When I first started reading Puritan women, I was not surprised that they wrote about spiritual practices. They were, of course, Puritans! Holiness, discipline, and zeal were in their theological DNA. But I was surprised to find that they often reflected on their personal use of spiritual practices and how they impacted their lives—and the lives of those around them—in very specific and unique ways.

In the end, what I took away from these Puritan writers was that (1) they used these practices to know God better, (2) they were intentional about using these practices but were never perfect, and (3) their use of these practices was organically connected to other aspects of their existence, like parenting and working. Their autobiographies, poems, diary entries, letters, and treatises showed me that Christian spirituality was a whole thing, a big thing, a full thing. It wasn’t one part of their schedule or to-do list but a holistic method they used to live all of life with God, bring all of themselves to him, receive all of the blessings he wanted to give, and engage with their full selves in the main purpose of Christian living—loving their Creator and his creatures.

Although we may think it a cliché, studying the Puritans reminded me afresh that leading a Christian life is not about following a set of rules but rather developing a relationship with God. This came through loud and clear in the Puritan women I was reading.

If you read my book 5 Puritan Women: Portraits of Faith and Love, you’ll see that in one letter to her son Edward, Lady Brilliana Harley wrote out a lengthy description of how to do self-examination (so long that I decided to add numbering to it in my book to make it easier to read). And in a letter to her friend Lord Berkeley, Mary Rich wrote out an essay about how he should structure his entire life according to the spiritual disciplines.

If we read Harley and Rich correctly—taking into account all they said and preserving the original emphases and priorities they articulated—we see that their rules alone are not enough to reveal what they believed and what they did. They wanted to spend time with God because they loved him and they knew he loved them, so they developed systems to support knowing God.

One quote that might sum it up comes from Rich after her sister Katherine—a godly woman who worked as a scientist and was Rich’s closest friend in life—was leaving Rich’s home at the end of a long visit. Rich was really discouraged about this and wrote a lament with this conclusion: “Yet my best friend,” meaning God, “stayed with me” (Rich, Memoir of Lady Warwick, 164).

Of course, as ordinary human beings bringing their hearts and souls to God, Puritan women sometimes encountered obstacles that got in the way. For example, Rich recorded instances in her diary when hot weather, an unexpected visitor, important errands, or just plain old tiredness would shorten her meditation time. When she lost her husband, it seems that she entirely abandoned her regular schedule of spiritual disciplines for several months.

What this tells me is that, in general, we must have special times of communion planned with God and do our best to meet with him there if we want to keep close to him. Yet, even in the times that we’re not at our best, God is still with us. And since being with him is the whole point of the practices in the first place, we can rest assured that he still loves us and is still nearby even if we can’t form the words to pray to him or our brains won’t think very deeply about him.

As we spend time with God, we are changed—our perspective or feelings about a situation might change, our desires and goals might change, and we may become motivated to change our behaviours. And even if unspoken, the people we interact with can feel these effects too. Because the lives of Puritan women were integrated in this way, their use of spiritual disciplines started and ended in organic relationship with other aspects of their lives.

Lucy Hutchinson, for example, poured an immense amount of time into theological studies and then ended up writing the only theological treatise we have from a woman in the seventeenth century to encourage her daughter, Barbara, to stick close to the church. Likewise, because Agnes Beaumont memorized Scripture, she was able to lovingly and truthfully evangelize her father during a medical crisis when there was simply no time to find a Bible and read it aloud. And when Anne Bradstreet began to craft her own poetry after immigrating to New England and facing the highs of childrearing and the lows of child losses, she dedicated prayers to her family in order to sanctify their shared experiences of joy and sorrow.

Overall, though they get a bad rap for being religious extremists who made no space for emotion or error, the Puritans were actually quite balanced. Their ideal spirituality entailed knowing God, giving their all to do so, and getting it all back in return.

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Having so many choices can seem overwhelming. Once you get into the process itself, there are college visits, filling out FAFSA, applications and scholarships, and more. No wonder many parents feel stressed about it!

As I write this, my wife and I are nearly “empty nest.” I’ll go ahead and do our college “reveal” at the outset – both of our kids are going to Dallas Baptist University. But as much as we love DBU, this is not a commercial for it, or even a recommendation that you should make the same types of decisions we did. Here I just want to offer eight guidelines based on what we’ve learned over the years, and what I know about the world of higher education.

• There is no “one size fits all” approach to college for Christian parents. There are simply too many factors involved for us to impose our decisions on other families. There are, however, some good and bad reasons to choose a college.
• If you choose a Christian school, make sure it is thoughtfully and thoroughly Christian. As my friend Perry Glanzer has noted, there are practical ways to gauge the level of seriousness of a Christian college. Do they have a statement of faith for faculty? Do they have required chapel? Who speaks in chapel? Are Bible classes required? Who teaches them?
• Finances are a big deal. Do whatever you can to minimize debt, especially for your student. Start a 529 or similar college savings plan as soon as possible, to enjoy tax-free savings. Unless you get major financial assistance, there is likely no good reason to choose a more expensive private school, which can now run you $70,000 or more a year. There are a lot of strong private schools that are not as expensive as the most famous or pretigious ones. Elite public schools can be quite pricey, too, but regional public universities are often a great choice for those who simply want a college degree (in business or a similar field), in order to compete for jobs that require one.
• Be cautious about paying top dollar for bureaucracy, bells, and whistles. Your child will likely be dazzled by the elite gym facilities, sparkling arenas, and the like at prestigious schools. Prestigious schools also often have massive bureaucracies – innumerable vice presidents, vice provosts, and more, tasked with interfacing with government, accreditation boards, donors, and attending to the latest educational fads. These do not immediately benefit most students, if they benefit students at all. Choosy parents should see over-the-top facilities and huge bureaucracies as potential red flags. Is it worth it to pay a cumulative $100,000 more for a student’s degree just so she can (possibly) use the school’s world-class gym?
• Help! My child wants to major in the arts, humanities, or social sciences! Fields like History or Political Science are not as bad for job prospects as they’re sometimes made out to be. It is very common for people with such degrees to go on to teach school (especially if they pair it with certification in education), work in government, go to law school, seminary, or to do almost any other kind of job you can imagine.
• You learn to do most jobs by on-the-job training. Admittedly, in some fields (accounting, engineering), there are foundational skills that you will likely learn in college, but most of what you do in most jobs is learned after you get the job. This means that, within reason, a child’s major and the prestige of a school does not make as much of a difference in job success as one might think. But learning to communicate more clearly – through college writing and presentations – will help you no matter what your profession.
• When should I consider paying more because of a school or faculty’s reputation in a given field? This can be a factor when your child has a clear idea of what he or she wants to study or do for work. For example, many liberal arts colleges or regional universities do not offer engineering or specialized science degrees. Or, if your child definitely wants to go to a top law school or medical school, you should ask questions about placement records at such schools. There can be a correlation between the prestige of the school and access to top professional and graduate programs. (The college does not necessarily have to have extensive graduate programs, or a law or medical school themselves, nor does attending an undergraduate school that has an affiliated professional or graduate school make it more likely that your student will get in.)
• What do I really want my child to learn? Some schools/programs have an extremely rigorous core curriculum, in which students learn from great books in traditional disciplines. Some schools basically let the students make up the curriculum, offering a mishmash of courses in fads of the moment. Some Christian-affiliated schools require almost nothing as far as education in the Bible or Christian tradition; some require those courses but professors are hostile toward the traditional faith in which students were raised. The strongest Christian colleges require rigorous, challenging, and faith-enhancing study of the Bible and church history. I assume Christian parents will want the latter – if they’re going to choose a private Christian school.

In summary, there are a ton of factors to consider when choosing a college – or another post-high school option. As with all such decisions, much prayer is needed! Take the time to think through all the factors.

Ask yourselves: What are our realistic options, without going deeply into debt? What do we know about my child’s vocational inclinations (tentative as that information may be)? What function would a college degree actually serve for my child? Trust that the Lord will give you wisdom and insight as you plan for these transitional years after high school.

For today’s post, I asked Andrew King, my colleague at Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, to suggest a go-to list of books for those thinking about visiting the Holy Land. Dr. King is Assistant Professor of Biblical Studies at Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary and Spurgeon College and Assistant Dean of Spurgeon College. He is the author of Social Identity and the Book of Amos (T&T Clark, 2020) and is currently writing a commentary on Hosea in the Pillar Old Testament Commentary series (Eerdmans). He has participated in two seasons of excavation at Tel Dan in northern Israel.

• John A. Beck, The Holy Land for Christian Travelers

This is a one-stop-shop for those traveling to Israel. In this compact book, Beck covers a lot of ground. He overviews biblical history, alerts travelers to proper etiquette for various sites, and provides details about the key locations and regions you will visit. He includes numerous maps, images, timelines, and more, to help you discover the world of the Old and New Testaments. The book is portable enough for you to carry with you during your trip and has a good index of locations at the back for quick navigation. This is an exceptionally user-friendly guide to touring Israel. A similar guidebook with an archaeological focus is Jerome Murphy-O’Connor’s The Holy Land: An Oxford Archaeological Guide from Earliest Times to 1700.

• Thomas V. Brisco, Holman Bible Atlas

A good Bible atlas can be helpful anytime you read the Bible. But before you head to Israel, an atlas can introduce you to the land of the Bible before your feet touch the ground. Brisco’s volume is one of my favorites. This book sets biblical history in the context of the ancient world and geography. Admittedly, it is not the kind of book you read straight through, but its chronological narrative, as well as its many maps and charts, will bring biblical history to life. A more recent work with higher quality images is Paul H. Wright’s Holman Illustrated Guide To Biblical Geography: Reading the Land.

• Ari Shav­it, My Promised Land: The Tri­umph and Tragedy of Israel

The modern nation of Israel is a complex place with a complicated history. In this book, secular Israeli journalist Ari Shavit gives an insider look into the history, culture, and politics of the modern state of Israel. Shavit presents a rather balanced and engaging exploration of key events that shaped the modern nation. A book like this can prepare readers for beginning to understand the divisions that exist today in Israel between various groups that call it home.

• James K. Hoffmeier, The Archaeology of the Bible

Part of touring Israel is visiting archaeological sites. But what is archaeology and how does it help our reading of Scripture? In this book, veteran archaeologist and Old Testament scholar Jim Hoffmeier introduces readers to the field and key findings of biblical archaeology from an evangelical perspective. Another valuable resource is John Currid’s recent book The Case for Biblical Archaeology: Uncovering the Historical Record of God’s Old Testament People.

• Oren Martin, Bound for the Promised Land: The Land Promise in God’s Redemptive Plan

There is continuing debate about the role of the land of Israel in God’s future purposes. Those visiting the land of the Bible should think biblically not just about the past, but also about the future. Oren Martin provides a clear and compelling biblical theology of the land. Martin traces the storyline of Scripture to show that the land promises in the Bible are fulfilled in Christ and are expanded to where Christ is present (the church and New Heavens and New Earth). For arguments for the continuing role of national Israel in God’s purposes, see the essays in The New Christian Zionism: Fresh Perspectives on Israel and the Land (ed. Gerald McDermott).

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[TK] To start with the most obvious question, what has made the hymn “Amazing Grace” so powerful for such a wide range of people?

[BH] First, there is the marriage of the words and the tune. It is hard to separate the two. We don’t know what tune was used when it was first sung, when John Newton introduced it to his Olney parish church 250 years ago. But about 200 years ago the words found the tune we all recognize today.

The music of Amazing Grace comes from an old southern shape-note tune called “New Britain.” It is based on the raw five-note pentatonic scale that is so central to folk and roots music in many places around the world, including of course the blues—the cousin to black gospel.

Beyond the tune, I think the song has endured and continued to move people because it taps into a universal sense that humans need grace.

It is somewhat surprising that a hymn that in its opening stanza expresses robust gratitude for having received grace (“that saved a wretch like me”) has become a heartfelt prayer for grace in times of tragedy. The words acknowledge, however, that there is grace for the human condition with all its wretchedness, lostness, and blindness.

This has helped singers past and present to reckon with inconsolable loss when this comes. It is good to be able to affirm that when evil has done its worst, grace still has the last word.

You were already an expert on John Newton going into this project. [See Hindmarsh’s excellent John Newton and the English Evangelical Tradition.] What surprised you about Newton or “Amazing Grace” as you and Craig Borlase worked on this book? 

More than thirty years ago, I began research on John Newton for my doctoral thesis at Oxford, and I trawled through hundreds of manuscripts in dozens of archives. I focused primarily on his contribution to the Evangelical Revival in Britain. In many ways, he epitomized the early evangelical movement, standing at its mid-point theologically and at its center spiritually.

For this book, though, a biography, I had to re-visit Newton’s early life and later life with greater attention. I found so much to connect with in terms of his humanity:

The young child who lost his mother and whose father was severe and overbearing. The teenager who made reckless decisions and was reckless in love. The young man who nearly died, far from home, alone, abused, and unloved.

The pastor whose best friend was suicidal and given over to spiritual despair. The gentle spiritual guide who wrote to offer wise personal counsel to thousands by letter. And the old man who has to reckon publicly with his early life as a slave trader at the same time that his beloved wife was dying of cancer.

At so many points, I could identify with John Newton as a struggling human being, a man who had to face up to his sinful past, but whose humble dependence on Christ deepened over the years.

Many know that Newton was once involved in the slave trade, and that he became an abolitionist. Fewer know that it took him a long time after his conversion to become convinced that slavery was immoral. How did he eventually change his mind?

It is important for people to know that Newton’s dramatic conversion in in the midst of a north Atlantic storm in 1748 did not lead him immediately to leave the slave trade. That is the narrative that we feel like we want, yet that is not what happened.

Newton did begin to change as he experienced God’s mercy, but the slave trade was so widely accepted that it would take time for him to realize that he was blind to its atrocities. He looked back later and wrote with contrition, “Custom, example, and interest had blinded my eyes.”

There is an enormous tension in the part of the narrative where Newton is writing in his spiritual journal on the quarterdeck while slaves are in chains below. But it is important that we feel this tension. It is like two tectonic plates overlapping and we can feel the tremors.

This is important because we need to consider how easily we can be self-deceived and condone horrific wrongs if they are widely accepted by our society—even as we say our prayers.

Later, Newton condemned the slave trade, and he was part of a wave of growing anti-slavery sentiment in the 1780s. The story is complex, but the scholar John Coffey thinks Newton probably held such views already in the early 1760s.

When he did finally reckon with the iniquity of the slave trade, he made a public confession, and then devoted himself to destroying the system. He wrote and spoke against the trade. He gave evidence twice to committees of the House of Commons. He encouraged William Wilberforce in his efforts.

The troubled Christian poet William Cowper played a major role in Newton’s hymn-writing. What was the nature of their collaboration?

Cowper became Newton’s neighbor at Olney not long after recuperating in an asylum from a severe mental illness. The two became fast friends and Cowper became like an unpaid associate pastor in the community. They wrote a large number of hymns together for weekly services. Cowper’s hymns, such as “God Moves in a Mysterious Way,” still speak with tremendous power today.

However, the day that John Newton introduced “Amazing Grace” to the parish was Cowper’s last time in church. He descended again into unremitting depression and came to feel he was uniquely damned by God. Newton and his wife were on suicide watch for him for months on end, and they really cared for him.

Although they drifted apart in later years when Newton moved to London, their affection remained. And Newton continued to believe that God’s grace was with Cowper, even though he could not feel it.

You call this book a “dramatized biography.” What does that mean, and what does this format allow you to do that traditional biography wouldn’t?

In most of my books, written for other historians, I cannot write more than one or two sentences without a footnote. But Craig and I wrote this book for a general audience. We wanted it to read like a novel, to tell Newton’s dramatic story vividly. We wanted to “show” not “tell” Newton’s story.

The advantage of this approach is to provide the reader a front-row seat to the narrative, like viewing live theatre or a film. This was the best way to help the widest possible audience of readers to experience Newton’s life for themselves, and to go through his experiences in real time.

We followed some strict conventions about how we did this. Craig and I did a lot of research to recreate some plausible dialogue and imagined scenes, but this is based on a close reading of the sources, including some newly discovered manuscripts. We didn’t just make things up to add color or interest. Mostly, we tried instead to see, hear, and feel the story. In fact, in several places we have quietly corrected details that were mistaken in earlier biographies.

In the end, this demanded more, not less of me as a historian. I had to “see” in my imagination what clothes John Newton was wearing (Did he have knee buckles where his stockings met his breeches?). I had to see the hole of the starboard bow of the ship (Was that why they went off course to the north in the mid-Atlantic?). I had to learn the ethnography of the Sherbro peoples in Sierra Leone and picture every mile of the Kittam River, and so on.

All this served the book, since we want the reader to experience the story from the inside. In the end, if we are able to see ourselves in Newton, just as we do in the song “Amazing Grace,” we will see something more of God’s grace. Above all, we come to realize that like Newton we need grace not only because of the terrible things that may have been done to us, but because of the things we ourselves have done. The title of the book is, after all, not Amazing John Newton, but Amazing Grace.

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While Noll rightly excoriates the anti-intellectualism that characterizes a wide swath of contemporary evangelicalism, especially in the populist approaches of some leaders, and easily marshals evidence that would sometimes be funny if it were not so sad, it seems to me he overlooks the most serious loss of a truly biblical mind. It is the loss of biblical outlook among Christian intellectuals.

In other words, I worry less about the anti-intellectualism of the less educated sections of evangelicalism than I do about the biblical and theological illiteracy, or astonishing intellectual compromise, among its leading intellectuals.

Evangelicalism has many sons and daughters whose primary vocation is the life of the mind: writers, thinkers, scholars, academicians, researchers—in field after field. They are not inferior to other thinkers in similar fields. But with rare exceptions they have not made the impact they might have because their grasp of biblical and theological truth has rarely extended much beyond Sunday school knowledge. In the main, they think like secularists and bless their insights with the odd text or biblical cliche. They cannot quite be accepted by the secular guilds (unless of course they keep their mouths shut completely about their faith), and they cannot revolutionize intellectual life in the West because they do not think like consistent Christians who take on the status quo and seek to replace it with something better.

—D.A. Carson, The Gagging of God (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1996), 483–84.

Historians lately have made a great ado about American evangelicals relying on “the Bible alone” for belief and practice. The standard account goes something like this: After the American Revolution, many Protestants rejected traditional religious authority and relied just on a plain reading of scripture. After clearing away the rubble of history and abandoning the old wineskins of tradition, evangelicals were left with everything they thought they needed to do theology: the King James Bible and their own common sense.

This biblicist approach to theology left a mixed legacy. On one hand, innovation and disregard for precedent contributed to the dramatic expansion of evangelical religion; on the other hand, reliance on “the Bible alone” mired antebellum evangelicals in intractable disagreements over questions including slaveholding.

