Adams and Leighton Ford conducting Crusades in Youngstown and I was a counselor for the latter event. While Graham or his associate was the “main event,” I remember how much music was a part of those crusades. My father loved listening to George Beverly Shea singing “How Great Thou Art.” And when the choir began singing “Just As I Am” we felt the impulse to come to Jesus and watched as droves of people did.

The late Edith L. Blumhofer left this work in manuscript form at the time of her death, edited for publication by Larry Eskridge. She studied Graham’s Crusades through the lens of the music surrounding Graham’s messages, the team of people who worked together for sixty years, the thought that went into every aspect of Crusade music and the impact of that music on evangelical worship more widely.

Blumhofer begins by tracing the steps that brought the trio of Graham, Shea, and Barrows together, offering mini-biographies of each, especially valuable in the case of Shea and Barrows. Graham understood the power of spirit-filled singing to complement his preaching, and the two others set aside independent careers to work together to develop the music and musical philosophy that became a notable feature of every crusade. And Graham desperately needed them, suffering as Shea quipped, “the malady of no melody.”

What was fascinating was how deliberate the choice of music was, whether hymns like those of Fanny Crosby, or the gospel songs. They drew on the history of Moody’s partnership with Ira Sankey as well as living models like Homer Rodeheaver. Blumhofer also goes into the history of a number of songs including Shea’s signature “I’d Rather Have Jesus” and his tussles with the composer as he changed the melody and several words. She also recounts the circuitous history of “How Great Thou Art” from Sweden to Estonia to Russia, and to this country and the pen of Stuart Hine. Again, the Crusades tweaked a few words, and the impact of Crusades was evident in that wording becoming the way most people remember the song, much to Hine’s displeasure. We also learn of Charlotte Elliott, who wrote the words of “Just As I Am” and how it enjoyed the favor of Moody long before it became the song that invariably accompanied invitations at the Crusades.

Blumhofer discusses the increasing inclusion of celebrities beginning with Stuart Hamblen, the “Singing Cowboy,” Roy Rogers and Dale Evans, and Johnny Cash, and Ethel Waters. Celebrities both needed to have a genuine Christian testimony and were selected for their ability to be a draw in particular venues. Later on, the early Seventies brought the Jesus Movement and the first Contemporary Christian artists. Graham’s appearance with them at Explo ’72 and his incorporation of artists from Michael W. Smith to dc Talk both broadened the appeal of Crusades for younger audiences and put Graham’s imprimateur on the CCM movement that transformed worship in evangelical Protestant churches.

The book concludes withe a coda, the last Crusade, in New York in 2005 that combined the mainstays of mass choir, Barrow, Shea, and Graham, as well as a host of contemporary musicians. It reflected all the ways the Crusades had influenced evangelical worship, from hymns like “Blessed Assurance” and “Great is Thy Faithfulness” to gospel songs to Contemporary Christian Music. The power of this music, coupled with gospel preaching, to move people to response was one drawn upon widely.

Blumhofer alludes only in passing to accusations that the music could be emotionally manipulative. Since this is more a history than a social psychological study, this is worth more careful study. There have been a number of discussions about the disparities between “decisions” and the number who go on as disciples incorporated in churches. Might the evocative elements of the music have played a role in this? How ought music be used in both evangelism and Christian worship and what are the boundaries between God-honoring musical witness and worship and emotional manipulation? What does seem clear from this account is that Barrows, and Shea and their team, with Graham’s blessing, modelled a deliberateness in the musical aspects of Crusades that was a key factor in their impact, both on attendees and on the wider Christian culture. Blumhofer’s work might well serve as the basis for others to explore these matters in greater depth. But it also is a gift to many of us who grew up in these years to recall, perhaps with great gratitude and affection, the music we loved to sing and its impact on our lives.

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Disclosure of Material Connection: I received a complimentary review copy of this book from the publisher.

Review: The Rise and Fall of Dispensationalism

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The Rise and Fall of Dispensationalism, Daniel G. Hummel (Foreword by Mark A. Noll). Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 2023.

Summary: A history of the origins, rise, and eventual decline of dispensationalism within American evangelicalism, and its impact on the wider American culture.

