ROUNDING THIRD:

The New Old-Time Religion: Evangelicals defy easy labels. Here's why--and why their numbers are growing (Jay Tolson, 12/8/03, US News)

[M]any 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." [...]

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 [Mark] 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.

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.

One of the things that makes Edwards so attractive is that he was beguiled by Nature and studied it intensely, secure in the faith that scientific knowledge would only enhance the awe of God's Creation. But in that earlier era, science was really just observation of the natural world--few of its secrets were penetrated. So, one suspects--though it's obviously futile to spend overmuch time on such an insoluble question--that if he were able to observe the modern world, in which science reaches down into the atomic level and renders applications from space flight to biotechnology, that he'd be heartened that even with such knowledge--which would have seemed almost divine to him and his contemporaries--American faith in an actual Divinity remains so strong. Of course, it helps that science has tended to confirm rather than refute the theological worldview.

Posted by Orrin Judd at December 7, 2003 6:41 PM