A common-sense hermeneutic meant that simple interpretations of scripture carried greater weight. The proslavery argument was fairly easy to understand: there was no obvious “thou shalt not own slaves” verse, but there were plenty of passages that seemed to assume the existence of slavery (“slaves obey your masters”).

The antislavery case relied on more complicated exegesis. It always involved at least one step of inference. For example, people said that the “golden rule” prohibited slavery because no one wanted to be a slave. Because it always required at least one step of interpretation, the antislavery argument was necessarily less persuasive. Common-sense American biblicism produced a great irony: the same denominations who enjoyed the most growth in the new nation—Baptists and Methodists—ended up splitting over slavery.

By these lights, an anti-tradition, ahistorical biblicism was at least partly responsible for the failure of American churches to avoid the Civil War. Or so the story goes.

A closer look complicates this picture. Certainly, scripture was at the center of the theological argument over slavery. Many American Christians—especially groups such as the Churches of Christ, but also Baptists and Methodists—claimed to rely solely on scripture. These evangelicals prided themselves on reading the Bible without help from other authorities, untethered from human tradition.

In reality, however, when American Protestants disagreed about the meaning of scripture, they did turn to other sources. Everyone interprets Scripture in a historic context. References to church history in evangelical writing on slavery can be found in great number. As evangelicals across denominations—Methodists, Baptists, Presbyterians, Episcopalians, Disciples of Christ, and others—defended or opposed slaveholding, they drew on patristic and medieval teaching, argued about precedent, and insisted on the importance of tradition. They might say they depended on the Bible alone, but they didn’t act that way.

The question of slavery in Christian history took on new urgency in the 1840s, when the three largest Protestant denominations faced schism. As pro- and antislavery Baptists, Presbyterians, and Methodists failed to win ecclesiastical arguments via scripture, many turned to tradition. Antislavery ministers argued that the teaching of the early church and the “spirit” of Christianity throughout the centuries supported church discipline against slaveholders.

Proslavery clergy countered that the very same church fathers permitted slavery. It was radical abolitionists who were departing from the norms of traditional Christianity.

One illustrative example is the debate between Baptist leaders Francis Wayland and Richard Fuller. They exchanged a series of letters over what the Bible—and Christian tradition—taught about slaveholding. Wayland, a professor of moral philosophy at Brown University, contended that Christ did not explicitly condemn slavery in the Gospels because he intended it to gradually end through the influence of Christian morals—and exactly this happened in Christendom. Wayland quoted Cyprian, Ambrose, and other church fathers, arguing that Christian principles “once abolished slavery and have almost done it for the second time.”

In response, Fuller, a lawyer, minister and slaveholder who helped found the Southern Baptist Convention, marshalled evidence both from patristic teaching and Christian precedent. Contra Wayland, he insisted that “during the apostolic periods, and for centuries after, the most holy men and martyrs held slaves.” Christianity never abolished slavery, Fuller concluded, but “infused its mild and benevolent spirit into the institution, making it quite a different thing.”

When the debate was published in 1845, Fuller’s proslavery account of church history enjoined a strong response. The Presbyterian Albert Barnes produced a book-length rebuttal, arguing that Christianity had in fact abolished slavery in Europe. Barnes, in turn, was quoted by Frederick Douglass in his 1852 speech “What to the Slave is the Fourth of July?” And Douglass was not alone—throughout the 1850s, white and Black antislavery authors from a variety of denominations used Christian history to bolster their cases against slavery.

As the sectional crisis heated to the boiling point, Fuller’s reading of Christian history fueled an increasingly ardent theological defense of slavery. Dozens of proslavery authors—not only theologians and ministers, but also legal scholars and social theorists—appealed to church history as demonstrating the compatibility of Christianity and slaveholding. After secession and the outbreak of war in 1861, Christians on both sides continued to publish rival narratives about slavery and the Christian tradition.

What do we make of this dismal slide toward the Civil War? First, whatever else “biblicism” means, it did not entail ignorance of history, nor disregard of tradition. Even as they claimed to rely solely on the Bible, evangelical Protestants frequently turned to the Christian past to bolster their interpretations. Their disagreements over slavery show that an era sometimes portrayed as ahistorical and anti-traditional in fact saw extensive engagement with the history of Christianity. These evangelicals never read, nor argued over, the Bible “alone.”

Second, using history did not solve much. The antebellum theological crisis was not due to pro- and antislavery theologians ignoring the Christian past but rather was furthered by their use of the past to make conflicting arguments. The histories constructed by each side only strengthened the conviction that theirs was a holy cause. Certain that the Bible endorsed their respective positions, pro- and antislavery Christians believed they were on the right side of church history.

The antebellum slavery debate illustrates how easy it is to use the Bible to endorse what we want in the present. Just as we can misuse scripture, we can also manipulate the past. History and tradition can offer valuable wisdom, and we need both. (Indeed, both are inescapable: we can’t read, let alone interpret, without belonging to a tradition.) But the misuses of history ought to negate any optimism that historical thinking or attention to tradition offers a foolproof alternative to mere biblicism.

In other words, the past failures of American Christians shouldn’t make us more suspicious of the Bible, but more suspicious of ourselves. We can use anything to justify what we want: scripture, history, precedent, and/or tradition. The Bible isn’t the problem—we are.

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[TK] What inspired you to write a book on Charles Spurgeon as a local church pastor?

[GC] When I was writing my doctoral dissertation at Midwestern Seminary, I wanted to focus on Spurgeon. One of my mentors encouraged me to look into his ecclesiology. I was struck by how little had been written on his pastoral ministry. Everyone recognized that Spurgeon was the pastor of the largest evangelical church in his day. But little attention had been given to how he pastored. As a local church pastor, I was interested in how he implemented things like church membership, discipline, the ordinances, leadership, and all the other challenges that pastors face today.

As it turns out, in my research into Spurgeon’s sermons, letters, magazine articles, church minute books, membership testimonies, and more, I discovered that Spurgeon had strong biblical and theological convictions on these church issues. Far from resorting to pragmatic solutions for pastoring his fast-growing church, Spurgeon stuck to his convictions even as the workload increased exponentially.

My book, then, is an attempt to present Spurgeon’s ecclesiological convictions and show how they influenced his pastoral ministry. I want to encourage pastors and church leaders by pointing to the faithfulness of another fellow pastor, even amid great challenges. So much of Spurgeon’s ministry was unique, and we would be foolish to try exactly to imitate him. But in his ecclesiological convictions, he is an example of faithfulness.

• How does the local church perspective change our view of Spurgeon, especially as compared to evangelists such as George Whitefield or Billy Graham?

The comparison between Spurgeon and George Whitefield is apt. Spurgeon admired Whitefield. In fact, in one of the volumes of Whitefield’s sermons located in the Spurgeon Library, he inscribed, “C. H. Spurgeon, who admires Whitefield as the chief of preachers.” When Spurgeon was 21, an American writer published a short biography of Spurgeon’s life entitled “The Modern Whitefield” In his open-air preaching, drawing crowds of thousands and tens of thousands, the awakening effect of his preaching… in all these things, and more, people saw something of Whitefield in Spurgeon.

But despite those similarities, Spurgeon’s rootedness in a local church was a significant departure from Whitefield (or Billy Graham, or other itinerant preachers). Spurgeon once said, “Christian labors, disconnected from the church, are like sowing and reaping without having any barn in which to store the fruits of the harvest; they are useful, but incomplete.” Spurgeon knew there was value in open-air preaching, evangelistic preaching tours, door-to-door evangelism, and other evangelistic efforts. But apart from bringing converts into the care of a local church, those efforts prove “incomplete.” We can rejoice in converts, but without membership in the local church, those converts remain hidden, undiscipled, and in disobedience to Christ’s commands.

Spurgeon had many invitations to preach all over the world, but he remained rooted in the local church throughout his life. Though he started many evangelistic and charitable organizations, they were all connected to the ministry of his local church. And the one institution that was dearest to him was The Pastors’ College (also a ministry of his church), which ultimately sought not only to train pastors but to plant and revitalize local churches. Especially as a Baptist, he connected all his evangelical convictions to the local church.

• What was the leadership structure in Spurgeon’s church? In particular, why did he adopt a plurality of elders, a system that was not common among English Baptists in the 19c?

When Spurgeon began pastoring in London in 1854, the church had a single pastor/elder plus deacon board model. This was workable while the church was only a few hundred, but they were soon overwhelmed by caring for all the people joining and the practical challenges that came with a growing church. Coming from the Reformed tradition, Spurgeon was familiar with a plurality of elders. More importantly, he saw clear evidence for that model in Scripture. But since it was uncommon among Baptists in his day, he didn’t force the change. Instead, he slowly began to teach on it. He would look for ways to incorporate application points about elders in his sermons and weave in Scripture readings from 1 Timothy 3 or Acts 20. Eventually, the congregation became convinced of the position and voted to establish a plurality of elders.

A plurality of elders made pastoral care, teaching, discipleship, church discipline, catechism, and a hundred other pastoral activities possible in a church of over 5,000. As Spurgeon invested in these lay elders, they multiplied Spurgeon’s gifts, so that the congregation could be equipped for the work of the ministry.

• What was distinctive about Spurgeon’s strategy for training new pastors?

Three things made the Pastors’ College particularly unique:

A singular focus of raising up pastors – Spurgeon was not interested in training people for scholarly vocations, even though some of his students did go on to teach in the academy. Rather, wanted to train local church pastors. Though many people applied to study with him, Spurgeon was selective in the students he accepted. Only those who gave clear evidence of a call to pastoral ministry would be admitted. For those who had such a call, the college would provide all the funds needed for their tuition and living expenses so that they might be equipped for pastoral ministry.

Second, rather than having his students sent away to a college to learn, Spurgeon wanted them immersed in a working church. So, in addition to their regular coursework, students lived with an elder’s or deacon’s family, attended all church services, prayer meetings, and congregational meetings, and were active in discipleship and evangelism.

Third, he created a network of like-minded pastors. Once students graduated from the College, they remained in touch with Spurgeon and with one another. The Sword & the Trowel, Spurgeon’s monthly magazine, provided a way for these pastors to encourage one another and stay up-to-date on the latest endeavors of this network. Once a year, all the graduates would return to the Metropolitan Tabernacle for the Pastors’ College Conference, a time of refreshment and edification.

• Your book is overall very positive about Spurgeon as a pastor, but like all pastors, he was not perfect. What’s the biggest caution you take away from his pastoral career?

There are a number of aspects of his ministry that I could critique, but that would require a separate article. As far as the biggest caution, perhaps what I would say is that Spurgeon took too much upon himself as pastor. Especially in the first ten years of his pastorate, Spurgeon basically tried to do it all: preaching, membership interviews, chairing congregational meetings, chairing elder meetings, and countless other responsibilities. His health eventually broke down, and he was forced to bring on his brother James as an associate pastor to help him.

Even after James arrived, Spurgeon would work to the very limits of his ability, making himself ill. Then he would require a sabbatical to recover and depend on his brother and his elders to take a bigger share in the leadership of the church. But even from sabbatical, Spurgeon would compose sermons for reading on Sunday mornings!

Sadly, Spurgeon died at the age of 57, and one contributing factor was certainly overwork. Spurgeon stands as a caution to pastors that there is always more work to be done. At some point we must entrust work to others and, even more, entrust the work to God. The church belongs to Him, and He will care for her.

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In research for a book I am writing on the Second Great Awakening, I came across a reference to small groups singing hymns by Joseph Hart at the Cane Ridge (Ky.) revival in 1801. Joseph Hart was a Calvinist minister and hymn-writer in London in the mid-1700s. Probably his most famous hymn was “Come Ye Sinners, Poor and Wretched” (1759). Those who know the song may be familiar with its title as “Come Ye Sinners, Poor and Needy,” however. It seems that this change started appearing in the early 1800s.

The earliest reference I have found (so far) to the relevant changed word in a hymnal is in Ralph Williston’s A Choice Selection of Evangelical Hymns: For the Use of the English Evangelical Lutheran Church in New York (1806). The Evangelical Lutheran Church in New York (“evangelical” connoted “Protestant” in German) was a pioneer in offering English-language Lutheran services in America. Thus it was important for Williston to prepare an English-language hymnal for the congregation’s use. Most of Williston’s hymns were evangelical standards, including many by Charles Wesley and Isaac Watts.

The fact that Williston was originally a Methodist, then a Lutheran, and finally an Episcopalian, suggests a moderate or liberal theological trajectory that could explain his choice of “needy” over “wretched.” Within a decade of Williston’s compilation, “poor and needy” had become common in hymnals. “Wretched” still appeared in Calvinist-leaning hymnals. By the mid-twentieth century, “poor and needy” seems to have become the norm. A Google search today turns up three times more hits for “needy” than the “wretched” version.

Why make the change to “needy”? The word “needy” did appear in Hart’s original lyrics, but not in the title line. There may be evidence where hymn writers or compilers explain the rationale for substituting needy for wretched, as well. But absent direct commentary like that, the switch would seem to reflect a more sanguine view of human nature in the early 1800s. People who are “poor and needy” are proper objects of sympathy and pity, but are not necessarily repulsive. The fact that Jesus “ready stands to save” someone who is “poor and needy” is perhaps less shocking than his readiness to save a wretch. But the truth is, outside of Christ, we’re both needy and wretched.

The turn away from “wretchedness” in hymnody was not complete, of course, as illustrated by the most famous hymn that uses the word “wretch,” John Newton’s “Amazing Grace” (1779). Did anyone think to soften that language? In fact they did, but the change never caught on the way that the change to “Come Ye Sinners” did. In the Anglican minister Richard Whittingham’s A Selection of Psalms and Hymns…Adapted to Public Worship, Whittingham rendered the famous first line as “Amazing grace! How sweet the sound! That freely saved me.” This would not only change the meter (requiring that you sing “save-ed me”), but it also avoids having the singer call him- or herself a wretch. Is grace less amazing, however, if you’re not a wretch?

There may be occasions when churches decide to change or update words to hymns (with due attention to copyright laws, when applicable) to make the language comprehensible to a modern audience. But “Come Ye Sinners” is a good example of how the words of hymns can be changed, sometimes with little explanation or reflection, and end up with a theologically weaker message. “Come Ye Sinners” is still a fine hymn with “poor and needy.” But if you have a choice, consider a switch back to Hart’s grittier 1759 version!

In 2006, Professor Randall Balmer claimed to reveal a dirty little secret about the origins of the “religious right.”

“They’ll tell you it was abortion,” blared a headline at Politico in 2014. “Sorry, the historical record’s clear: it was segregation.”

The “segregation” story spread all over. Balmer’s book, Thy Kingdom Come: How the Religious Right Distorts the Faith and Threatens America—An Evangelical’s Lament (2006), spawned articles In Politico, Slate, and London’s Guardian. It was taught in Ivy League schools.

Balmer released a second book on the story in 2021, Bad Faith: Race and the Rise of the Religious Right.

And with the recent fall of Roe v. Wade, the story has been passed around again.

But the story is wrong.

In reality, the triggering event wasn’t “Evangelicals supporting segregation.” Rather, it was anti-discrimination Evangelicals outraged by an IRS plan to presume all church schools were segregationist. Balmer’s “just so” story distorts the record and caricatures Evangelicals, assigning them almost the antithesis of their actual positions.

The Alleged Bombshell Confession from Paul Weyrich

In his 2006 book, Balmer claimed he had received a bombshell confession from Paul Weyrich (1942–2008), a key activist in the Religious Right.

Balmer said that he was invited to a “closed-door” conference in 1990:

In the course of one of the sessions, Weyrich tried to make a point to his Religious Right brethren. . . . Let’s remember, he said animatedly, that the Religious Right did not come together in response to the Roe decision. No, Weyrich insisted, what got us going as a political movement was the attempt on the part of the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) to rescind the tax-exempt status of Bob Jones University because of its racially discriminatory policies.

Balmer says he immediately confirmed the admission:

During the following break in the conference proceedings, I cornered Weyrich to make sure I had heard him correctly. He was adamant that, yes, the 1975 action by the IRS against Bob Jones University was responsible for the genesis of the Religious Right in the late 1970s.

Note the lack of quotation marks. This story shifts in later retellings, but the core is never recanted. By 2021, Balmer says Weyrich “sounded credible,” and it “set [him] on a course” to prove the claim.

But the Weyrich story didn’t happen this way.

What Weyrich Really Said

Weyrich did not offhandedly claim “what got us going as a political movement was the attempt on the part of the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) to rescind the tax-exempt status of Bob Jones University.”

Nor did any 1975 IRS action against BJU “galvanize [evangelicals] as a political force and [bring them] into the fold of the Republican Party,” as Balmer’s latest book claims.

Weyrich is dead. So we can’t ask him. But we can know what he said. Contrary to the impression Balmer gives, the conference wasn’t a secret. The Ethics and Public Policy Center invited religious historians to present papers, and religious right luminaries responded. The papers and responses were even compiled into a book: No Longer Exiles: The Religious New Right in American Politics (1992).

In the proceedings, Weyrich did comment on the movement’s genesis. But he didn’t mention segregation.

It is a defensive movement. The people who are involved in [the Religious Right] didn’t want to get involved. . . . [W]hat caused the movement to surface was the federal government’s moves against Christian schools. . . . [I]t wasn’t the abortion issue; that wasn’t sufficient. It was the recognition that isolation simply would no longer work.

The Federal Government’s Moves against Christian Schools

What federal “moves against Christian schools” did Weyrich have in mind?

Balmer says Weyrich was “adamant” that it was a 1975 action by the IRS against Bob Jones University. He also mentions Green v. Connally, a case first decided in 1971. But neither of these fit the facts.

To begin with, the IRS was the defendant in both court cases. In Green, Mississippi parents forced the IRS to withdraw tax exemptions from explicitly segregated schools. BJU, seeing the writing on the wall, immediately sued the IRS after Green.

But nothing about Green or BJU’s slow-rolling litigation unleashed religious right voters. In 1974, the Supreme Court said BJU had filed too soon; it had to wait until the IRS sent a formal notice of revocation. The formal notice of revocation wasn’t delivered until January 1976; BJU went back to court.

All of which would have been obvious in 1975. The premise of BJU’s first suit was that the revocation was a foregone conclusion, unless a court took the decision away from the IRS. And BJU’s supporters had reasons to think a court would stop the IRS. Indeed, BJU won at the trial court level in 1979. The win wasn’t reversed until the very end of 1980 (and later confirmed by SCOTUS in 1983), well after the “religious right” phenomenon had started.

The other dates posited by Balmer are too early. The religious right surfaced in the 1978 midterm elections. But if religious voters were “galvanized” by an IRS action somewhere between 1971 (when Green was decided) and 1975 (the date Balmer says Weyrich gave to him), why would they stay hidden until the Carter midterms?