When all of us were talking about The Late, Great Planet Earth and prophecies of the end times during my Jesus movement days, I had no idea how this connected with a movement that began in the early 1800’s in England, spread to the United States and became the dominant way of thinking about the end times among much of Protestant fundamentalism and evangelicalism. In this work, Daniel G. Hummel sets this moment in time within the much longer history of this theological movement. What is more, he examines the influence this movement had not only on the church but our wider society.

His account begins with the premillenialism of J. N. Darby among the Exclusive Brethren of England (I wish the author had distinguished this group from Brethren churches in the U.S. that arose out of the German pietist and Anabaptist tradition who were not associated with Darby’s movement). He traces Darby’s work in the region spanning New England and the Great Lakes Basin of the country. He chronicles Darby’s influential successors, James H. Brooks and Joseph A. Seiss, and the emergence of new premillenialism out of old, with its focus on the church-Israel distinction, the idea of dispensational time, and the imminent rapture. Particularly, he elucidates the interpretive structures for studying scripture that these men developed and their appeal to those who wanted to understand the Bible.

He also explains the expansion of this movement through Moody’s revivalism, and the interlaced structures of Bible conferences, Bible institutes, mission agencies (to hasten the imminent coming of Jesus), and publications like Blackstone’s Jesus is Coming. As the movement entered the twentieth century, it expanded both its geographic boundaries to the South and to the West Coast, and also embraced pentecostalism. A key to this was the embrace of sectional reconciliation, downplaying the persistence of racism. Hummel considers the important role of the Scofield Bible in nurturing the new premillenialist movement in this period.

With World War 1, Hummel sees various factions developing between denominational fundamentalists, nationalist fundamentalists, and Philip Mauro’s dispensationalism (a term he coined). One of the most fascinating developments out of what had been a more populist movement is the rise of Lewis Sperry Chafer, scholastic dispensationalism, and Dallas Theological Seminary. In succeeding years, as fundamentalism morphs into neo-evangelicalism, the divisions multiply and harden between the Covenantalists, the Dispensationalists, and those like Harold J, Ockenga, Carl Henry, and George Eldon Ladd.

This is also the era where dispensationalism begins to forge political alliances around concerns for the nation of Israel, opposition to godless, perhaps “Beastly” atheism. Much of this reflected literalist interpretation, that in matters of science advanced young earth creationism, flood geology, and skepticism toward science. By and large, this movement left the Black church and its concerns about persisting racism behind. In light of an imminent rapture, social justice concerns could be seen as “rearranging desk chairs on the Titanic.”

Hal Lindsey and The Late, Great Planet Earth, in Hummel’s analysis represents both media success and broad influence combined with the beginnings of the decline of scholastic dispensationalism, and indeed the whole movement, even while dispensationalist and apocalyptic ideas entered the American cultural and political consciousness showing up in everything from Christian nationalism and the writings of QAnon to apocalyptic films and literature.

Hummel’s work makes the point that American religious history is simply American history. It cannot be kept in a silo to itself–the wider cultural influences are too great. He not only traces a theological genealogy of dispensationalism, he helps us understand the interlacing dynamics that explain the growth, spread, and influences of this movement. Along the way he includes figures that reproduce examples of key documents, including interpretive schemes and timelines and charts. Rather than offering us one more screed against dispensationalism, he offers an even-handed account of this theological movement and the factors that contributed to its decline. Much of American religious history has considered the early Puritan influences, the rise of frontier religion, the period of revivalism, or even the growth of pentecostalism. This work offers a similar account of dispensationalism that perhaps has received less attention. Hummel makes the case that dispensationalism deserves greater attention for both its influence upon American Christianity, and the American culture with which the church has always been entwined.

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Disclosure of Material Connection: I received a complimentary review copy of this book from the publisher.

Review: The Most Famous Man in America

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The Most Famous Man in America, Debby Applegate. New York: Three Leaves Press, 2007.

Summary: The Pulitzer prize-winning biography of the most famous preacher in nineteenth century America, and the scandals around his sexual life.