A clue that Balmer got the real trigger wrong comes from Grover Norquist, another activist colleague of Weyrich. Norquist made a claim to US News & World Report that is similar to what Weyrich said:

The religious right did not get started in . . . ’73 with Roe v. Wade. It started in ’77 or ’78 with the Carter administration’s attack on Christian schools.

What Really Started the Firestorm in 1978

In 1978, the IRS proposed new rules for private elementary and secondary schools with tax exempt status under IRC 501(c)(3). The proposals did not apply to colleges like BJU. Schools “adjudicated” to engage in race discrimination would lose tax exemption, as required by Green.

But the IRS also proposed rules for private schools lacking “significant” minority enrollment or “relat[ing]” to desegregation efforts in public schools. From then on, the IRS would presume, in effect, that such schools were racist and segregationist. In order to obtain or retain tax exempt status, these schools would have to adopt affirmative action plans and meet ratios dictated by the IRS.

It was this presumption of race discrimination that galvanized many Evangelical voters in the November 1978 mid-terms.

Most were not defending segregation; many were outraged that even churches opposed to discrimination would be lumped in with the segregationists.

• Pat Robertson said President Carter (a Baptist who had attracted “born-again voters” in 1976) had “betrayed Christian voters.”
• Richard Viguerie said the rules “kicked a sleeping dog” and “ignited the religious right.”
• Jerry Falwell Sr. quipped that “in some states it’s easier to open a massage parlor than a Christian school.”
• The IRS received 150,000 letters, mostly opposed to the proposals.

Green was a landmark, so in some sense, it was a progenitor of all the IRS’s actions in this area, including the 1978 proposals.

But Green’s holding did not trigger Evangelicals or catalyze the Religious Right. The Association of Christian Schools International told Congress: “we take no issue with [sic] IRS in its attempt to remove the tax-exempt status of [segregationist] schools.”

Instead, it was the IRS’s presumption against Christian schools that ignited a firestorm in 1978.

In part, because many church schools were inseparable from their churches. A challenge to the school’s exemption would effectively challenge the church’s exemption, too.

And church schools typically draw fellow believers, not a random pool of nearby students. Many religious groups have strong ethnic connections, for reasons of history and doctrine. The students in a Greek Orthodox school, an Amish school, or a Jewish day school are likely to be “white,” no matter how much the school opposes discrimination.

Noted constitutional attorney William Ball, who later argued at the Supreme Court for BJU, said the IRS had tried unfairly to put religious minorities in a “suspect class.” Even the Baptist Joint Committee on Public Affairs, representing Carter’s own Southern Baptist Convention, opposed the 1978 plan, in part because it intruded on church autonomy.

So the core allegations of the Balmer story are wrong. The trigger for Religious Right voters was not:

• a 1975 IRS action, or
• a defense of segregation, or
• BJU’s tax exemption.

Balmer’s “Abortion Myth” Claim Is Also Wrong

The timing of the IRS proposals undercuts another part of this narrative: Balmer’s specific claims about an “abortion myth.”

It’s clear that Roe didn’t immediately produce partisan voters. Balmer’s explanation is that Weyrich “seize[d]” a 1975 “opening” around BJU to engage in “machinations,” where he cleverly redirected evangelical segregationists to support the pro-life movement by 1978.

But Weyrich and Norquist were talking about events barely months apart. The IRS rules were announced in August 1978. In November 1978, the “religious right” had already embraced the life issue, and voters in Iowa pushed out U.S. Senator Dick Clark over his stance on abortion.

So there was no multi-year subterfuge by a conservative Svengali. No doubt, Weyrich wanted issues that could generate conservative votes. But the pro-life movement’s connection to the Religious Right wasn’t Weyrich’s cynical invention; anti-Roe organizing was one of several streams of activism that reached critical mass in the Carter years.

History Is More Complex than Simplistic

Of course, some may say it’s all close enough. Some scholars, like Anthea Butler, have chosen to foreground a particular story, alleging that an evangelical, “color-blind gospel” merely provided cover for followers of Billy Graham to “whitewash” the intentional segregation. The racial neutrality of Evangelical schools, in this story, is another form of racism.

And no honest person would deny the reality of some segregation academies, or that many church schools were largely white. Like all American phenomena, the question will always be how Evangelicals and Christian schools interfaced with race, not whether it interfaced with race.

But race is only part of the story. Public schools of the 1960s and 1970s made other changes, too. Most public schools were, in practice, Protestant until Engle v. Vitale in 1962 and Abington v. Schempp in 1963. Those cases held that compulsory prayer and Bible reading in public schools violated the First Amendment. One of the parents in Abington, Madalyn Murray O’Hair, was named “The Most Hated Woman in America” by Life magazine in 1964.

So parents faced a new dichotomy between “religious” and “public” education. Fears about secular humanism and atheism in public schools caused Christian schools to open rapidly in the early 1970s in California, the western states, and the Midwest, not just the South.

That’s not to suggest that the rural Midwest of the 1970s was beyond race issues. But those parents weren’t forming redoubts against local desegregation orders. There were other reasons for exiting public schools.

Telling the story carefully, then, is important. Balmer’s “segregation” story has spread so widely, it has poisoned the well in many discussions of Evangelicals and their educational institutions. Rather than describe Evangelicals as Americans with concerns about life, government overreach, and religious freedom, Balmer paints the Evangelicals as vile racists who are dishonest about their own motivations.

But the actual story of the “religious right” is far more complex. By the early 1970s, Evangelicals, Catholics, and other religious voters had discovered that politics would not leave them alone. Then their concerns about abortion, government overreach in schools, secular humanism at the FCC, and an unresponsive “born again” President all merged into a single outlet, creating a torrent of Republican voters in 1978 and beyond.

Several issues can lay rightful claim to being the headwaters of the Religious Right. But it wasn’t the IRS’s attempt to revoke Bob Jones’ tax exemption, or defense of segregation.

Rather (as Evangelicals said at the time) when it came to segregation, it was Bob Jones versus everybody.

[TK] Your book is timely, given the vigorous and acrimonious debate in recent years about “Christian nationalism.” What does your perspective on the decades from the Civil War to World War I illuminate about the history of Christian nationalism?

[BW] First of all, thank you for the opportunity to talk about the book. I’ve been a TGC reader for a long time and a beneficiary of its great content. In terms of Christian nationalism, the book shows that the phenomenon is nothing new. Like most things, it has a deep history. The book also shows that wartime is a stimulant for this kind of thinking.

When young Americans are fighting and dying, it can be very tempting to suppose that God has blessed their cause and that their enemies are not only misguided but also demonic. Nevertheless, it is still a temptation and that temptation is to nothing less than idolatry. One of the main lessons I hope Christians take away from the book is the distinction between (in Augustine’s categories) the City of God and the City of Man. As great as it is to live in the United States, we are still a secular nation, not the Kingdom of God.

From 1860 to 1920 it was progressive, elite, and northern pastors who adopted some of the most uncritical views of America’s righteousness in wartime. Why was that?

That is an interesting question, because it is the opposite of what we would suspect today. But in this period, progressive, elite, and northern pastors had a particularly deep commitment to Protestant American civilization. They believed that the United States stood for democracy, liberty, constant improvement, and the most up-do-date (read: liberal) Christianity. Some ministers applied messianic prophecies directly to the United States!

By contrast, other nations like Spain in 1898 and Germany in 1917 were “backward,” autocratic, and (in Spain’s case) Catholic. Therefore, these ministers just knew that the United States was fighting for the right and fighting on God’s side. Some of the more progressive theology that emphasized the spirit of the Bible instead of its inerrancy or historicity also allowed these pastors to think of Christian morality, democracy, and America as all one and the same.

You also speak about groups who offered a “counterpoint” to the establishment white pastors. What sorts of denominations were likely to take a different, more critical view of America’s national purposes?

In addition to the white Protestant liberals mentioned above, my book also pays attention to how the African Methodist Episcopal Church understood the Civil War, how American Catholics analyzed the Spanish-American War, and how conservative, German-speaking Lutherans in Missouri interpreted World War I. Because of their particular theological commitments and their position on the margins of American religious life, these three groups were able to offer (in my judgment) a more sophisticated understanding of the United States and its wars.

All of them saw more clearly the problems in American life, all of them rejected the idea of the United States as a Christian nation, and, consequently, all of them supported the various wars in a more restrained way. They cheered American victories without supposing that God uniquely blessed the United States or that all American soldiers went to heaven.

Some readers might be surprised at how many leading “Social Gospel” figures, such as the Congregationalist pastor Washington Gladden, argued for the Spanish-American War (1898) and World War I on Social Gospel grounds, portraying them as “Christian wars.” How did that make sense to them?

The Social Gospelers’ goal was to reform the United States so that it looked more and more like the Kingdom of God. But these pastors and theologians didn’t stop there: they simply applied that same logic to world affairs. In their thinking, Spain and its empire was corrupt and despotic; American military victory would thus bring enlightenment and Protestant civilization to colonies like the Philippines. Germany was aggressive and monarchical; American victory in World War I would cleanse Germany of corruption and would be for the good of the German people.

We might think of warfare as an odd means of Christianizing the world, but they thought it could be a divine method. World War I, after all, was the “war to end all wars”—it was going to usher in a new era of peace. When that did not happen, a number of important Christian leaders like Harry Emerson Fosdick and Reinhold Niebuhr rejected the Social Gospel/warfare blend that had energized their support for the Great War. Niebuhr was especially profound when he wrote in 1928 that “if Christianity is to be killed in this new world of nationalism and commercialism, it would be better for it to die splendidly than to survive by adding the odor of an old sanctity to the worship of mammon and Caesar.”

One temptation during wartime is presenting American soldiers as uniquely Christlike figures, ones who must go to heaven if they die in the nation’s service. How did pastors bolster, or critique, this image of soldiers almost as automatic Christians?

This issue was one of the flashpoints between some of the mainline Protestant churches and the “counterpoint” groups. During the Civil War, the New York Congregationalist Henry Ward Beecher had allegedly preached a sermon where he suggested that Union soldiers would go straight to heaven because they died in a godly cause. However, even though African American Methodists had more reason than Beecher to hope for Union victory, they protested against such idolatry. They worried that Beecher had forgotten that only “the great atoning sacrifice and the new birth” could secure salvation. In this case, their more conservative theology allowed them to push back against the dangerous blending of God and country.

Conservative Protestants could be Christian nationalists too—Billy Sunday once stated that “if you turn hell upside down, you will find ‘Made in Germany’ stamped on the bottom.” But I think their record was a little better partly because they still held on to supernaturalist distinctives that made them hesitate to completely identify any earthly cause with the Christian cause.

Nearly 50 years ago, Chuck Colson was born again.

His memoir Born Again was published in 1975. Earlier that year he had been released from a seven-month stint in federal prison after pleading guilty of obstructing justice in the Watergate investigation.

He had converted to Christianity in 1973 after serving four years as Special Counsel for President Richard Nixon. C.S. Lewis’s Mere Christianity was pivotal in his spiritual repentance and awakening. The memoir was made into a 1978 film starring Dean Jones.

In 1976, Colson founded Prison Fellowship to serve prisoners, former prisoners, and their families, advocating for reform of the justice system.

His most controversial post-Watergate endeavor, especially among Reformed Protestants, was co-signing with Richard John Neuhaus an ecumenical document entitled “Evangelicals and Catholics Together.” This work led to a rupturing of his relationships, the most prominent of which was R. C. Sproul.

The Colson Center has just released a 12-minute documentary about Colson’s life and legacy focusing on his conversion, prison-reform work, and worldview teaching.

Charles Spurgeon (1834–1892) preached to approximately 10 million people in his lifetime, often speaking ten times a week. His 3,561 sermons are bound in sixty-three volumes, and in addition he wrote many books.

Wonderful as those accomplishments were, they put demands on his life that no doubt contributed to his battles with depression. (Not least of all that he often worked eighteen hours a day!)

Spurgeon writes:

I have suffered many times from severe sickness and frightful mental depression seeking almost to despair. Almost every year I’ve been laid aside for a season, for flesh and blood cannot bear the strain, at least such flesh and blood as mine. I believe, however, the affliction was necessary to me and has answered salutary ends.

Those words were written by a man who lived with great physical pain for a large part of his life. While his dear wife Susanna was bed-ridden for decades, Spurgeon contracted smallpox and suffered from gout, rheumatism, and Bright’s disease (inflammation of the kidneys). His health became progressively worse so that nearly a third of his last twenty-two years were spent away from the pulpit. This physical hardship took a great emotional toll on him.

When Spurgeon was twenty-two years old, a tragedy took place that still haunted him years later. He was preaching for the first time in the Music Hall of the Royal Surrey Gardens because his own church wasn’t large enough. The ten-thousand-person seating capacity was far exceeded by the crowds pressing in. Someone shouted, “Fire!” and though there was no fire, the resulting stampede caused many injuries and the deaths of seven people. Years later, Spurgeon said this horrifying incident took him “near the burning furnace of insanity.”

Still, Spurgeon found that his great suffering drew him closer to God. In an address to ministers and students he says,

I daresay the greatest earthly blessing that God can give to any of us is health, with the exception of sickness. If some men whom I know of could only be favored with a month of rheumatism, it would, by God’s grace, mellow them marvelously.

As you’ll see in Encouragement to the Depressed, Spurgeon said of pastoral ministry:

Our work, when earnestly undertaken, lays us open to attacks in the direction of depression. Who can bear the weight of souls without sometimes sinking to the dust? Passionate longings after men’s conversion, if not fully satisfied (and when are they?), consume the soul with anxiety and disappointment. To see the hopeful turn aside, the godly grow cold, professors abusing their privileges, and sinners waxing more bold in sin—are not these sights enough to crush us to the earth. . . . How often, on Lord’s-day evenings, do we feel as if life were completely washed out of us! After pouring out our souls over our congregations, we feel like empty earthen pitchers which a child might break.

He also wrote:

I am afraid that all the grace I have got of my comfortable and easy times and happy hours might almost lie on a penny. But the good I have received from my sorrows and pains and griefs is altogether incalculable. Affliction is . . . the best book in a minister’s library.

Like the apostle Paul, the often jovial Spurgeon was “sorrowful, yet always rejoicing” (2 Cor, 6:10). Spurgeon says,

Glory be to God for the furnace, the hammer and the file. Heaven shall be all the fuller of bliss because we have been filled with anguish here below; and earth shall be better tilled because of our training in the school of adversity.

Thank you, Charles Spurgeon, for your integrity, devotion to God’s Word, honest sharing of your own weaknesses, and your unquenchable passion for God not just in times of good cheer, but in times of desolate darkness. And thank you, sovereign Lord, for encouraging us through your servant, who like Abel in Hebrews 11:4, though he is dead (while fully alive in your presence), still speaks through his example and life-giving words.

May God give us ears to hear, and may our hearts be full of hope and expectancy as we await the day that King Jesus, true to his blood-bought promise, will wipe away every tear from our eyes (Rev. 21:4).

The role of religion in America’s founding is more controversial today than ever. The riot at the U.S. Capitol in January 2021 unleashed a flood of acrimony toward Christian nationalists. Critics point to attackers who carried Christian- and Bible-themed signs as they stormed the Capitol building. This attack, they say, is the fruit of decades of white Republican evangelicals clamoring about America as a Christian nation, one which politicized evangelicals say must be “taken back” from the secular left.

We live in an age of cultural extremes. These extremes have damaged our ability to appreciate the complexities of the American past. On every front, polemicists insist that American history must be all one thing, or all the other. For example, fans of Nikole Hannah-Jones’ 1619 Project focus almost exclusively on white supremacy and America’s original sin of slavery, while some partisan critics of the project insist that most of today’s talk about racism and oppression in American history is just the claptrap of critical race theorists.

We’ve had a similar argument about religion in American history. The Capitol attack turned up the volume considerably on that debate. For secularists, the American founding was a pure Enlightenment and non-religious affair driven by deists (or perhaps closet atheists) such as Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson. Christian America partisans counter that the Founding Fathers were mostly devout believers. Even if a few weren’t very pious or orthodox, their political culture was still so thoroughly Christian that they might as well have been citing chapter and verse from the Bible when they wrote the Declaration of Independence and Constitution.

Where is the truth between these partisan polarities? Let’s take the Declaration of Independence and its lead author Jefferson as an example. There’s no question about the declaration’s iconic status in American history. Virtually every line of the declaration, especially in its famous opening paragraphs, has been thoroughly analyzed. Yet there’s still no agreement about whether it was secular or religious…

As I show in my new biography of Jefferson, the declaration’s author was already skeptical in 1776 about basic Christian doctrines such as the trinity, and the divinity and resurrection of Jesus Christ. Thus, he was not writing [the declaration’s lines about the creator God] because he was some kind of born-again predecessor to the Christian right.

Throughout his career, Jefferson tried to keep his doubts about biblical revelation quiet. His opponents made a great ruckus about even the slightest hints of his heterodox beliefs. An 1800 Federalist editorial proclaimed that a vote for Jefferson was a vote for “NO GOD!”

Even in retirement, he declined to publish his notorious Jefferson Bible. This was his compilation of the Gospels, from which he literally cut out many miracles with a penknife. In his version, for instance, there was no Resurrection, just an occupied tomb. Jefferson feared the ferocious Christian backlash he would receive if he submitted his naturalistic distillation of the Gospels to public view. In other words, this skeptical founder was not the type of person who would try to sneak biblical references into America’s founding documents.

And yet, the declaration’s argument utterly depended on God himself. Jefferson and Congress fundamentally based the document on the concept of God’s common creation of humankind. Without a creator God, there is no Declaration of Independence. Why would a skeptic like Jefferson make such a profoundly theological statement? Jefferson was a bundle of contradictions on many issues. Most obviously, he was a slaveowner who declared that all men were created equal. Perhaps we shouldn’t be surprised that his uses of religion were complicated, too.

But we can start to unpack the enigma of Jefferson, the declaration, and religion by remembering that the declaration was, first and foremost, a political document… In the declaration he was just trying to reflect the “harmonizing sentiments of the day,” he explained. This was a document meant to unite politically engaged Americans around the cause of independence.

Calling on people to sacrifice lives and treasure in war almost always generates God-talk. Such civil-religious rhetoric might be sincere or cynical, depending on the occasion. Jefferson’s religious sentiments definitely appeared to be heartfelt. Appealing to the “Supreme Judge of the world,” Congress defended the rightness of their cause, pledging to defend independence on their sacred honor. Jefferson understood that independence could not be justified only as a matter of the colonists’ self-interest, or their disinclination to pay taxes. He undoubtedly believed it was a struggle in which the patriots needed God’s blessing, or they would lose.

We may also forget that Jefferson, for all his doubts about basic Christianity, did believe in a creator God. Unlike more rigid deists, he also believed that God sometimes acted in human history, by God’s providence. Jefferson lived in a pre-Darwinian world in which few could imagine human life as anything but the pinnacle of a divinely created order. Perhaps, to Jefferson, humans were not created exactly like the book of Genesis said. But where else could life have come from, aside from God? Naturalistic evolution was barely on the horizon in 1776. If God created people, then God also endowed people with rights, ones which were not justly alienable by any human authority.

In this sense, Jefferson was no traditional Christian, but he was a traditional theist. The declaration says nothing that we would regard as specifically Christian (such as an affirmation of Jesus as Lord), but it is deeply dependent upon belief in a created order. Jefferson’s broadly Christian audience also resonated with what the declaration said about God, creation and rights. Such talk was indeed harmonizing in Jefferson’s world, whether for traditional believers or for skeptics such as himself.

The actual text of the declaration, then, should leave polemicists on both sides of the “Christian nation” debate unsatisfied.

Jefferson was personally skeptical about Christian doctrine. The declaration doesn’t mention the trinity, the resurrection, Christ’s divinity, or other essential Christian tenets. But that hardly makes it secular. The declaration remains a powerfully theological document. It sees our common creation by God as the basis of our equality and rights. Its theological character is precisely what made the declaration the most resounding statement of human equality the world has ever known.

Jefferson reviled beliefs like the Trinity and the virgin birth as irrational and implausible. He said that he looked forward to the time “when we shall have done away the incomprehensible jargon of the Trinitarian arithmetic, that three are one, and one is three.”

Jefferson did consider himself a Christian, but not one of the sort that TGC readers would recognize. He wrote in 1803 that “to the corruptions of Christianity, I am indeed opposed; but not to the genuine precepts of Jesus himself. I am a Christian, in the only sense in which he wished any one to be; sincerely attached to his doctrines, in preference to all others; ascribing to himself every human excellence, & believing he never claimed any other.” In other words, he revered Jesus’s teachings, but did not believe that Jesus ever claimed to be divine.

Jefferson was convinced that Jesus’s followers had imposed the claims of divinity on him after Jesus died. This accounts for the shape of the Jefferson Bible, which was Jefferson’s multi-language edition of the Gospels. Jefferson used a pen-knife to remove sections of the Gospels that he found unreliable, especially a number of the miracles attributed to Jesus.

In last verse of the Jefferson Bible, Jesus’s disciples “rolled a great stone to the door of the sepulchre, and departed.” There was no resurrection in Jefferson’s edition. The Jefferson Bible was not published until the early 20th century, but it illustrated his Unitarian view of Jesus as a preeminent moral teacher, and nothing more.

Unlike many of Christianity’s critics today, Jefferson was deeply familiar with the Bible. He had to be in order to produce the Jefferson Bible. But Jefferson clearly put his own standards of rationality above the authority of Scripture. Lots of people implicitly cut out parts of the Bible they don’t like. Jefferson literally did so.

Learn more about Jefferson’s religion in my new book, Thomas Jefferson: A Biography of Spirit and Flesh (Yale University Press).

In the 1670s, a heated debate erupted between John Bunyan and a number of influential Baptists over the terms of communion. The debate spanned ten years (1671–1681) and resulted in ten publications from six different authors.

The dispute centered upon this question for those churches who baptize upon a credible profession of faith: Should they receive a paedobaptist (those who practice infant baptism) into the membership of a visible church and admit them to the Lord’s Supper?

Bunyan argued strongly in the affirmative; the Baptists argued just as strongly in the negative.

The communion controversy represents the eruption of tensions that had been building since the emergence of the Particular Baptist movement three decades earlier, and since that time, the issue has reemerged in every century of Baptist life.

An analysis of the communion controversy reveals that it was not merely a quarrel among fellow Baptists about a secondary matter of church practice, but a dispute over fundamentally different ecclesiologies. Underneath all of the polemics and prooftexting, Bunyan and his Baptist opponents were separated by seven irreconcilable ecclesiological convictions.

1. The nature of the church as visible and invisible.

Bunyan viewed the church in binary categories. The church is either invisible/universal or visible/particular.

He determined that baptism could not be the initiating ordinance into either one.

• To regard baptism as the initiating ordinance into the invisible/universal church would be to “unchristian” paedobaptists.
• To regard baptism as the initiating ordinance into the visible/particular would be to “unchurch” paedobaptist churches.

The Baptists viewed the church in three forms:

1. the invisible, universal church comprised of all the elect of all ages;
2. a visible, universal church of Baptists upon the earth or within a given region;
3. a visible, particular church comprised of baptized believers bound together by covenant.

According to the Baptists, baptism was the initiating ordinance into the second of the three.

The necessary implication of the Baptist view is that while there may be true paedobaptist saints, there are no true paedobaptist churches.

2. The nature of baptism as symbol or sacrament.

For Bunyan, baptism in water was the outward sign of the baptism of the Spirit, but there was no essential relationship between the two. Throughout the communion controversy, Bunyan only spoke of baptism is symbolic terms, never as a means of grace. Water baptism and Spirit baptism could not only be distinguished, they could be severed—such that one could and often did possess the substance without the shadow.

This spiritualist strain in Bunyan further separated him from the Baptists, who were unwilling to sever the sign from the thing signified. Though water baptism could be distinguished from the baptism of the Spirit, they must never be divorced such that the church accepts one who possesses the first but neglects the second. In other words, though such a thing may be possible, that does not mean it is permissible. William Kiffin explicitly spoke of baptism as a means of grace, the sign and seal of salvation. If there is no sign, there is no seal. Without the seal, there can be no visible communion.

3. The application of the regulative principle to baptism.

The regulative principle holds that the elements of corporate worship must be grounded in the specific commands from God in Scripture.

Both sides in this debate appealed to the regulative principle as the basis of their argument, and both sides accused the other of violating that principle in favor of human inventions.

Bunyan repeatedly demanded of the Baptists “precept, precedent, or example” for making baptism the initiating ordinance of the church, as well as for excluding unbaptized saints from church communion.

The Baptists continually pointed to the dominical precept, apostolic precedent, and primitive church pattern of believers who were baptized and afterward brought into church communion. Kiffin, especially, argued from the definition of the regulative principle as including both explicit command and necessary inference.

4. Romans 14 and baptism as a matter of conscience or command.

Much of the communion debate revolved around the interpretation of Romans 14.

Bunyan insisted that this text, with its command that the church at Rome receive those who were weak in faith despite differences of opinion in non-essential, outward, circumstantial matters of conscience, applied to the present question of baptism. For Bunyan, Romans 14 established a clear and undeniable paradigm: the church must receive all whom God has received, on the same basis upon which God has received them.

The Baptists responded that baptism is not a matter of conscience but of command, admitting of no deviation from the Scriptural institution. Furthermore, the Baptists repeatedly denied that Romans 14 applied to baptism, since the “weak in faith” in Rome were already baptized members of the church.

5. Clarity about baptism and the need for “light.”

Bunyan had a category for the convictional paedobaptist, arguing that they refused believer’s baptism because they lacked sufficient “light”—i.e., the illumination of the Holy Spirit to understand the biblical administration of the ordinance. Therefore, since “whatever is not of faith is sin,” paedobaptism was no breach of obedience nor smear upon the sincerity of their faith, and should not exclude them from church communion.

The Baptists had no category for the convictional paedobaptist, insisting instead that baptism was as clear as any ordinance of Scripture, “written as with a Sun beam, that he that runs may read.” Therefore, a refusal to submit to baptism is not due to a want of light, but is either the result of a failure to “seriously enquire after it,” blatant disobedience, or worse, unbelief. The Baptists insisted that ignorance of a command does not absolve from sin.

6. The membership requirements of the visible church.

For Bunyan, the membership requirements of the visible, particular church must be identical to the membership requirements of the invisible, universal church.

As water baptism is not required for membership in the invisible, universal church, it must not be required for membership in a visible, particular church. The only membership requirement for entrance into the invisible, universal church is evangelical faith, which is made visible not by baptism but by evangelical holiness.

For the Baptists, the pattern for the visible church is not the invisible church, but the apostolic church. Therefore, the requirements for membership in the visible church must be identical to the membership requirements established in Scripture.

7. The controlling principle of evangelical unity or ecclesiological purity.

Bunyan’s conclusions were controlled by the fundamental desire for evangelical unity. A visible saint is one who possesses evangelical faith and holiness, and as such is a member of the invisible church and cannot be excluded from the visible church without provoking God to judgment for rejecting one whom He has accepted.

The Baptists were driven by the fundamental desire for ecclesiological purity. The truth must never be sacrificed for the sake of unity. The visible church must be ordered according to the rule of Scripture.

This is not to suggest that the Baptists were unconcerned about evangelical unity, nor that Bunyan was unconcerned about ecclesiological purity. But when those two principles came into conflict, a choice had to be made, and Bunyan and the Baptists found themselves standing on opposite sides.

Bunyan concluded A Confession of My Faith, and a Reason of My Practice, the treatise that ignited the controversy, with this irenic call to his separated brethren:

I return now to those that are visible saints by calling, that stand at a distance one from another, upon accounts before specified:

Brethren; CLOSE; CLOSE; be one, as the Father in Christ is one.

But they could not close. The gap between them simply could not be bridged without either side conceding essential ecclesiological convictions regarding

• the nature of the church,
• the nature of baptism, and
• the relationship between the two.

Examination of the communion controversy led to my recent dissertation, in which I provide a systematic analysis of Bunyan’s ecclesiology and reevaluation of his ecclesiological identity. I argue that the controlling principle of Bunyan’s ecclesiology was evangelical unity rooted in evangelical faith and holiness. This evangelical, ecumenical ecclesiology demanded open communion and brought Bunyan into irreconcilable conflict with contemporary Baptists, whose controlling principle of ecclesiological purity drove them to strict communion.

Bunyan’s evangelical, ecumenical ecclesiology represents a unique contribution to the seventeenth-century ecclesiological landscape. Neither Baptist nor Congregationalist, the best ecclesiological label for Bunyan is evangelical Independent.

It would be interesting to tabulate the ways in which the word deism was used in the 1700s. My suspicion is that when it was used in the sense of someone who rejected traditional Christian doctrine, it commonly was coming from critics accusing someone of that kind of heterodox deism. That was the case with the Rev. William Linn’s 1800 religious attack on Thomas Jefferson in the presidential election against John Adams. Linn said that Jefferson was unfit to be president because of “his rejection of the Christian Religion and open profession of Deism.”

Jefferson had indiscreetly aired a couple of his less-than-orthodox beliefs prior to 1800, but Jefferson rarely used the terms “deist” or “deism” in his vast correspondence. I count only about 10 references total to deism in Jefferson’s writings. He certainly would not have wanted to casually apply the term “deist” to himself (in the way Franklin had in his autobiography), since he knew that anything he said about religion would likely get leaked to the media. He did refer to attacks on him as a deist, but he was more likely to refer to the deism of the ancient Jews, or the “deism” of Jesus (!), by which he meant Jesus’s simplified view of a loving God.

To cite one important instance, Jefferson wrote in 1803 to the scientist and Unitarian minister Joseph Priestley, who was helping Jefferson to affirm his own idiosyncratic version of Unitarian Christianity. He told Priestley that he was thinking of composing an outline of the “Christian system” and the reasons for the superiority (though not perfection) of Jesus’s ethical teachings. After reviewing the moral codes of the great philosophers of ancient Greece and Rome, he said, “I should then take a view of the deism, and ethics of the Jews, and shew in what a degraded state they were, and the necessity they presented of a reformation. I should proceed to a view of the life, character, & doctrines of Jesus, who sensible of the incorrectness of their ideas of the deity, and of morality, endeavored to bring them to the principles of a pure deism, and juster notions of the attributes of god.”

For Jefferson, deism in this case simply meant belief in a monotheistic creator God. He knew the term had widely known skeptical connotations, too. Perhaps he took pleasure in describing Jesus as a deist, knowing this would irritate Christian critics who called Jefferson a deist. Once Jefferson reconciled himself to believing in Unitarian, naturalistic Christianity, he was eager to present himself as a true follower of Jesus, as opposed to critics like Linn. To Jefferson, traditional Christians clung to the churches’ accretions of “Platonic,” mystical, and ostensibly incomprehensible beliefs, such as the doctrine of the Trinity. Jefferson touted his devotion to the true deism of Jesus alone.

I explain much more about these issues in my new book on Jefferson, Thomas Jefferson: A Biography of Spirit and Flesh (Yale Press).

A pro-Adams newspaper repeatedly thundered that the question of the election was “GOD AND A RELIGIOUS PRESIDENT [Adams]” or “JEFFERSON—AND NO GOD.” Yes, they used ‘all caps’ before Twitter.

Adams was disposed toward Unitarianism, too, so his theology was not all that different from Jefferson’s. But the two differed sharply about whether state governments should continue to support a preferred Christian denomination, or an “establishment,” in the language of the First Amendment. Adams thought the states should keep established churches, and the established denomination in Massachusetts was the Congregationalist Church, the old church of the Puritans.

Jefferson, by contrast, delighted evangelicals—especially Baptists—by championing the disestablishment of the Anglican (or Episcopal) Church in Virginia. The process of disestablishment there concluded with the passage of Jefferson’s Bill for Establishing Religious Freedom in 1786.

Many of the Federalist pastors of New England, who received financial support from state governments, saw Jefferson as an existential threat to religion. They were wrong. Jefferson wanted to get the government out of the business of playing favorites in religion, but he hardly intended to launch an anti-Christian crusade like what France had seen in the darkest phases of their Revolution.

Jefferson’s friend Benjamin Rush gave a compelling biblical explanation for church-state separation in the midst of the fall 1800 election season, in a letter to Jefferson:

When pastors become political campaigners, politics can corrupt the church and distract it from its core business. Obviously, we never want the government to become hostile to religion, or to place believers under special disadvantages because of their faith. And we must remember that the First Amendment gives equal weight to disestablishment and to the free exercise of religion.

However, as a matter of prudence and the health of the church, we should never want church leaders to become partisan campaigners, regardless of the party in question. Getting involved in campaigning and partisanship disrupts the unity of the church, and risks turning the church into a servant of temporal power as much as the Kingdom of God.

Check out my new book Thomas Jefferson: A Biography of Spirit and Flesh (Yale University Press).

In 1994, historian Mark Noll plumbed The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind in America. He highlighted as one of the American evangelical subculture’s abiding weaknesses a tendency to fashion misinformed patriotic myths about the United States’ founders.

This tendency didn’t begin in the 20^th century. In the 1820s and ‘30s, as the last “living relics” of the Founding were dying, a heartfelt crisis of historical memory gripped the nation. Frenetically, Americans began grasping for alternative material props to commemorate the fast-disappearing founding generation. More than a few patriots attempted to take America’s founding history by the hair—by George Washington’s hair, to be precise.

Snippets of hair purportedly shorn from the pate of America’s Pater Patriae, George Washington, are currently held—often out of public view, like an embarrassing family secret—in more than 100 of the nation’s museums, research universities, archives, libraries, and historical societies, as I’ve mapped them here.

Even allowing that it was common in early America to keep hair locks of the loved and lost, and that some caches of “George Washington’s hair” must be fake, copious references to keepsake stashes in the 18th and 19^th century leave no doubt that a “cult” of George Washington’s hair flourished in the young United States.

The years between 1790 and 1840 were also, in Mark Noll’s words, an era of “evangelical surge,” in which revivalist grassroots Protestantism reached new fervor. Faced with growing discrimination and prejudice, Catholics in the United States highlighted the seeming hypocrisy of Protestant evangelicals, who, as Cincinnati’s Catholic Telegraph reported accurately in 1835, were eager to “receive with respect and guard with reverence” the “illustrious Washington’s hair,” even as they accused Catholics who honored saints’ relics of “idolatry.”

In 1832, James R. Willson, a Presbyterian pastor and legislative chaplain in Albany, New York, became one of the few evangelicals in the period to call out fellow-evangelicals for inaccurate, posthumous recasting of America’s Founding elite in their own born-again image.  Willson—arguing from recently published papers and other primary sources—categorically rejected claims that U.S. Founders had, in the main, been evangelically inclined.

When word of Reverend Willson’s sermon reached the ears of legislators in Albany, they voted ninety-five to two to condemn the preacher for having “unnecessarily endeavored to detract from the fame of many of the benefactors of our country.” Then they rescinded his appointment as a state chaplain. Outside the legislative halls, an angry mob burned Willson in effigy, suggesting that the growing tendency among American evangelicals to cling to exaggerated pietistic myths about the United States Founders might have a scandalously long half-life.

Washington’s relics illustrate one version of the longstanding American penchant for revering the Founders in sacred terms. But as biblical anthropology might lead one to predict, the historical truth about the Founding Fathers was quite messy. The founding generation was hardly exempt from original sin. Several of the new nation’s leading political lights expressly rejected the divinity of Jesus. In retirement, John Adams and Thomas Jefferson vented to each other their shared disdain for evangelical doctrines.

Adams, wrote to Jefferson, that it was “awful blasphemy” to believe New Testament claims that God was incarnated as Jesus Christ, or that the “great principle which has produced this boundless Universe…came down to this little Ball to be spit-upon by Jews.” Jefferson averred to Adams that the doctrine of the Trinity was just the “deliria of crazy imaginations.” Adams could be confident that Jefferson would find humor in Adams’s criticism of evangelical, U.S. founder, and future president of the American Bible Society, John Jay, for studying biblical “Prophecies to the End of his Life.”

As Adams’s quip about Jay reflected, a few of the leading founders were indeed evangelicals. Yet Mark Noll has noted that confessed evangelicals—John Jay, Elias Boudinot, and Patrick Henry, for example—were in the second tier of influence within America’s founding political elite. In recent years, historians including the Evangelical History blog’s Thomas Kidd have effectively elaborated and qualified that summary claim.

My own new book on patriotic memory in the early America republic, George Washington’s Hair: How Early Americans Remembered the Founders complements those prior studies of evangelical religion in the new nation. In a key chapter in that work, I trace the historical roots of evangelical misremembering of the founders to their uncritical embrace in the 1820s and ‘30s of new “scientific” theories about the biology of human memory then gaining currency in American culture.

Evangelicals also applied those au currant physicalist understandings of memory (many of which would later be discredited as just pseudo-scientific blither blather). They would use these beliefs about memory in their own earnest efforts to reliably and patriotically “remember” foundational American history.

The new “mnemonic physicalism” demanded primary reliance upon material props to physically anchor, and memorably convey into people’s physical brains, material evidence (one might even say forensic evidence) of the historical past. Such seemingly arcane beliefs about history and memory are at the heart of the enduring evangelical reverence for the Founders.

As someone who lived for two years in Russia and spent extended periods doing research in Ukraine, my heart breaks for these countries, but for different reasons. Certain far-left or far right political commentators do not seem to understand essential differences between the two nations. In my study of Christian education in both countries (K-12 and higher education), I found one important difference.