The story of the writing of this biography strikes me as nearly as interesting as the book itself. It began when Debby Applegate was an undergraduate student at Amherst researching famous Amherst alumni. She selected Henry Ward Beecher and then went on to write her senior thesis about him. She then went on to Yale, making him the subject of her doctoral thesis. And like any good writer of theses in history, she sought a book contract to turn it into a book. This was in the Clinton era and the sex scandals surrounding his administration. However, due to the time needed for research, it finally published in 2006 (in paper in 2007). The culmination of this twenty year project was that the book was a National Book Critics Award Finalist and winner of the 2007 Pulitzer Prize for Biography.

Her biography traces the life of Henry Ward Beecher, who, if not the most famous man in America, was certainly the most famous preacher of America. He was asked by President Lincoln to speak at Fort Sumter at the end of the Civil War, an event overshadowed by Lincoln’s assassination. He filled the pulpit of Brooklyn’s Plymouth Church, a nineteenth century megachurch. At one point he drew a $100,000 salary–in the nineteenth century. He pioneered a more informal style of preaching using humor and pathos and emphasizing the love of God as well as social reform.

He was a mover in the abolitionist movement, although Applegate emphasizes his ambivalent record. One one hand, he raised money to emancipate slaves and sent rifles to Nebraska and Kansas to aid abolitionists–“Beecher Bibles.” On the other hand, he counselled caution and moderation, offending more radical proponents like Frederick Douglass and William Lloyd Garrison. He also campaigned for women’s suffrage and for temperance.

The book portrays his distinguished family. His father Lyman was a New England Calvinist, later transplanted to Cincinnati as president of Lane Theological Seminary. Harriet Beecher Stowe, was his sister. One of the striking facts is that all of his children departed from this stern Calvinism, although a number were ministers. Nine were writers. Applegate traces Henry’s career from his early struggles with his charge in Lawrenceburg, Indiana, where he first begins to shift from the more Calvinist form of preaching to the more informal and engaging style he observed among the Methodists. His success was great enough to attract the notice of church leaders in Indianapolis, who offered him a salary that finally allowed him and Eunice to live more comfortably. Increasingly his preaching focused on the love of God rather than human sinfulness. This, in turn, caught the attention of Henry Bowen, who lured the Beechers to Brooklyn, and the shared ambitions of building up Plymouth Church.

Applegate chronicles the influence of money and power that became increasingly alluring to Beecher. Bowen helped Beecher with his debts and Beecher contributed to his publishing enterprises. Beecher’s fame led to political influence within the newly born Republican party. As he became ever busier on social campaigns, he and Bowen relied more on Theodore Tilton for his writing enterprises.

This powerful alliance unraveled when Beecher became emotionally, and, it seems likely, sexually involved with several women, culminating in an affair with Tilton’s wife Elizabeth. Applegate records a tawdry set of confrontations, confessions, retractions and denial, and ultimately a civil trial that ended with a hung jury and a church trial that exonerated Beecher and shamed his accusers.

Reading the biography brought to mind the Apostle Paul’s counsel to a young pastor, Timothy: “Watch your life and doctrine closely. Persevere in them, because if you do, you will save both yourself and your hearers” (1 Timothy 4:16, NIV). As Beecher pursued pastoral success, he jettisoned unpopular doctrines for public acclaim. Having struggled with desperate circumstances, he gave way to the allures of money, power, and sex. At one point he defends and propounds free love and the rightness of intimacy with a woman not his wife. And sadly, because of his success, the leaders of his church cast a blind eye to these abuses, and the relational wreckage that resulted with Bowen, the Tiltons, and others.

If the biography came after the scandals of the Clinton administration, it came before the sex scandals, #MeToo, and #ChurchToo of the last decade. It seems to me that Applegate’s biography ought be recommended reading for aspiring ministers as well as the church boards who oversee their efforts, especially where such efforts result in significant growth and acclaim for minister and church. The biography explores not only the personal temptations but the systemic dynamics that contribute to pastoral unfaithfulness and the covering up of moral failures. The biography also traces the rise of the personality cults around pastors, which may arguably have begun with Beecher. A study of the circle around Beecher reveals a web of dysfunctionality. Even if none of this interests you, read this simply for Applegate’s fascinating chronicle of one of the most influential figures of the nineteenth century.