Russian political leaders continually exalt corruption, dysfunction, and the pursuit of power. This leads them to undermine burgeoning efforts to rebuild civil society, improve religious liberty, or expand religious education. Unfortunately, the dominant Russian Orthodox Church makes things worse. Former communists largely control the Russian Orthodox Church, and they use this power to support a Russian version of Christian nationalism—making the church an instrument of the state.

In Ukraine I have found hope and courage among educators and Christians trying to build civil society in the context of religious freedom in ways that some political leaders supported. Indeed, I researched one Christian university that even one of Ukraine’s former prime ministers praised for its lack of corruption and its courage. To understand this difference is to understand why the current conflict is a clash between two different types of countries.

Russian Moral Degradation and Death

Accomplishing anything in Russia without resorting to bribery or other forms of moral corruption takes tremendous effort, time, and courage. In the social philosophy faculty at People’s Friendship University in Moscow (RUDN) where I taught social philosophy in 2001, the brother of one of the economic ministers also taught. He told me that he constantly received calls from people asking for favors and gifts (assuming that he could obtain such things through his brother). That’s just the common moral expectation of how life works in Russia. That’s why I had to add a class on bribery when I taught Christian ethics at Russian American Christian University (RACU).

RACU was a beacon of light in this politically and morally corrupt culture. I mention in my recent book The Dismantling of Moral Education how the chair of social philosophy department told me, “we are looking for moral answers right now because we do not have any.” Russia was considered the Wild Wild East when I lived there, due to rampant crime. I have a picture with a black eye and a scar from the razor cut to my neck during a mugging to confirm it. I remember meeting a gentleman for lunch in St. Petersburg in 1994 who was running a Christian press. He gave me such hope. Then, I read a few years later how he was murdered on the street outside his home.

RACU sought to change Russia from the bottom up. Yet Russian politicians hated this kind of positive moral influence from the West. It’s why they have outlawed evangelism, and they persecute Protestants as well as Russian Orthodox who press for moral reform. In fact, Russian politicians have made it difficult, and sometimes impossible, for Russian Christians to build institutions to further Christianity.

One simply merely has to read of John Bernbaum’s courageous story of his effort to sustain RACU to understand the level of work, integrity, and courage it takes to start and try to sustain such an institution in the midst of political and moral degradation. In the end, the Russian politicians refused to let it live, since RACU was such a beacon of light, and they killed it in 2011.

They did the same thing to Donetsk Theological Seminary. Donestk was a beautiful town and the seminary had a beautiful building and was thriving until Russian mercenaries marched into Ukraine in 2017 and set up their headquarters in the building to expand Putin’s maniacal and deadly dreams.

Killing people and institutions has been a norm throughout the last century of Russian history. I encourage anyone to read Anne Applebaum’s Pulitzer Prize-winning history Gulag: A History. 100 million deaths were attributed to communist leaders alone. Putin is just continuing this long history. Russian political leaders specialize in spreading moral degradation, death, and a culture that promotes it.

Ukrainian Hope

In contrast to Russian political leadership, prior to Russian interference Christian institutions had been thriving in Ukraine, a land that promoted religious freedom. [See Vasyl Ostryi’s TGC column on Kyiv Theological Seminary and Irpin’ Bible Church.] In addition to Donetsk Theological Seminary, there were robust Protestant churches, other seminaries, and even Ukraine’s first Christian university, Ukrainian Catholic University (UCU).  As one leader told me in my case study of the institution, “by putting that name in the university you have put your line in the sand.” In fact, my visit to L’viv, Ukraine, in 2007 to the Ukrainian Catholic University, was one of the most inspiring visits to a university campus I had ever had. The whole university and its graduates were engaged in rebuilding civil society.

To understand UCU, one must remember that the Catholic Church was outlawed in the Soviet Union. Yet, even by 2007 some students were already forgetting that history. The president at the time told me that some students did not really know who Lenin or Stalin were. Thus, to help students remember, they required all the students to participate in an oral history project and interview an older adult who had been part of the underground Catholic Church during that time. The interviews were part of their Christian discipleship. As a result of the project, the Institute of Church History already housed over 2,000 interviews and over 80,000 pages of transcriptions from clergy and lay leaders (both men and women) involved with the underground church.

Perhaps one of its most profound influences pertains to the counter-cultural example they demonstrated when it comes to the basic practices of university integrity, particularly in the arena of corruption. They made it their aim to provide students with an academic life free from concerns about bribery. The rector of a different private university in Ukraine actually remarked around that time, “if an American university, with [an] exclusively Nobel prize-winning staff, decided to transfer its base of operations to Ukraine, it would fail to get a license (without a bribe, of course) and could only dream of accreditation.”

UCU, however, successfully achieved this goal. In fact, their efforts received the notice of Ukraine’s prime minister at the time who declared it to be one of only two higher education institutions in the country without corruption. These efforts also reportedly made it attractive to serious professors. Olena Dzhedzhora, Director of the Department of International Academic Relations at the time, shared how when the university began they had trouble finding Christian humanities professors. As a result, they hired a number of non-Christian professors. Interestingly, when these professors began to be treated with dignity, did not have to deal with bribes, found clean classrooms and were paid decently, a number progressed on a faith journey, since “these values were soon seen as Christian.”

In addition, the President noted that one of the first things he requested that be implemented in order to recognize human dignity involved the establishment of clean toilets. The grounds are UCU are meticulous and they even have the symbol of the university printed into the yard’s landscaping. When the mayor saw this example, he asked if the groundskeeper for the university could do the same thing for the city.

It also performed worship meant to serve as a witness. UCU helped give institutional support to The Emmaus Center, the Ukrainian Branch of L’Arche that ministers to the mentally handicapped with various students often volunteering (Henri Nouwen had recently taught at the university before I visited). The first Monday of every month they had a liturgy with the mentally handicapped which involved 30 to 40 mentally handicapped people as well as the same number of parents or supporters.

The creative and redemptive influence of these universities extended beyond the campus to the wider social life. Before Ukrainians’ successful 2001 effort to overthrow a rigged election in favor of Russia’s favored candidate, dubbed the “Orange Revolution,” UCU students were active in protesting corruption. This resulted in the Ukrainian secret police visiting the president at the time, Borys Gudziak. As The Economist noted, “shortly afterwards, television news reported that ‘rectors who are American nationals are being directly threatened with deportation.’ That could only mean Father Gudziak.” When the Orange Revolution took place in Ukraine, the university cancelled classes for three weeks as students traveled to Kiev to protest election fraud.

The influence of UCU also extended to civil society. One faculty member observed of the church under communism, “Orthodox Churches became sacrament factories. They weren’t running soup kitchens, because as you know there were no social problems during the communist period. If there ever was a social problem it would be addressed by the government, thank you.” When I visited UCU, graduates had started a military chaplaincy, a student chaplaincy, a prison chaplaincy, orphanages, and a pro-life group on campus.

Although Ukraine still bore all the scars of leadership under morally corrupt communists, civil society was beginning again. Now, Russians are on the hunt to kill signs of civil society and hope beyond their border. Let’s pray for Ukraine and its fragile efforts to rebuild a Christian civil society.

Here’s an excerpt as Wilsey summarizes Schweiger on the need for historians to love their dead subjects and to follow the way of Christ in evaluating and portraying them:

Schweiger argues that the Christian historian has a duty to love the historical subjects she studies, who are now dead. This love is not sentimental, nor does this love absolve the subjects of their sins. Loving the dead means we tell the truth about them, as far as it is possible given our limitations and the complexities of the past. And we love the dead for their own sakes, rather than for some utilitarian purpose we might have for them.

The dead are a source of contemplation for us in the present; they offer us perspective, humility, and aid us in our own self-examination as we study their lives. The dead are at our mercy—they cannot come back and offer their explanations, their justifications, their apologies, or their acts of restitution.

As we increase in our knowledge of history, the temptation is to exercise power over those who are gone, render judgment on them, and emerge from the exercise justified, righteous, and pure. Instead, knowledge of past lives ought to foster a pastoral imagination which, as Schweiger describes, “views others not in terms of oneself, but in terms of themselves, ‘trying to sense their experience as they are experiencing it, seeing with their eyes, feeling with their nerves.’” When we write history, we must exercise humility and empathy.

Schweiger taught at the University of Arkansas for fifteen years and specializes in nineteenth-century Southern history. She knows something about how to extend a pastoral imagination to her subjects, to commune with and love dead people even though many of them were guilty of truly heinous crimes against fellow human beings.

Ultimately, our goal in history writing is truth-telling, not power-wielding. And learning from history is not for meting out moral judgments on other; rather it is about how we can change to fit patterns of righteousness and moral excellence.

When it comes to Jesus and John Wayne, Wilsey finds areas to agree with and appreciate, and thinks that the book should be read, while he also laments that it reads “less as history and more as ideology, and an ideology with little in the way of faith, hope, or charity.”

You can read Wilsey’s whole review here:

Jesus and John Wayne: A Review

[TK] You write that in studies of the Reformation, “Zwingli has long been cast as a lesser man than Martin Luther and as the warm-up act for John Calvin.” You argue, however, that “neither view stands up to scrutiny.” How should we think about Zwingli’s role in the Reformation?

[BG] Huldrych Zwingli is largely forgotten for two reasons. First, as a contemporary of Martin Luther he remains largely overshadowed by the German reformer. Traditionally, the focus has almost exclusively been on their debate over the Lord’s Supper, and Zwingli is usually characterized as having reduced the sacrament to a mere memorial meal.

Secondly, there is an assumption that anything significant from Zwingli was largely taken up and developed by John Calvin, who is regarded as the true founder of the Reformed tradition. Zwingli is seen as provincially Swiss while Calvin was the great international reformer. One consequence of these enduring perspectives is the virtual absence of Zwingli’s writings in good modern translations.

Among all of Zwingli’s intellectual influences, none was more important than the Dutch humanist and biblical scholar Desiderius Erasmus. What was it about Erasmus that made such a profound impact?

As a young priest Zwingli idolized Erasmus for his belief that the study of the classics was crucial for the reform of Christianity. Zwingli was a zealous student of Greek and Latin literature as well as of the Bible. He embraced Erasmus’ call to read the Bible in the original languages and to the study the works of the church fathers – many of whom Erasmus edited. Zwingli was also deeply influenced by Erasmus’ position on the symbolic nature of the sacraments and his emphasis on the imitation of Christ in the sanctified life. Although their friendship broke down, Zwingli never lost his admiration for the Dutchman.

How did Zwingli end up in Zurich, and how did the Reformation unfold in that city?

By 1518 Zwingli had an established reputation as a preacher. He was priest at a monastery in Einsiedeln, to which many of the leading families of Zurich came on pilgrimage. Zwingli was ambitious and wanted to come to Zurich as a priest and worked hard to be elected. He began his preaching in the Grossmünster – the principal church in Zurich – in January 1519. He immediately introduced a new form of sermon. Instead of using the lectionary he began with the first chapter of the Gospel of Matthew and preached through the whole book. The people should hear the whole Word of God. He did the same with the Old Testament.

Zwingli’s preaching was the catalyst for the Reformation in the city. His sermons also addressed the Christian life, and that included social and political issues, above all the mercenary service. God demanded repentance and renewal. Zwingli declared mercenary service an offense against God and denounced what he saw as moral corruption. His preaching inspired groups of figures to study the Bible and supporters for reform grew in Zurich around Zwingli. Zwingli’s preaching and the influence of Luther’s teaching on justification proved powerful. Following Erasmus, Zwingli became skeptical about many teachings of the Roman Catholic Church, such as the intercession of the saints. He was supported by key members of the ruling Council, enabling his reform ideas to gain political support.

By 1522 he was publicly confronting the church hierarchy on questions of the freedom of a Christian and clerical celibacy. He staged two public disputations in 1523 under the authority of the Zurich council at which his ideas became more radical. The only authority of the church should be the Bible; there was no need for bishops and hierarchy, and the mass was an abomination. Again, the support of influential families in the city made his agenda possible. There was enormous opposition from Catholics on the one side and, on the other, from the radicals (mostly former friends), who thought he had not gone far or fast enough.

In 1524 by order of the council, churches were stripped of all art and religious objects and their walls were whitewashed. At Easter 1525 the Reformation was formally instituted with abolition of the mass and the celebration of a new Reformed order of the Lord’s Supper. Zurich had formally left the Roman church.

Readers familiar with Reformation history may recall that Zwingli and Luther disagreed vehemently about the nature of the Lord’s Supper. Why was Zwingli’s “symbolic” view seen as so provocative?

Far more emphatically than Luther, Zwingli denounced the Catholic mass as an abomination. His chief argument was that priests were repeating the sacrifice of Christ on the altar. That sacrifice, he argued, had been offered once and was wholly sufficient. It was blasphemous to claim any need to reenact it. That would deny the efficacy of Christ’s death on the cross and resurrection.

Further, the bread and wine could not become the body and blood of Christ because the Son of God was no longer physically in the world. The Creeds made absolutely clear that he sits at the right hand of the Father. He is present in the world spiritually. Therefore, the Lord’s Supper must be a spiritual meal in which through faith Christians are united with Christ.

Zwingli’s ideas were heresy for Catholics who claimed he was denying the traditional teaching of the Church. Rejection of the mass was denial of the heart of Christianity. Martin Luther saw Zwingli as denying Christ’s own words when he said, “This is my body.” Zwingli claimed that Christ meant, “This signifies my body.” For Luther this was a perversion of the Gospel and demonstrated that Zwingli and his followers were “fanatics.” Luther argued that Christ meant that “is” means “Is” and that he is physically present in the sacrament. For him, there could be no compromise with Zwingli. They met once at Marburg and could not agree on the sacrament and remained hostile to one another.

Zwingli’s life came to an abrupt conclusion, as he died in battle in 1531. You say that he perished as a “casualty of his own willingness to use force to religious ends.” What accounts for the literal combativeness of Zwingli’s last years?

Although he is usually associated with the city of Zurich, that was never Zwingli’s perspective. He believed that the whole Swiss people had been called by God to embrace the Gospel. He saw himself as a prophet in the tradition of the Old Testament summoned to preach the Bible and ensure that all people heard God’s Word. From the time of his arrival in Zurich at the end of 1518 he understood that reform of the faith was not possible without the support of temporal authority. He made no distinction between the religious and the political, and his vision of the godly community was based on ancient Israel: king and prophet presiding over the whole community.

Zwingli understood the church to embrace the whole visible community, believers and unbelievers. There were two forms of righteousness, divine and human. The prophet declared God’s righteousness and called the people to follow Christ. The magistrates ruled by laws necessary to govern the community, implementing just governance and punishing offenders. The two spheres were closely related but distinct. In that sense, Zwingli’s Reformation always had a strong political character. The magistrates carried God’s will through just rule of the state while the prophets declared God’s Word and admonished the rulers when they failed in their duties. It was not a theocracy as the clergy did not control government.

Zwingli’s vision of the godly community, as I say, was envisaged for all the Swiss, but he believed that God’s Word was being thwarted by supporters of the Catholic Church and of the mercenary service. His conviction was that if the people were exposed to the preaching of Scripture they would be converted. He increasingly came to the conclusion that the opponents of the Gospel, as he saw them, could only be overcome by force. The magistrates should take up the sword to further the true religion.

He devised military plans by which Zurich and her allies to break the Catholic forces and establish preaching. By 1531 he had become wholly convinced that this was the only way and that if they failed the Reformation failed. Many of his colleagues were worried by his bellicose tendencies. Zwingli’s decision to support armed conflict proved his downfall as he fell in battle in October 1531.

Nearly 25 years ago as a first-year seminarian, I read Adler’s section on understanding as a prerequisite for critique.  It struck me then, and still strikes me now, as nothing less than an application of Jesus’s golden rule. Love of neighbor requires that we seek understanding, treating others as we would want to be treated.

Adler wrote:

You must be able to say, with reasonable certainty, “I understand,” before you can say any one of the following things: “I agree,” or “I disagree,” or “I suspend judgment.”

For those who don’t do this, he says:

There is actually no point in answering critics of this sort. The only polite thing to do is to ask them to state your position for you, the position they claim to be challenging. If they cannot do it satisfactorily, if they cannot repeat what you have said in their own words, you know that they do not understand, and you are entirely justified in ignoring their criticisms.

Alder goes on:

When you find the rare person who shows that he understands what you are saying as well as you do, then you can delight in his agreement or be seriously disturbed by his dissent.

Adler counseled that when you disagree with someone’s work, you should do so reasonably, not disputatiously or contentiously. You should respect the difference between knowledge and mere personal opinion by offering reasons for any critical judgment you make. Maybe, he said, the author is uninformed or misinformed. Maybe the argument is illogical or incomplete. But you have to show that this is the case by presenting arguments to advance your claim.

The latter point was made by C. S. Lewis in his 1941 essay on the fallacy of what he called “Bulverism” —another piece that should be required reading today.

You must show that a man is wrong before you start explaining why he is wrong.

The modern method is to assume without discussion that he is wrong and then distract his attention from this (the only real issue) by busily explaining how he became so silly.

I thought about both of these pieces when reading a post by Kevin DeYoung in World Opinions. DeYoung, who did his PhD in early modern history under John Coffey at the University of Birmingham, offers a starting answer to the question of how we interpret the past:

In dealing with texts and people from the past, we should—in so far as possible, and as the first and most important line of intellectual inquiry—endeavor to see things their way.

That last phrase, “seeing things their way,” was made popular by the famed British intellectual historian Quentin Skinner (b. 1940), one of the founders of the Cambridge School of the history of political thought.

DeYoung explains:

Opposed to the reductionistic historiography of the 1960s, Skinner tried to steer a middle course between the materialist school (which crammed everything into Marxist or Freudian categories) and the idealist school (which tended to put Great Thinkers in supposed conversations with other Great Thinkers).

Skinner’s conviction was that the historian’s first job was to make every effort “to see things their way” . . . .

To be sure, historians are not prohibited from criticizing texts and persons from the past, but prior to criticism, they should seek to understand historical agents as they understood themselves.

DeYoung quotes David Bebbington reflecting on this method:

Only if the agents are content that their intentions have not been misrepresented can the account stand.

This principle is becoming depressingly uncommon in some quarters of Christian history writing, where selective and tendentious readings are praised as long as they reach the correct conclusions.

DeYoung again:

We should be slow to impute unstated motives to people in the past and hesitant to think we have uncovered the “real” reasons for their ideas and actions. Again, Coffey and Chapman put it well:

Some historians are still inclined to explain religious belief as a mask for more fundamental social, economic, or political interests, or as a reflection of psychological needs. Such approaches are deeply problematic because they allow historians to ignore what their subjects actually say.

If the problem with Christian historians used to be hagiography (making our religious heroes into uncomplicated saints), the danger today is hamartiography (making our religious opponents into unmitigated sinners).

Too many historical reconstructions—either on the academic level or of the more casual journalistic variety—are adept at highlighting the worst things someone has said or done and then using those sins and mistakes to deconstruct an entire movement, era, tradition, theology, or people group. The problem is not that we are made to reckon with the failures of the past. The problem is with any historical approach that traffics in monocausal explanations, judges the past by the concerns of the present, and applies its own method unevenly.

When our people are in the dock, we want nuance, caution, carefulness, and precision. When our ideological opponents are being evaluated, however, we are quick to make unflattering connections, assume motives, and make the evidence fit the story we want to tell. . . .

Of course, doing history in this way does not mean that everyone will agree with our interpretations. But careful criticism (where necessary) mingled with genuine appreciation (where appropriate) is not the same as quick, constant, and vituperative denunciation.

You can read DeYoung’s whole piece here. And think about these principles the next time you read a history that offers a neat and tidy history narratives filled with uncomplicated characters who do either all good or all bad.

In an earlier interview with historian and Graham biographer Grant Wacker, I asked him about the background of this development by Graham to address racial justice through his ministry. He responded:

Till then, his racial justice efforts were mostly memorable for starting to de-segregate his crusade audiences in 1953 (possibly 1952). In the context of the early 1950s, insisting that he would not tolerate segregated audiences was a momentous and courageous step. One Graham biographer, generally not sympathetic to him, called it his “handsomest hour.” But 1953 was not 1957. “Time makes ancient truth uncouth,” the poet James Russell Lowell had said. Graham knew that he had to do more.

From the beginning at the Garden, Graham saw that his audiences were overwhelmingly white. A few days in, he contacted his black friend Howard Jones, the pastor of a large African-American Christian Missionary Alliance church in Cleveland, and asked what he should do about it. Jones advised, Do not wait for blacks to come to you. You need to go to them. The sub-text was clear: you and everything else about your crusade—associates, artists, music, choir, and congregation—present a virtually solid white front. If blacks are hesitant to come, what would you expect?

Inviting King—the most prominent black Christian in America—was a logical next step.

The Montgomery Bus Boycott—led by King—had ended just seven months earlier, in December 1956.

The two men were different, obviously in many ways.

King was 5’7″. Graham was 6’2″.

Both were Southerners. King, the son of a pastor, was born in Atlanta, Georgia; Graham was reared on his family’s dairy farm outside of Charlotte, North Carolina.

King was 28 years old at the time. Graham was 38.

King would not live to see his 40th birthday before being murdered by a lone assassin in 1968. Graham lived to be 99, dying in 2018.

On July 5, Graham and King had a telephone conversation, and afterward, Graham associate (and brother-in-law) Leighton Ford wired a telegram to King officially inviting him to pray at the crusade. King accepted the invitation three days later.

On Thursday, July 18, Graham introduced him to the assembly, saying,

A great social revolution is going on in the United States today.

Dr. King is one of its leaders, and we appreciate his taking time out of his busy schedule to come and share this service with us tonight.

King prayed as follows:

Let us pray.

O God, our Heavenly Father—out of whose mind this great cosmic universe has been created, toward whom the weary and perplexed of all generations turn for consolation and direction—we come before Thy presence this evening thanking Thee for the many blessings of life.

We come recognizing our dependence on Thee.

We also come, O God, with an awareness:

The fact that we have not always given our lives to that which is high and noble.

In the midst of all of the high and noble aspects of justice,
we followed injustice.

We stand amid the forces of truth,
and yet we deliberately lie.

We stand amid the compelling urgency of the Lord of love, as exemplified in the life of Jesus Christ,
and yet we live our lives so often in the dungeons of hate.

For all of these sins, O God, forgive.

And in these days of emotional tension—when the problems of the world are gigantic in extent and chaotic in detail—give us penetrating vision, broad understanding, power of endurance, and abiding faith, and save us from the paralysis of crippling fear.

And O God, we ask Thee to help us to work with renewed vigor for a warless world and for a brotherhood that transcends race or color.

We thank Thee this evening for the marvelous things which have been done in this city, and through the dynamic preachings of this great evangelist.

And we ask Thee, O God, to continue blessing him. Give him continued power and authority.

And as we look into him tonight, grant that our hearts and spirit will be opened to the divine inflow.

All of these things we ask, in the name of Him who taught us to pray.

Our Father [audience also begins to pray],
who art in heaven,
hallowed be Thy name. . . .

[Audience continues prayer without King.]

You can hear some of the audio in the following clip:

The cumulative effect of this depressing pattern is that everyday evangelicals often don’t find much that’s immediately familiar in coverage of evangelicals. (Unless of course they watch Fox News or listen to talk radio or buy “evangelical” books from the airport newsstand.) When’s the last time you read something on evangelical pastors who handle politics in a thoughtful way? It’s like the proverbial evangelical tree falling in the forest. If it doesn’t cause a sensation or get reviled, does it still exist?

All this may help explain how refreshing it was to read Melanie Ross’s excellent Evangelical Worship: An American Mosaic (Oxford, 2021). As a member of a large evangelical congregation myself, there is much that is familiar, and much to ponder, in this challenging but empathetic study. Ross’s book also does something that almost no scholarly work on the history of evangelicalism ever does: discuss what happens in actual church services. As the great scholar of evangelicals David Bebbington has often noted, as central as church services are to evangelicals’ lives, the historical and anthropological evidence for what happens in those services – especially prior to the widespread recording of such services in the church website era – is vanishingly thin.

Ross is Associate Professor of Liturgical Studies at Yale Divinity School, and an expert on church hymnody, liturgical practices, the history of American worship. She comes out of an evangelical background herself. In her book, Ross reviews her own experience growing up evangelical, especially with regard to worship practices. She holds a view that I suspect is common among liturgical experts who are also practicing believers: ambivalence about the heightened commercialization of worship music, combined with a realization that churches to some extent have to cater to the musical tastes of their congregants. Ultimately God moves among people worshipping in Spirit and truth, regardless of the genre and musical accompaniment. But Ross doesn’t think that truth lets churches off the hook from taking their musical choices seriously.

Ross argues that the fading “traditional vs. contemporary” dichotomy of the worship wars – which was never as clear a distinction as polemicists suggested – is now settling into a “mosaic” model of worship styles, varying by congregations. Churches are not static; they are normally navigating tensions within the congregation itself with regard to worship practices. Still, she wants us to remember the treasures of the great tradition of evangelical hymnody. A generation that loses touch with that tradition is impoverished for it.

Ross surveys a range of evangelical congregations where she did field work and interviews, to get the texture of worship practices and competing views about worship styles and songs. Nearly all of her “evangelical” churches unquestionably fit that description, but they are largely nondenominational, urban/suburban, and usually connected to the historic evangelical or charismatic movements. Park Street Church in Boston, and Moody Church in Chicago, are her first two case studies: historic evangelical congregations, though not usual stops on the politicized menagerie tour. They’re also struggling with how to respect their evangelical traditions in music, while not coming off as stuffy or inflexible.

Instead of the strict traditional vs. contemporary dichotomy, Ross shows that recurring tensions over competing goods commonly play out within the same congregation. Often large congregations have a worship minister who worries about the ahistorical, commercialized nature of worship music. But the minister knows there are limits about how much one might wisely fight against the tide of popular taste.

Another key tension is how much congregational participation in singing is expected. At Moody Church, the music minister overtly trains the congregation in the basic practices of choral singing. At North Point Church in Atlanta, the ministerial team cranks up the music so loud that you can’t hear yourself singing anyway, and it puts no expectation on anyone to sing, lest any visiting seekers feel uncomfortable. But this practice bothers some of the worship staff at North Point, one of whom complains to Ross about how many attendees just stand silently during songs, starting blankly at the stage while holding a Starbucks cup.

In some chapters, music fades into the background as Ross tackles difficult congregational questions such as racial inequality and ethnic violence. Such matters are actually not incidental to worship music, especially in more charismatic settings (like a pseudonymous Vineyard congregation she visited on the West Coast) where music leaders also have significant praying and speaking roles. Ross notes that she visited the Vineyard church shortly after the 2016 killings of Alton Sterling and Philando Castile. Machelle, one of the only black members of the congregation, was also a music leader. The church dealt awkwardly with the news of the killings, reflecting the classic dilemma of what political and cultural issues deserve direct mention during a worship service. Machelle regarded her nearly all-white church as “vague and unclear” in its response to police violence against black men.

Ross includes a chapter on a pseudonymous “emergent” church in Portland, which charmingly posted a “No Smoking or Consuming Cannabis Inside” sign at the entrance to its rented warehouse. This is a useful examination of the challenges facing emergent churches circa 2016, but it is perhaps the chapter that seems the most passé now. One suspects that most emergent churches have either closed, abandoned the emergent model, and/or fully embraced progressive theology in the past decade, so I found myself wondering about the ongoing pertinence of the emergent movement within the “evangelical” mosaic.

Conversely, perhaps the most rewarding section of the book is Ross’s analysis of Keith and Kristyn Getty’s music ministry. Theirs is perhaps the epitome of the evangelical mosaic’s impulse to offer music that seems affective and relevant, while also tapping into the treasures of the historic tradition. Those (like me) who don’t have formal musical training might get a little lost in the details in this section, but the Gettys (and apparently Ross) are convinced that composers and songwriters can identify qualities in melody and lyrics that make a song enduring, and transmissible across time and culture.

Kristyn Getty specifically cites “Be Thou My Vision” as an example of a Christian song that works with almost any (competent) musical accompaniment, or none at all. The Gettys are helping a new generation of worship leaders to lead churches in songs that have that enduring quality, both musically and theologically. “Enduring,” in this way of thinking, is far preferable to “current.”

I am only scratching the surface here regarding the rich detail that Ross’s book reveals about evangelical worship culture in the U.S. (One can only imagine the rich analysis one could undertake for the similar vibrant but contested cultures of the evangelical worlds of Brazil, Nigeria, China, and more.) The conclusion one reaches in reading this profound analysis, however, is that “worship” is bigger, more complex, and more important to a Christian’s identity than most evangelicals or scholars of evangelicals knew.

It’s also far more complicated than the old “traditional vs. contemporary” wars, which are now passing from the scene. In Ross’s analysis, “worship wars” was never really the right way to frame it anyway. To Ross, “evangelical worship is best understood as a theological culture that must continually negotiate the paradoxes of continuity and change, consensus and conversation, and sameness and difference.” Want to understand what she means, and how it applies to your congregation? Read Professor Ross’s outstanding book.

In an 1886 address titled “Our Lord’s Second Coming, a Motive to World-wide Evangelism,” Pierson explained that “imminent” was not synonymous with “impending.”

Pierson, still living in a world with exceedingly limited options for transatlantic communications, proposed a comparable scenario:

For more on Pierson, see Dana L. Robert, Occupy until I Come: A. T. Pierson and the Evangelization of the World (Eerdmans, 2003).

The book links provided here are part of the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to Amazon.com.

Trueman explains his third way in a longform piece at First Things, titled “The Failure of Evangelical Elites,” a thought-provoking article which I commend to your attention. There is a lot to discuss in the piece, but here I focus on the parts most relevant to me: his discussion of the work and legacy of historians Mark Noll and George Marsden (my doctoral adviser at Notre Dame).

Trueman notes that when he teaches Marsden’s Outrageous Idea of Christian Scholarship at Grove City, students find Marsden appealing but somewhat unrealistic, given the current intolerant mood of elite academia and corporate culture.

I definitely think that Trueman is on to something, and I do find that Noll and Marsden’s arguments sound increasingly like something out of a past generation. I would add that their histories of evangelicalism and fundamentalism, which to me are still the gold standard for incisiveness and historical method, also (tragically) seem a bit outdated now. Their works were critical but empathetic toward evangelicals. The most popular histories of evangelicalism in the past decade have instead been written in an activist, anti-evangelical mode. Loathing has often replaced empathy in the study of American evangelicals, even among some Christian historians.

Marsden is also critical of the modern academy, however, in ways that Trueman doesn’t quite explain (it’s already a long piece!). In Outrageous Idea and in The Soul of the American University, Marsden held the modern secular academy accountable to its own stated commitment to postmodernism and diversity. If we are all admittedly coming from a cultural perspective, he argued, and if a more vibrant academy includes a range of diverse perspectives and experiences, then why exclude outspoken Christians from the academy? Why shouldn’t Christians (or people of other traditional faiths, such as Jews) have a “seat at the table”? Marsden already realized in the 1990s that academic “diversity” is usually not diverse ideologically.

For a brief moment in the 1990s and early 2000s, it seemed that Marsden’s call for ideological consistency might have a chance of making room for more Christian perspectives in elite academia. He himself won the Bancroft Prize in American History from Columbia University, arguably the most prestigious award for an academic historian of America, for his critical yet admiring biography of Jonathan Edwards. I cannot imagine a Christian historian winning such a prize for such a book today.

Moreover, the early 2000s saw the beginning of Baylor’s “2012 vision,” in which Baylor set out to become a research university while maintaining a clear commitment to Christian orthodoxy, at least of a very broad kind. The fate of that vision is another topic for another time, but successive leadership changes since the mid-2000s, and Baylor’s horrific football sexual assault scandal, certainly have not helped Baylor to maintain institutional focus or entire credibility, especially on the clarity of its Christian commitments.

Trueman suggests that elite recognition in academia requires theological and ethical compromise, a claim which one could back up with examples across fields in biblical studies, ethics, psychology, social work, and more. Yet I am still not convinced that the position of traditionalist Christians vis a vis elite academia is quite so black-and-white as Trueman suggests. (One might expect me to have some doubts, as a Marsden disciple.) After all, Trueman himself teaches at an outstanding Christian college that scores well by the usual secular academic metrics, and he has published with elite academic outlets including Oxford University Press. His undeniable credibility as a Christian scholar is bolstered by those facts.

For most believers in academia, there is no necessary reason why one’s convictions about theological or cultural issues should, by definition, keep you from being able to get an academic teaching position. (The awful job market might be a far more difficult problem.) Even more so, scholars like Trueman, me, Noll, Marsden, and others have found university presses willing to publish our work in religious history, because our work meets normal academic standards one must meet to get published there. I have certainly encountered subtle or overt forms of anti-Christian bigotry from prospective employers and from anonymous readers at presses and journals, but I don’t believe that in all fields or endeavors, one’s faith per se will block you from academic success.

The problem comes, as Trueman notes, when you express views that dominant secular academia regards as abhorrent. This is hardly restricted to traditionalist Christians. The University of Chicago geophysicist Dorian Abbot recently had an invited MIT lecture cancelled because of dismay over his criticism of the current academic rule of “diversity, equity, and inclusion.” Because of tenure, such cases rarely result in termination, but universities can still make life difficult for those who stray from the mainstream ideology.

Early career, pre-tenured scholars may find that they do not need (or want) to speak out on issues that run against the dominant ideology. It becomes more difficult, of course, when your research is directly related to a controversial topic. University of Texas sociologist Mark Regnerus (a Catholic) fell under a massive campaign of harassment, shaming, and investigation for daring to publish research in 2012 that raised questions about the flourishing of children raised by same-sex parents. But he already had tenure and thus survived the storm.

There are many fields and topics where one’s faith or personal beliefs need not precipitate a culture war fracas, however, such as Trueman’s 1994 book Luther’s Legacy: Salvation and English Reformers, 1525-1556, with Oxford University Press. One could cite many such examples of Christians who write on religious history from various confessional perspectives and find outlets with top secular presses such as Oxford or Yale (with which Marsden published his Edwards biography).

Is it possible that presses and journals will stop publishing work by people who (a la Dorian Abbot) are otherwise known to have views that are abhorrent to dominant academic and media interests? Sure, and surely it has already happened (at least subtly) in some instances. But as long as traditionalists and others with undesirable views can still be published with secular presses, they should do so. It is essential for many Christian scholars to be engaged in specifically Christian publishing, too, and few secular presses would want to touch Trueman’s The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self. (Thank goodness that some Christian presses, like Crossway, still will!)

But some Christian scholars will also keep a place at the table in elite secular academia, especially by publishing in secular outlets as they have opportunity. There is a long and distinguished Christian tradition of doing so when possible. Christian intellectual leaders such as Jonathan Edwards, Herman Bavinck, and C.S. Lewis maintained a distinctive Christian voice in the elite academic circles of their eras – though admittedly each worked in a far more Christianized culture than ours.

A full-blown Christian intellectual witness ideally includes maintaining a role for such Christian scholars, so long as maintaining that place does not require theological and cultural compromise. We might pray that in the post-Christian West, our culture’s ostensible commitment to the principles of classical liberalism and tolerance might keep the door open for a Christian intellectual witness in scattered nooks and crannies of dominant academic culture.

God hardly needs our academic contributions to build the Kingdom. But from Paul’s witness at Mars Hill through today, there have always been Christian voices defending gospel truths in the groves of academe. To whatever extent we can, let’s carry on that witness in our generation.

[The book links provided here are part of the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to Amazon.com.]

“The Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) is not what it used to be. Founded in 1845 amid controversies over the morality of Christian slaveholding, the SBC went on to become the de facto established church for much of the white South. By the mid-twentieth century it was the largest Protestant denomination in America. Starting in 1979, the SBC went through what supporters call the “Conservative Resurgence,” which initiated leadership changes that made the denomination more uniformly evangelical and conservative on doctrinal and cultural issues.

Walker Robins’s fascinating Between Dixie and Zion tells a story about the older version of the SBC, a denomination that was never united around today’s politicized conservative Christian beliefs. Robins’s engaging narrative shows why the SBC in the 1940s was not firmly pro-Zionist or pro-Israel. Instead, the denomination’s pastors and members reflected a range of views derived from travel narratives (or actual travel to Palestine), prophecy belief about Israel and the last days, and, most importantly, missionary work among Jews, Muslims, and Orthodox Christians of the Middle East. All of their views reflected widespread “Orientalism,” in Edward Said’s classic term, that undergirded American and European assumptions about the peoples and cultures of the Middle East. Orientalist “knowledge” of the Middle East was often fantastical, anecdotal, and politicized, and it rarely took a studied interest in the people of the Middle East as people per se.

Orientalist views of the Middle East help explain why, despite an enduring interest among American Christians in missions to the Middle East, that interest was rarely matched by sustained, realistic, and effective missionary work. Exceptional figures such as Shukri Mosa, an Arab who grew up in northern Palestine, did sustain some early SBC missions in the region. Mosa had experienced conversion and became a Baptist while working as a peddler of Holy Land goods in Texas in the early 1900s. He kept up various Baptist works in Palestine, supported by both SBC leaders and Northern Baptists, until his sudden death in 1928. Mosa was a pragmatic Christian anti-Zionist, believing that new Jewish settlers caused logistical problems for his educational and evangelistic works, and he also regarded the Jews in Palestine as commonly irreligious and “more Bolshevist than Jew” (46).