Review: Christian Parenting

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Christian Parenting: Wisdom and Perspectives from American History, David P. Setran. Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 2022.

Summary: A historical study of Christian parenting beliefs in two eras of American history, the Colonial and Victorian periods.

All conscientious and loving parents have wrestled with the question of how to raise their children. For Christians, there is the added concern of imparting their faith, seeing their children follow Christ, growing up as people characterized by faith, hope, and love.

What David P. Setran offers here is not a handbook but a history of parenting practices among Christians in what became the United States during the first three centuries of our history. Setran divides this history into two periods, the Colonial (1620-1770) and the Victorian (1830-1890), with the intervening years reflecting a transition. And what he finds is a distinctive shift from the former to the latter periods in the parental tasks, the nature of the home, the respective roles and strength of influence of fathers and mothers, and the assumptions about the spiritual nature of children and how, then, they ought to be formed in the faith.

While fathers and mothers both play an important role in both periods, the father’s role stands out in the Colonial period and the home was considered central in the spiritual lives of children. In this period sons often inherited property from fathers, heightening this tie, and much of life, economic and otherwise was centered in the home. Children were understood as unregenerate sinners who needed to be awakened to their own sinfulness and in need of the saving grace of God to impart new life in Christ to them. Thus one of the roles of fathers was evangelist. The home was also a center of worship, with the father as “priest” leading the family in worship. Part of their work was that of intercession for God’s saving work in the lives of their children. The home was also considered the school of faith, with parents instructing their children in both the catechism and the commands of scripture. Literacy was important to catechism and the reading of scripture. The aim of all of this was to provide children with the vocabulary of faith and parents were “prophets,” instructing children in the word of the Lord. Finally, every home was a little kingdom with parents as “kings,” exercising authority over their children, teaching children to honor parents, and exercising discipline in the form of admonition, restraint, and corporal punishment (“the rod”). Yet much of the literature emphasized moderation and not severity in discipline or instruction.

Setran traces a shift occurring from about 1830 on. Mothers play a much more important role as fathers work increasingly takes them out of the home except for Sundays. The home is increasingly seen as a loving and nurturing environment in which children’s faith and character is shaped less by instruction and ritual and more by the loving care and model of parents. There is also a shift from Calvinist belief in depravity to seeing children as malleable, or even as innocents. Instead of stressing the need of conversion, parents influenced the faith and character of children through the environment they created and the model of their own lives, especially early in the child’s life. Reflecting the shift to mothers, much of the literature focused on the mother’s role in Christian nurture. Motherly love was considered an irresistible force while fathers became playmates rather than pedagogues with their children. A critical function of the home was the creation of warm memories. Family worship, “the family altar,” continued to be stressed, less as father-led, and more dialogical. Discipline focused more around the love of parents, with the disobedient child removed from the parental circle through early versions of “time out. The focus on human love ran the danger of elevating it above the love of God and the ideal of home as heaven on earth ran the danger of de-emphasizing the priority of the church, although the church became increasingly the center of catechesis, rather than the home, even as education was being shifted to the schools.

This study offers perspective on how we have gotten to where we are in our Christian parenting practices, particularly the contemporary situation in which so many institutions outside the home are having a more profound influence. While not offering detailed parenting advice, he proposes that there are things that may be drawn from both of the periods, particularly the idea of catechesis and family worship woven into the daily life of families in a warm home environment. Drawing on James K.A. Smith, these “liturgies of the ordinary,” to borrow a phrase from Tish Harrison Warren, can be powerful in forming our children. He argues against an approach that polarizes the two models into either-or in conflict but draws on the best of both.

One question that is noted but not resolved has to do with our assumptions about the spiritual nature of children. Are they unregenerate sinners in need of conversion or malleable creatures or even spiritual innocents? How people answer this has shaped parenting advice and practices. The former view is often portrayed as unloving, harsh, or severe in terms of parenting practices as opposed to the loving home environment associated with the latter. But need it be, and is this even accurate? Setran’s account of the Colonial period refers to warnings about harshness in discipline, or overly taxing approaches to catechesis.

I’m reminded of G.K. Chesterton’s observation that original sin is the one doctrine of the Christian faith empirically verifiable. I’m also reminded that one of the first words children learn is “no.” This inclines me to the Colonial period’s assumptions and suggests that there are some valuable lessons we may learn from them in this work. The shift in assumptions in the Victorian period seems to me linked to Christian Smith’s “moral therapeutic deism” in which Christian faith is reduced to being nice, with God as the friend who is there when I need him and otherwise stays out of the way. While I do not disagree with the author’s conclusion that we draw from the values both periods, I do think the assumptions we make shape how we prioritize those values, and the character of the faith that results.

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Disclosure of Material Connection: I received a complimentary review copy of this book from the publisher.

Review: A History of Evangelism in North America

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A History of Evangelism in North America, Thomas P. Johnston, editor. Grand Rapids: Kregel Academic, 2021.

Summary: An account of the history of evangelism in North America through a compilation of articles on key figures, movements, and organizations from the colonial period to the present.

If one is to give a full account of American church history, it is difficult to do so without discussing the various evangelistic movements and significant evangelists and revivalists who birthed church and parachurch organizations and contributed to their expansion across the country. This work offers an account of those evangelists, those movements and organizations that fueled successive waves of growth and renewal in American Christianity.

This is not a comprehensive history of evangelism in North America compiled by a single author as the title might suggest but rather an edited volume of twenty-two articles covering key figures and movements from the 1700’s to the present. The work begins with Jonathan Edwards offering a much more extensive study of Edward’s preaching than we often get in truncated versions of “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God.” Subsequent chapters discuss other early figures: Brainerd’s efforts among native peoples, John Wesley and his use of preaching conferences to multiply his efforts, George Whitefield’s method for effective evangelizing and Francis Asbury and his organization of circuit riders that led to the explosive growth of American Methodism. We also learn about the important role of Bible societies in the spread of the scriptures that accompanied the gradual spread of American literacy.

The revivalist movement of the early 1800’s is represented by Shubal Stearns and the Sandy Creek Association, Cane Ridge as representative of the camp meeting movement, and the revival of 1800 centered around the lawless region of Logan County, Kentucky. The mid-19th century is covered with discussions of the methodical approach to evangelism of J. Wilbur Chapman including prayer, intentional evangelistic effort, outreach strategies, and systematic efforts to render hospitality and contact prospects. By contrast, John Mason Peck’s efforts focused around education of workers, epitomized in his Shurtleff College and Rock Creek Seminary.

The book then jumps to the post World War 1 era covering Henrietta Mears Sunday School movement and her influence on a generation of evangelical leaders including Bill Bright and Billy Graham, who are also subjects of individual chapters. Other chapters include a wonderful summary of the work of Dawson Trotman of the Navigators and Shadrach Meshach Lockridge, one of the foremost black evangelists who ministered at Calvary Baptist Church in San Diego.

The latter part of the twentieth century was marked by a revival among counter-culture youth in the early seventies, with Chuck Smith’s Calvary Chapel serving as an epicenter of a movement that spontaneously sprang up around the country. There are also chapters on D. James Kennedy and Evangelism Explosion, Donald McGavran and C. Peter Wagner on church growth, John Piper and evangelism among the “Young-Restless-and-Reformed”. The book concludes with Southern Baptist methodologies and a concluding chapter on Twenty-first century developments.

It was striking to me that there were no chapters either on Charles Finney or D. L. Moody, both of whose methods shaped the “crusade evangelism” of the twentieth century. Billy Sunday is only mentioned as an antecedent of Billy Graham. No women, such as Aimee Semple McPherson or Kathryn Kuhlman are mentioned. While various movements in different church traditions are covered, the flavor is contemporary Southern Baptist, which may account for some of these lacuna.

While this text is framed as a history, the writing and effort to draw practical lessons from different evangelists and movements, which suggests that this text might be used as part of an adult forum on evangelism or as a seminary text as part of a course on evangelism. There are recurring themes of the importance of prayer, confidence in the scriptures and clarity in the message, going out to reach the lost in intentional outreach, the work of the Holy Spirit in conviction, conversion, and empowering of the preacher, and the necessity of making disciples and not just converts.