White Baptists also produced faithful missionaries, though few gave as much meticulous devotion to Palestine as Mosa did. At the other end of the dedication spectrum was the preposterously brief missionary tenure of Texas Baptist premillennialist preacher W. A. Hamlett. Hamlett blew into Palestine like a tornado in 1921, promising to create a string of missionary stations, schools, and hospitals. Within a month, he was headed back to Texas, convinced that missionary work in Palestine was impossible. Mosa was embarrassed and pled with Baptist leaders in the United States to send others who could “redeem our great Baptist name” after the Hamlett debacle. Once back in Texas, Hamlett resigned his pastorate and began working full-time for the Ku Klux Klan. “This role was likely better for him,” Robins drily notes (54).

No single person or event was responsible for the gradual turn in the SBC toward a more pro-Zionist or pro-Israel stance before 1948, the year of Israeli statehood. Instead, it was a cause championed by scattered figures such as the indefatigable Baptist convert from Judaism Jacob Gartenhaus. Gartenhaus was ostensibly an SBC missionary to Jews of the American South, but Gartenhaus was even more successful at contending among Southern Baptists for Zionism, a Jewish state in Palestine, and Christian evangelism of Jews. Other pro-Zionist figures included the Woman’s Missionary Union writer Myrtle Robinson Creasman and the ultra-combative premillennialist preacher J. Frank Norris. The SBC remained somewhat insulated from the wars over fundamentalism and modernism that buffeted northern Protestant denominations, and SBC leaders did not uniformly endorse the common fundamentalist belief in dispensational premillennialism or its prominent role for the Jews of Palestine in the last days. To make things even more complicated, not all premillennialists were Zionists. Yet Norris waged brutal battles against Baptist pastors and institutions including Southwestern Seminary (Fort Worth) and Baylor University, partly over his undying commitment to premillennialism and Zionism. In 1948, Norris and his allies tried to get the annual meeting of the SBC to congratulate President Harry Truman for officially recognizing Israel, but messengers (delegates) declined to do so.

These splits remind us of the difficulty of defining the SBC theologically before the Conservative Resurgence. Southern Baptists were clearly Southern and Baptist, but it is not as clear that they were “conservative evangelicals” (2) in the era of the fundamentalist-modernist controversy. “Evangelical,” in the era Robins covers, was structurally Northern, led by institutions such as Moody Bible Institute and the National Association of Evangelicals, which the SBC did not join. Even many Southern Baptists who were conservative theologically did not embrace the term evangelical, hearing officious Yankeedom in that word. Robins knows all this, but Between Dixie and Zion could have done a bit more to sort out the theological currents swirling underneath the SBC’s “Grand Compromise” (102), which mandated unity in the name of missions and unity for the sake of the SBC itself. Norris obviously tried to blow up that compromise, but I found myself wanting to understand more about the extent to which the old SBC actually was “evangelical.” As Robins notes, President Truman was the best-known Southern Baptist politician of the era but was definitely not a fundamentalist nor an evangelical in any useful sense. Perhaps the pre-1948 (and pre-1979) SBC was a sort of denominational tertium quid on the American religious landscape?

In any case, Robins offers a deeply informative and highly engaging history in Between Dixie and Zion, a book that anyone interested in Baptist history or American views of Israel should definitely read.”

Walls was the author of many articles on missions and world Christianity, but is probably best known for his book The Missionary Movement in Christian History: Studies in the Transmission of Faith (1996).

Here’s a brief excerpt from one of Walls’s articles, “World Christianity, Theological Education and Scholarship” (2011), making points about world Christianity and Christian scholarship that seem even more pertinent a decade later:

See also Mark R. Gornik, “Profile: Andrew Walls and the Transformation of Christianity”

For fifteen years, I’ve been a church historian who has taught courses on topics such as Baptist History, Fundamentalism and Evangelicalism, and American Religious History. For my PhD at Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary, I wrote a dissertation titled “The Development of Baptist Fundamentalism in the South, 1940-1980.” Though I never published the dissertation, I have written several journal articles and book chapters that were related to the larger project. Based largely on that research, I want to offer some thoughts on Southern Baptist history, as well as some current tensions within the Convention.

As a historian, I define fundamentalism as militant conservative dissent against progressive trends in the church and the culture. Fundamentalism is first and foremost a reactionary posture born out of concerns about real or perceived drift away from orthodox theology and faithful piety. One important strand of mid-century Baptist fundamentalism found within the SBC was what I call denominational fundamentalism. The denominational fundamentalists were theologically conservative and committed to evangelism and missions. However, that hardly made them unique since the same could be said of nearly all Southern Baptists.

Two key factors made the denominational fundamentalists stand out from most Southern Baptist conservatives. First, SBC fundamentalism was a populist movement that deeply distrusted institutions and leaders, nearly all of whom they perceived to be unfaithful compromisers at best or disconnected elites at worst. Because of this dynamic, earlier historians who wrote on this topic used the phrases “anti-conventionism” and “fundamentalism” as synonyms. Southern Baptist fundamentalists perceived themselves as righteous outsiders within the Convention who were called to hold the suspect insiders accountable.

Another defining feature of SBC fundamentalists was the influence of far-right views of American culture. I don’t mean the postwar conservative intellectual tradition or the conservative wings of the Republican or Democratic parties of that era, though fundamentalists were political conservatives. Rather, by far-right views of culture I’m talking about fears of communist infiltration of the US government, the defense of Jim Crow style racism in the South, and anti-Catholic bigotry. Often, these three themes were intertwined in elaborate right-wing conspiracy theories. Think the John Birch Society rather than William F. Buckley or Barry Goldwater.

Denominational fundamentalists were similar to the Independent Baptists in many respects, with the major exception that they continued to (begrudgingly) support the Cooperative Program and remain within the Convention. Many fundamentalists eventually left the SBC to become Independent Baptists. By the 1970s, the fundamentalists who remained in the SBC were shedding most of their earlier prejudices and penchant for conspiracy theories. They were also distanced themselves further from the Independent Baptists because the latter were increasingly tempted by the King James Only view of the Bible and riven with debates over how much separation was required to be faithful. By the mid-1970s SBC fundamentalists were rejecting the fundamentalist label completely, arguing it was no longer accurate. They simply called themselves conservatives instead.

By the time denominational fundamentalists were dropping the fundamentalist label, Southern Baptist moderates—an informal coalition of theological progressives and denominational insiders—had consolidated their control of most SBC institutions. The year 1979 marked the beginning of a two-decade clash between conservatives and moderates as they wrestled for control of the SBC. Since the conservatives eventually won, this period is often called the Conservative Resurgence. The former denominational fundamentalists were a key part of the conservative coalition that carried the day against the moderates.

Throughout the Conservative Resurgence, moderates frequently claimed that all conservatives were fundamentalists. That was far too simplistic. Certainly, conservatives were all committed to historic orthodoxy, rallying around the doctrine of biblical inerrancy. But many conservatives had never been fundamentalists and none of them were anti-conventionists of the sort that were common a generation earlier. Southern Baptist conservatives wanted doctrinal renewal for the sake of greater effectiveness in evangelism and missions.

I believe this information provides some helpful historical context for understanding the current tensions within the Convention. Some Southern Baptists are concerned about alleged progressive drift in the contemporary SBC. However, many of them seem more like the denominational fundamentalists of the 1950s or 1960s than the resurgent conservatives of the 1980s. The prevalence of institutional mistrust, populist concerns about leaders, the attraction to conspiracy theories, and the influence of far-right views of culture echo mid-20th century Southern Baptist fundamentalism. More important, they reflect trends in the wider culture that have grown increasingly pronounced over the past decade or so.

To be sure, there are real progressive threats to Christian faithfulness in American culture. But the answer to these challenges is not a new Conservative Resurgence in the SBC. At the risk of stating the obvious, we are already thoroughly conservative. This is not 1979. The progressive threats are “out there” rather than within the Convention. We must not capitulate to a reinvigorated fundamentalism that would divide us over personalities, preferences, and politics. That is the spirit of J. Frank Norris, not Adrian Rogers.

I believe the way forward for Southern Baptists is a Great Commandment Resurgence. We need to trust each other, recognize who are real enemies are (the world, the flesh, and the devil), and develop calloused knees and hot hearts for the lost. My prayer is that we would renew our commitment to our conservative confessional consensus and our historic principle of cooperative missions: the “eliciting, combining, and directing” of our energies toward Great Commission faithfulness for the glory of God and the sake of the nations.

See also Thomas Kidd’s recent post, “Who Is a Fundamentalist?“

Jehu J. Hanciles, Migration and the Making of Global Christianity (Eerdmans, foreword by my Baylor colleague Philip Jenkins). “Human migration has long been identified as a driving force of historical change. Building on this understanding, Jehu Hanciles surveys the history of Christianity’s global expansion from its origins through 1500 CE to show how migration—more than official missionary activity or imperial designs—played a vital role in making Christianity the world’s largest religion.”

Gary Scott Smith, Duty and Destiny: The Life and Faith of Winston Churchill (Eerdmans Library of Religious Biography). Winston Churchill was “far from transparent about his religious beliefs and never regularly attended church services as an adult, even considering himself ‘not a pillar of the church but a buttress,’ in the sense that he supported it ‘from the outside.’ But Gary Scott Smith assembles pieces of Churchill’s life and words to convey the profound sense of duty and destiny, partly inspired by his religious convictions, that undergirded his outlook.”

Crawford Gribben, Survival and Resistance in Evangelical America: Christian Reconstruction in the Pacific Northwest (Oxford). If someone other than Crawford Gribben wrote this, I would probably roll my eyes and say “another hit piece on evangelicals!” But I am confident that Gribben, a professor at Queen’s University Belfast and great scholar of both Puritanism and evangelicalism, will approach this topic with great empathy and insight.

Kirsten Fischer, American Freethinker: Elihu Palmer and the Struggle for Religious Freedom in the New Nation (University of Pennsylvania Press). “Fischer reveals that Palmer engaged in person and in print with an array of freethinkers—some famous, others now obscure. The flourishing of diverse religious opinion struck some of his contemporaries as foundational to a healthy democracy while others believed that only a strong Christian faith could support democratic self-governance. This first comprehensive biography of Palmer draws on extensive archival research to tell the life story of a freethinker who was at the heart of the new nation’s protracted contest over religious freedom and free speech—a debate that continues to resonate today.”

Daniel R. Bare, Black Fundamentalists: Conservative Christianity and Racial Identity in the Segregation Era (New York University Press). In my endorsement of this book, I said “Daniel R. Bare’s splendid book . . . will become one of the essential works on American fundamentalism, carrying major implications for the troubles over race and politics confronting many American churches today.”

[The book links provided here are part of the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to Amazon.com.]

Some in the Southern Baptist Convention (those in the “fundamentalist” wing) might accuse me of being a “liberal,” however, even though I am firmly aligned with all the SBC’s doctrinal commitments. Yet I am not a fan of Donald Trump and Trumpism. To some this might implicitly or explicitly disqualify me from good standing within the SBC.

The difference between evangelicals and fundamentalists has been much discussed lately, as observers such as David French have explained what happened at SBC 2021 as a fight between evangelicals and fundamentalists – or “fundamentalist pirates,” to be precise. Tim Keller has likewise tweeted about the negative effects of certain American fundamentalists on the public impression of the world evangelical movement generally.

The terms of “evangelical” and “fundamentalist” are among the most perplexing on the American religious landscape. Very few people identify as fundamentalists any more in America, while more white people identify as evangelicals than are actual evangelicals in the sense of belief or practice. As I discuss in my book Who Is an Evangelical?, this disparity is partly because pollsters since 1976 have routinely asked whether people are “born again” or “evangelical.” But they rarely ask people if they are fundamentalists.

Similarly, many African Americans would fit standard definitions of “evangelical” according to belief and practice, but they do not identify as such either because they are not asked – often pollsters only ask whites if they are evangelicals – or because they reject the term’s political implications.

During the fundamentalist-modernist crisis of the early 20th century, “fundamentalist” became almost synonymous with “evangelical.” Fundamentalist meant those who defended the fundamentals of the Christian faith against modernists, who doubted the full veracity and inspiration of the Bible.

“Fundamentalist” came into some bad odor due to the debacle at the Scopes Trial in 1925, the effect of which was amplified by the play and movie Inherit the Wind, which made William Jennings Bryan’s character look like a deranged buffoon. “Fundamentalist” also took on connotations of any intolerant religious person, so that it was as common to hear the term applied to Muslims as to Christians.

By the post-World War II era, whether a Christian embraced the term “fundamentalist” basically depended upon one’s opinion of Billy Graham. Self-identified fundamentalists said that Graham’s cooperation with mainliners and Catholics was a fatal compromise of the gospel. In 1966, Bob Jones Jr. said that Graham was “doing more harm to the cause of Jesus Christ than any living man.” Bob Jones University remains a flagship institution for American fundamentalism, noting that its doctrinal beliefs accord with the “spirit of historical biblical Fundamentalism.” Independent Baptist churches are probably the most common denominational affiliation that touts and embraces the fundamentalist label today. If you’re going to a church that is King James Bible-only, it seems fair to conclude that it is “fundamentalist.”

The problem comes when people apply the term “fundamentalist” to rivals or enemies (or pirates) who do not claim the label fundamentalist for themselves. I definitely agree with David French’s type of concerns about SBC 2021. The SBC may yet tear itself apart over issues including “Critical Race Theory” (however one defines that), race relations, Republican politics, women’s roles, and more. But I’m not sure that labeling people fundamentalists is going to “move the ball” on the SBC’s problems. (Candidly, I don’t think anything will essentially address those problems other than a great move of the Holy Spirit to renew the denomination in its commitment to humility, transparency, love for one’s brother and sister, evangelism, and faithfulness to the Word of God.)

Part of the difficulty is that, save for those who self-identify as fundamentalists, “fundamentalist” is most often an epithet (as Alvin Plantinga has explained) for those whose whose views on politics, theology, or church life seem more rigid than yours. Then there is the “spirit” of fundamentalism, which has infected both the woke left and the nationalist right. As French says, woke fundamentalism is “a secular version of the religious intensity of the far religious right, rejecting alternative worldviews with the same ferocity that religious fundamentalists reject secular sources of truth.” You only need to spend a few minutes on a typical university campus to get a taste of this intolerant wokeism.

By this point, however, “fundamentalist” seems as much like a tool of rhetoric as a description of how a specific group of religious people would understand themselves. Social media is consumed with incendiary attacks against people of faith, but the priority of empathy undercuts the value of using “fundamentalist” to describe most religious people. If “fundamentalist” is simply a way to place people beyond the pale – to identify them as outside the evangelical movement, to be specific – then it may be rhetorically useful but not much else.

Keller and French would no doubt remind us that internal debates among traditionalist Christians are not likely to get solved on Twitter. And our current problems reflect yet another instance of people in churches being discipled far more by cable news and social media than by the church. The “spirit” of fundamentalism tells us that no difference, politically or theologically, is tolerable, and that our enemies must be destroyed. The spirit of Christ offers a better way: robust truth and robust kindness.

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I was honored to write the entries on Dwight Moody, William Jennings Bryan, Billy Graham, John Piper, and Rick Warren.

The publisher has given me permission to post my entry on Jennings below. (I have added the images for purposes of this post.)

Bryan, William Jennings (1860–1925)

William Jennings Bryan was a popular progressive Democratic politician who lost three elections for the presidency, a pacifist statesman who served as Secretary of State under Woodrow Wilson, a fundamentalist Presbyterian elder who attacked evolution in dozens of speeches and his 1922 book In His Image, an ardent social reformer, and a lawyer who prosecuted the trial of the century despite not having practiced courtroom law for three decades.

Bryan was born in Salem, Illinois, on March 19, 1860, two months before Abraham Lincoln who lived in Springfield, 110 miles north, was nominated to be president of the United States. He was the fourth of ten children born to Silas Willard and Mariah Elizabeth (née Jennings) Bryan, and one of only five who survived to adulthood. In his Memoirs Bryan expressed pride in his upbringing and identity: “I was born in the greatest of all ages. . . . I was born a member of the greatest of all races . . . I was born a citizen of the greatest of all lands” (quoted in Russell 1976, 175).

Bryan’s father, an ardent Jacksonian Democrat, served as a state circuit judge and was narrowly defeated when he ran for Congress in 1872. William was homeschooled through elementary school by his mother in their ten-room house on a 520-acre farm north of Salem.

Young Bryan attended Sunday school in the morning with his Methodist mother and Sunday school in the afternoon with his Baptist father, sowing the seeds for his later ecumenism. At the age of thirteen, Bryan made a personal profession of faith in response to the preaching at a revival of a traveling Cumberland Presbyterian minister. He would later call this the most important day of his life.

At age fifteen Bryan was sent to a private school in Jacksonville, Illinois, 125 miles from home. He stayed there through college, graduating from Illinois University in 1881. After earning a law degree from Union Law College in Chicago, Bryan returned to Jacksonville to work in a law firm.

Bryan met Mary Elizabeth Baird in 1879 and married her five years later. She bore him three children: Ruth (b. 1885), William Jr. (b. 1889), and Grace (b. 1891). To support her husband, Mary enrolled as the only woman at Union Law College, graduating third in her class and then passing the bar exam.

In 1887, the Bryans moved to Lincoln, Nebraska, where he founded a law firm. Four years later, running as a Democrat, he was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives, and he narrowly won reelection two years later. After losing a race for the Senate in 1894, Bryan worked for two years as the editor-in-chief of the Omaha World-Herald newspaper.

After securing the Democratic nomination for president, Bryan was defeated in 1896 by pro-business Republican William McKinley. The day before his nomination, he delivered one of the most famous speeches in American political history, titled “Cross of Gold,” at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago, making the case for bimetallism, or the free coinage of silver, to help increase prosperity in America. He famously responded to the Republican demand to maintain a gold standard by intoning in biblical language, “You shall not press down upon the brow of labor this crown of thorns, you shall not crucify mankind upon a cross of gold” (quoted in Kazin 2006, 61).

After serving as a U.S. Army colonel in the 1898 Spanish-American War, he ran two more unsuccessful presidential campaigns, losing again to McKinley in 1900 and then to Republican William Howard Taft in 1908.

After switching his support to Wilson at the 1912 Democratic convention, which helped secure Wilson’s nomination, President Wilson rewarded him with a cabinet position as Secretary of State, where the pacifist negotiated peace treaties with over thirty nations. It was his proudest achievement in office, though “Hardened, sophisticated diplomats were privately amused at Bryan’s simple faith in man’s moral progress as a force dominating all others in the life and future of the world” (Koening 1971, 511). Bryan resigned on June 9, 1915, because of his inability to persuade Wilson that the U.S. should remain neutral in World War I.