In an age that prefers presence to proclamation and is squeamish about any of the cognates of “evangel,” this book reminds us that this was not always so, and that many have found faith and passed from death to life through evangelism movements of the past. It reminds us of the transforming power of the gospel. We may need new wineskins, but this book reminds us that the wine is good.

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Disclosure of Material Connection: I received a complimentary review copy of this book from the publisher in exchange for an honest review. The opinions I have expressed are my own.

Review: Jesus and John Wayne

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Jesus and John Wayne, Kristen Kobes Du Mez. New York: Liveright Publishing Corporation, 2020.

Summary: A historical study of how the ideal of rugged masculinity typified by John Wayne influenced the evangelical embrace of authority, gender roles, and conservative, nationalist politics.

This is one of the most intensely discussed books in religious publishing over the past year. Kristen Kobes Du Mez, a Calvin University historian, offers a carefully documented account of the development of authoritarian, patriarchal and “muscular” models of masculinity which have invaded evangelical religious subculture and played a vital role in evangelical political engagement.

Her title is drawn from “Jesus and John Wayne,” a 1980’s Christian hit of the Gaither Vocal Band. She traces how Wayne’s muscular and sometimes violent form of masculinity supplanted the Jesus of the gospels as the evangelical model of masculinity. She traces the fascination with the square-jawed, passionate Billy Graham and the youth leader become family guru Bill Gothard as early figures in this trend, teachers like James Dobson and Tim LaHaye, media figures as diverse as Mel Gibson and Duck Dynasty, and military figures like Oliver North.

This is a movement not only about masculinity but patriarchal gender roles, supported oddly enough by women like Elizabeth Eliot, Phyllis Schlafly, and Marabel Morgan (remember The Total Woman?). Kobes Du Mez traces the influence of the Promise Keepers movement, John Eldredge’s books, Pastor Douglas Wilson, Mark Driscoll, and John Piper in upholding militant masculinity and male control of families. More troubling yet are the connections between this culture, purity teaching, and sexual abuse.

The book also traces the exploitation of this vision of masculinity by the conservative political movement from the presidencies of Ronald Reagan to Donald Trump. The author challenges the argument advanced by some that only “unchurched” embrace these values. She shows studies that demonstrate high numbers of the most faithful have been equally supportive. She argues that Trump’s rough masculinity appealed to a subculture schooled for seventy years on “John Wayne” models of masculinity and helped explain their willingness to overlook his moral flaws and failings.

This is a deeply troubling account, especially since I’ve witnessed the damage of women abused and not protected by the church, and the thwarting of the gifts of women eager to use them to follow Christ. This is an important but uncomfortable book for men in church leadership to read and wrestle with. Many of us have been troubled by the political allegiance of large swaths of evangelicalism with one political party. What this book connected for me is the connection between these allegiances and flawed masculine and gender role ideals. I also found troubling the complicity of much of the Christian bookselling industry in promoting these views.

If I would have any objection, it is that the narrative does not offer counter-examples, including the Christian institution at which the author holds tenure. We hear of the Council of Biblical Manhood and Womanhood but there is no mention of the Council of Biblical Equality. We hear of scholars like Wayne Grudem and John Piper but not of Craig Keener and Aida Besancon Spencer and many others supportive of equal partnership between men and women in marriage and ministry. Nor do we hear of egalitarian churches and ministries, except a passing reference to Beth Moore. Although these movements have not achieved the political influence nor the rank and file embrace of many evangelicals, they offer a counter-narrative that may point the way forward. Many of these operate in what Ross Douthat calls “the evangelical penumbra” and may be increasingly uncomfortable with the identifier “evangelical” for reasons this book makes abundantly clear.

The challenge these groups face, underscored by this book, is to articulate a compelling vision for men and women following Christ, of Christian character and the fruit of the Spirit, lived out in both marriage and ministry partnerships, committed to pursuing the missio dei rather than political influence. Neither the culture of the 1950’s or the 2020’s can help us. Only the real Jesus of the Gospels.

Review: White Evangelical Racism

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White Evangelical Racism, Anthea Butler. Chapel Hill: UNC Press, (Forthcoming, March) 2021.

Summary: A short history of the evangelical movement in the United States, showing its ties to racism and white supremacy from the time of slavery down to the present.

This was an uncomfortable book for me to read and review. In our racialized society, I would be identified as white. By conviction, I would identify as evangelical. What troubles me about this account is that it makes a good case that the evangelicalism in America with which I am identified is inextricably bound up with the history of racism, America’s original sin, as Jim Wallis has called it.

Anthea Butler offers in this book a concise historical account of white evangelicalism’s complicity in racism. She traces that history from the support of slavery in white, mostly southern churches. She follows this through post-Civil War Jim Crow laws and the support of white churches for segregation, and the participation of churches in lynchings. While some mainline denominations gave support to the civil rights movement, evangelicals remained on the sideline, calling this a “social gospel.”

Butler is not the first to note that the coalescing of evangelical political engagement in the Seventies and Eighties came as much around the denial of tax exemption for segregated schools like Bob Jones University as it did around opposition to abortion, which was originally not an evangelical cause. She traces the rise of organizations like Focus on the Family, the Moral Majority and the Christian Coalition that led to an increasing alliance of evangelicalism with the Republican party, culminating in the support of 81 percent of self-identifying evangelicals with Donald Trump in 2016 despite race-baiting language, anti-immigration stances, and support of white nationalistic aims.

Perhaps no one person has defined American evangelicalism more than Billy Graham and so Butler devotes a chapter to him. While he desegregated his meetings, and hosted black speakers on his platform, and even include a black evangelist on his team, he took care to distance himself from the civil rights movement as it embraced nonviolent civil disobedience. King may have shared his platform once, but no more. Graham also preached against communism, associated by many in the South with the civil rights movement. His record was ambiguous at best and in the end, the focus remained on winning people to Christ rather than unequivocal stands for racial justice.

Parts of me wanted to protest against this sweeping indictment by citing the abolitionist efforts of northern evangelicals, and other socially engaged efforts in the nineteenth century. Butler does mention this as well as other forays like that of the Promise Keepers into racial reconciliation. The sad fact is none of these movements prevailed over the long haul in standing against white supremacism. The first decade and a half of the twenty-first century saw some promising evangelical initiatives around racial reconciliation and immigration reform, only for these to wither over the last five years.

I also wanted to protest that evangelicalism is not inherently white. Black and Latino churches in this country share the same theology. And people globally identify with the same theological convictions that form the core of American evangelical belief. I’ve been in a meeting with representatives of over 150 countries where this was the case, where those of my skin color were a minority. But in the ways American evangelicalism has separated itself from its Black and Latino kindred, the judgment stands. The typical first response of many white evangelicals to a Christian person of color trying to talk about racial injustice is to defend and argue rather than listen to a fellow Christian. We seem remarkably untroubled that divisions by race in our churches mirror our political divisions.

Butler, a former evangelical who still cares about this movement, reaches this sobering conclusion:

“Evangelicalism is at a precipice. It is no longer a movement to which Americans look for a moral center. American evangelicalism lacks social, political, and spiritual effectiveness in the twentyfirst century. It has become a religion lodged within political party. It is a religion that promotes issues important almost exclusively to white conservatives. Evangelicalism embraces racists and says that evangelicals’ interests, and only theirs, are the most important for all American citizens.”

I have no defense against this. I fear evangelicalism in the United States may be like the church in Ephesus described in Revelation 2:1-7. The church was marked by its orthodoxy and yet Jesus has this to say: “Yet I hold this against you: You have forsaken the love you had at first. Consider how far you have fallen! Repent and do the things you did at first. If you do not repent, I will come to you and remove your lampstand from its place” (Revelation 2:4-5, NIV). I fear we are at imminent risk of losing our lampstand, that is, our witness within the culture. In fact, I find most churches are more concerned about political interests than even their historical distinction of seeing lost people come to Christ. Butler’s message mirrors that of Jesus in Revelation. This book is a call to repentance. The trajectory of history is not inevitable. We can turn away from the precipice. But I fear the time is short.

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Disclosure of Material Connection: I received a complimentary review copy of this book from the publisher via Edelweiss. The opinions I have expressed are my own.