From 1916 to 1925, Bryan actively traveled the country as an orator, lecturer, author, publisher, and public philosopher. In 1921, the Bryans relocated to Florida because of his wife’s health. Bryan led a large Sunday school class at First Presbyterian Church of Miami, which eventually met outdoors where he addressed thousands of listeners each week. Bryan became more closely aligned with fundamentalism, as he was increasingly concerned about the inroads that theological liberalism, or modernism, was making into the home and church. He especially protested that the teaching of evolution was undermining confidence in the authority of the Bible as the moral foundation of the nation. The fundamentalists, in turn, were pleased to have such an accomplished statesmen and powerful rhetorician on their side.

In May of 1925, on a speaking tour in Pittsburgh, Bryan received a telegram from William Bell Riley, a Baptist pastor in Minneapolis who founded the World Fundamentalist Christian Association in 1919. Riley invited him to join the prosecution team for a case in the small town of Dayton, Tennessee, where the ACLU was defending a local high school teacher, John T. Scopes, who had agreed to test a recent ban on teaching that humans originated through evolution rather than through divine creation. Despite being thirty years removed from trying a courtroom case, Bryan agreed to join the team without remuneration. Meanwhile, the famed defense attorney Clarence Darrow—a lapsed Catholic and an agnostic—volunteered to join the other side.

On the next to last day of the eight-day trial held in mid-July, Darrow called Bryan to the stand for cross-examination. During his testimony, Bryan declared, “The only purpose Mr. Darrow has is to slur at the Bible,” with Darrow retorting, “I am examining you on your fool ideas that no intelligent Christian on earth believes” (quoted in Larson 1997, 190). The next day, Darrow successfully asked the court to bring in the jury and declare his client guilty, which kept Darrow from appearing on the witness stand and prevented Bryan from delivering his long-awaited closing address. The jury deliberated for nine minutes, delivered a guilty verdict, and the judge fined Scopes $100.

Five days later, after leading a prayer at the First Southern Methodist Church in Dayton, Bryan died in his sleep at the age of sixty-five. His funeral was held at New York Avenue Presbyterian Church in Washington, D.C., and he was buried atop a hill in Arlington National Cemetery. Flags, by President Calvin Coolidge’s order, were flown at half-mast.

Bryan has not fared well in popular historical memory; he is largely remembered as the only major-party nominee in U.S. history to have lost three presidential elections. The 1960 film Inherit the Wind was an ahistorical morality play that critiqued McCarthyism by using a fictionalized Scopes trial. The character Matthew Harrison Brady represented Bryan, leaving viewers with the impression that the Democrat was a pompous and hypocritical anti-intellectual.

Lost in these distortions is Bryan’s unique role as a conservative Christian, deeply concerned about the eroding moral values in his country (exemplified by his opposition to evolution and his adherence to strict Sabbatarianism), along with a populist and progressive form of politics that championed social reform and the role of government to serve the common man (hence his staunch support of woman’s suffrage, prohibition, popular election of U.S. Senators, transparency in campaign contributions, and his work that led to the establishing of the Department of Labor and the Federal Reserve Act). His leading biographer argues that “only Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson had a greater impact on politics and political culture during the era of reform that began in the mid-1890s and lasted until the early 1920s” (Kazin 2006, 135).

The timing of Bryan’s death, immediately after the media spectacle of the Scopes trial, obscured full consideration of his legacy. “If he had died a year earlier, the public undoubtedly would have remembered him as the political and social reformer that he was—for good or ill, depending upon one’s evaluation of individual reforms—rather than as the zealous defender of a literalist interpretation of the Scriptures” (Russell 1976, 176). Uniting all of his endeavors was his reputation as the “Great Commoner” who supported common laborers and farmers over manufacturers and industrialists and defended traditional morality and Christian faith.

Justin Taylor

See also Fundamentalist-Modernist Controversy; Scopes Monkey Trial

Further Reading

Kazin, Michael. 2006. A Godly Hero: The Life of William Jennings Bryan. New York: Knopf.

Koenig, Louis W. 1971. Bryan: A Political Biography of William Jennings Bryan. New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons.

Larson, Edward. 1997. Summer for the Gods: The Scopes Trial and America’s Continuing Debate over Science and Religion. New York: Basic Books.

Russell, C. Allyn. 1976. “William Jennings Bryan: Statesman-Fundamentalist,” in Voices of American Fundamentalism: Seven Biographical Studies, 162–89. Philadelphia: Westminster Press.

One of the glorious things about the United States system of higher education is freedom for innovation. Whereas some countries actually outlaw or discourage Christian education (e.g. China or Russia) and/or private higher education (e.g., the U.K.), in the United States there are hundreds of private Christian colleges from which to choose. So, how do you tell the difference between them? For example, what is the difference between Texas Christian University and Biola University?

In my research, I have discovered that there are twenty clear decisions that a college or university makes that either demonstrate its Christian commitment, or its desire to follow the rest of higher education crowd. My students and I have actually created a spreadsheet that evaluates every institution according to these factors. What we find is that an institution such as Texas Christian University really should stick with calling itself TCU (it scores a “0”), but an institution like Biola University basically uses Christian criteria in all these decisions. Of those twenty factors, there are really five factors or groups of factors that are the most important to consider when trying to figure out the seriousness with which an institution takes its Christian identity.

Of course, the first place to find out if an institution actually even identifies itself as Christian is to look at the mission statement. TCU claims that its mission is to “to educate individuals to think and act as ethical leaders and responsible citizens in a global community.” In contrast, the mission of Biola University “is biblically centered education, scholarship and service—equipping men and women in mind and character to impact the world for the Lord Jesus Christ.” For secularized institutions, Jesus and God are absent from the mission. Instead, they usually speak in ethical or educational language, but they avoid theological language.

Second, you want to find out who is able to join and lead the community. Are the students, staff, faculty, president, and/or members of the governance board required to be Christian? (e.g., Biola or Taylor University or Wheaton College) Is it some kind of mixture (such as at Baylor, Calvin, or Messiah University)? Or are there no religious requirements for anyone (e.g., Texas Christian University). Depending on the experience you or your future student wants, you should consider these important administrative decisions regarding membership.

Third, you want to find out if there are any required courses related to Christianity. To start, a sure way to spot some differences is whether the department offering the course uses the generic name “Religion,” like my own university, or whether it uses labels such as “Bible,” “Christian Studies,” “Theology,” etc. You can look in the student handbook to see the number of required courses in this area. If it is one or two general religion courses and the students have plenty of options from which to choose, including world religions, the institution is likely not that serious about passing along the Christian tradition (e.g., most every Methodist, Presbyterian USA, or United Church of Christ institution). If, like Biola University, students take 30 hours and receive a minor in Bible, you know it takes education regarding the Christian tradition seriously.

Fourth, you want to look at chapel. To be honest, I have mixed thoughts about this one, since my own qualitative analysis at my institution has found that students generally dislike chapel and find it unhelpful for spiritual growth (and sometimes even a hindrance). You’ll want to corner some innocent-looking students on a campus visit and try to get accurate answers. Depending upon the college student, whether there is required chapel (and how often) can be good or bad. More important than chapel, according to our quantitative and qualitative research, is getting involved in a local church, particularly a college group. I have interviewed plenty of students passionate for Christ, who were not passionate about chapel, but who were nurtured by wonderful college groups, small group, and/or mentors at their church.

Fifth, you want to look at the student life ethos, especially the student handbook. Here, there are four types of Christian institutions. There are those that merely enforce the law in residence life, and focus much of the formation on making sure the liberal democratic virtue of autonomy is respected (e.g., get sexual consent, don’t drink and drive, etc.). They also enforce respect for “diversity,” including affirmation of contemporary elite norms about race, gender, sexuality, etc. These would be your TCU types. Then, there are those Christian institutions who seek to enforce some moral standards, perhaps using an honor code, but they offer no Christian reasoning for the ethical parts of the code to students. Usually such codes are just lists of general virtues you would find at any secular institution, such as “respect,” “responsibility,” “honesty,” “kindness,” etc. Thus, students are simply socialized by university authorities into behaving in accord with broadly acceptable norms of virtue.

Not much better are the Christian institutions that have lots of supposedly Christian rules (e.g., no sex outside of marriage, no alcohol, etc.), but they focus solely on the rules and not a positive Christian vision of sex, drink, and more (like the Pharisees in Mark 10). Finally, there are institutions that actually create a community covenant (often complete with biblical or Christian rationales for the different parts of the covenant) that sets forth a positive Christian vision for students about community, stewardship, sexuality, etc. They ask students to sign these covenants and abide by them. These are the types of institutions that have put tremendous thought into how to live Christian educational life together and ask for mutual accountability (versus taking a simple top-down approach like the rule-focused institutions).

Finally, I want to be clear that these things alone do not make an institution Christian. You could be required to take four courses about Christianity, but if taught by horrible professors who bore you to tears, they might make you wonder why you did not attend State Party U with the rest of your friends. At my own institution, for example, I want my own sons to take religion professors who have maturity and pastoral sensibility, and not a graduate student or assistant professor who wants to discuss the latest doubts with which they are wrestling. Here’s what one student who came to Christ at Baylor had to say about their experience learning from a faith-building professor:

Conversely, you could attend an institution with a theologically rich community covenant, but be ruled by an authoritative RA in residence life who has no understanding of character or spiritual development. People make the most difference, although the administrative structures do help or hinder those people.

Also, I should note that you should not expect college tour guides to be much help to answering your questions honestly. They are generally taught to downplay controversy and market the university. Your best bet is to talk to some senior students who are not being paid by the university. It’s reasonable for schools to market themselves in the best possible light, of course, but Christian parents and students should move beyond rhetoric to see what a school’s Christian commitment means in practice.

Some white evangelicals have helped to trigger the hostility, of course, via their incautious political engagement, especially since 2016. The extent to which that hostility is deserved, or whether it has just presented an excuse for anti-evangelical stereotypes, is another subject for another time. But even evangelicals who are basically apolitical will likely be unable to avoid hostility directed toward anyone who holds the views of gender, sexuality, and marriage that are common in the vast majority of Christian churches globally today.

What can we do to counter anti-evangelical animus? In one sense, we may not be able to do much. The Bible assumes that the people of God may often encounter hostility, from outside or from within the fold of the church. We shouldn’t romanticize persecution, but we also shouldn’t be nostalgic for times in the American past when Christians exercised a de facto or de jure establishment (i.e. when Christians largely made the rules). We should just accept what the Lord providentially has for us in our place and time, and live faithfully under those circumstances.

But there are a few things that Christians can do to counter derision or caricature. First, as I discussed in Who Is an Evangelical? The History of a Movement in Crisis we can use vitriol as a chance for self-evaluation. Are some of the criticisms we’re receiving warranted? In today’s environment, I would sadly say ‘yes.’ Many white evangelicals’ attachment to the Republican Party has given much of the watching world the idea that we’re basically a political interest group, and they treat us as such. If we are going to be reviled, let’s make sure it is for things that are central to the gospel and the historic biblical tradition.

Second, we can focus our reading (and associated talk on social media) on sources that are empathetically critical toward evangelicals, instead of focusing on the clickbaity trashing of evangelicals (or uncritical, defensive apologetics), which most of us should probably just ignore. Evangelical leaders need capacity for self-criticism, and there are abundant supplies of charitably critical work on evangelicals. These publications are usually not sensational best-sellers, but they often have an enduring quality to them that will stand the test of time, beyond the furor of any given Twitter moment.

There are far too many such books to list here, but among my favorite examples of works about evangelicals that are sometimes tough, consistently fair, and always thought-provoking are Catherine Brekus’s Sarah Osborn’s World: The Rise of Evangelical Christianity in Early America; Michael Emerson and Christian Smith’s Divided by Faith: Evangelical Religion and the Problem of Race in America; and books and articles by my friend and Baylor colleague George Yancey, including Beyond Racial Gridlock. Just because some critics attribute most of America’s problems to evangelicals shouldn’t cause us to overcorrect and blindly defend our group. But there’s also little gained by getting into never-ending Twitter battles with people whose brand depends on outrage and acrimony.

Finally, we can encourage and highlight those experts charitably, calmly responding to some of the worst clickbaity attacks. One recent effort to respond in this way was by Harvard’s Tyler VanderWeele and Brendan Case (a former colleague of mine at Baylor). They responded to a Washington Post/Religion News Service story which alleged that women in “structurally sexist” congregations have worse health than those in “inclusive” congregations. (Take religion survey statistics with a grain of salt, especially when they are used to impugn religious traditionalists.) “Structurally sexist,” to the piece’s authors, chiefly means congregations that do not have female pastors. This means that most Christian churches and denominations (Protestant, Catholic, and Orthodox) throughout history, and around the globe today, are “structurally sexist,” from the authors’ perspective.

Case and VanderWeele responded to this article with generosity, patience, and skill. It is well worth reading the piece in its entirety, but not because it makes for sensational reading. It doesn’t. You might even struggle to read it because it is dispassionate and technical. It uses a measured tone to explain the manifold problems with the study and the ways the authors skewed the evidence. The Post/RNS story overtly suggested that going to a conservative church is bad for your health. More reliable studies, Case and VanderWeele explain, have shown huge advantages in overall health for women (and men) who attend congregations of virtually any kind.

Even the Post authors’ own data suggests that women and men who attend “structurally sexist” congregations do better in self-described health outcomes than those who don’t attend church. (I might add that “inclusive” congregations – ironically – often attract a more exclusively elite demographic than traditional congregations do. One might expect such social and financial elites to have better health anyway.) The idea that going to a conservative church makes you sick is ridiculous, even based on the evidence accumulated in this study.

The problems in the study will not, of course, keep many media outlets from publishing such pieces. Nor will the problems keep such claims from getting re-tweeted. If the authors publish a book on the sickly women of “structurally sexist” congregations, I am sure it will be a big hit. But there are plenty of scholars who expertly refute such pieces, and they do not all work at Christian institutions, either (Harvard!). Let’s do what we can to traffic in critical, empathetic, and high-quality literature on religion, and take measured opportunities to calmly respond to provocations when appropriate.

Some book links provided here are part of the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to Amazon.com.

[TK] Many readers may have heard of John Foster Dulles, but might not remember exactly who he was. Tell us why Dulles was important, and what led you to write a religious biography of him.

[JDW] Fame and influence are fickle, and John Foster Dulles is a salient example of how fickle they are. During the 1950s, his was a household name. As Dwight Eisenhower’s secretary of state from 1953 to 1959, Dulles was at the center of every diplomatic issue during the early years of the Cold War. He was mourned the world over when he died from abdominal cancer in May 1959. But largely because of American diplomatic and military failures in the Caribbean, Middle East, and Southeast Asia, Americans soured on Dulles. By the 1990s, Americans had just forgotten him.

But Dulles remains significant for our times, because he both contributed to, and was himself a product of, a civil religious awakening of the 1950s. Americans saw themselves in a Manichean struggle of good against evil against the Soviet Union during the 1950s, and Dulles was the epitome of an early Cold Warrior. Dulles represents a Christian nationalism of the 1950s, one that takes its shape in the context of American diplomacy between the Korean and Vietnam Wars.

You note that for Dulles, “Christianity’s essence is operational rather than theological.” What did that mean for him in practice?

Dulles grew up as a Presbyterian pastor’s son in turn-of-the-century North County New York. His father, Allen Macy Dulles, was a liberal theologian trained at the University of Leipzig and Hamilton College. He stressed the ethical teachings of Jesus in his preaching, teaching, and writing, and debunked conservative doctrines. Dulles adopted his father’s understanding of Christianity as an essentially ethical religion, and this was clear in his stress on the liberal concept of “Fatherhood of God, Brotherhood of Man” during his involvement with the Federal Council of Churches during the 1940s.

As Dulles considered America’s place in the world at the beginning of the Cold War, he articulated the significance of “moral law” as a diplomatic frame of reference. In his understanding, the universe was a moral system. Nature exhibited precepts of moral law, and one could find wisdom from nature in human interactions, from the local to the global level. In that regard, Christianity was less a set of abstract and outdated dogmatic orthodoxies, and more an active faith, animated by Christ’s teachings on loving one’s neighbor, doing to others as one would have done to oneself, and sacrificing one’s own interests for the good of the whole. These teachings required ongoing action, abiding vigilance, and creative innovation as circumstances changed. Dulles liked to say that peace must be waged, the same as war. This was how Dulles conceived of Christianity as active, not passive; ethical, not theological.

Dulles took a leading role in modernist and anti-fundamentalist advocacy in the Presbyterian Church in the 1920s. Yet his own faith seems to have become diluted, at least until he participated in an ecumenical Christian conference in Oxford in 1937. Where do you think his beliefs stood on the eve of World War II?

As a child, Dulles exhibited signs of piety in memorizing Scripture and hymns, and in involvement with church outreach ministries. But when he went to Princeton in 1904, Dulles did not attend church regularly. As his career took off in the 1910s and ‘20s, he did serve as an elder at Park Avenue Presbyterian Church, but he resigned because he enjoyed recreational activities near his home in Cold Spring Harbor on Long Island, New York. By the mid-1930s, Dulles rarely attended church.

Dulles did not consider Christianity to be relevant to the world’s challenges after World War I. He said he had been a “nominal Christian” during the years prior to attending the Oxford Conference in 1937. Prior to that conference, Dulles came to the conclusion that Christianity had “gone soft,” and allowed itself to be divided by trivial issues such that it could make no substantial contribution to human good. But the conference changed his mind. He noted that Christians came to Oxford from all over the globe. They brought with them unique denominational identities and convictions. And yet they put their differences aside and came to agreement on solving the problems challenging all of humanity. Dulles left the conference a changed man. For the rest of his life, he strenuously argued that Christian churches were indispensable to a peaceful world order.

In spite of Dulles’s modernism, after World War II he increasingly embraced American civil religion and staunch anti-Communism in ways that seemed similar to fundamentalist and evangelical leaders such as Billy Graham. Was Dulles a sort of modernist Christian nationalist?

The answer is definitely yes. Dulles is an example of a particular kind of American Christian nationalism that arose during World War I. This Christian nationalism emerged from progressive figures like Woodrow Wilson. Wilsonian Christian nationalism was idealistic, committed to something often called “Christian civilization,” and animated by a sense of American Christian duty and mission to the world.

It is commonly accepted that Dulles went through a change in his perspective on the moral law between the end of World War II and the beginning of the Cold War. Mark Toulouse, in his brilliant religious biography of Dulles entitled The Transformation of John Foster Dulles, argues that Dulles went from being a “prophet of realism” to a “priest of nationalism.” Toulouse wrote that Dulles essentially abandoned his commitment to international cooperation and a peaceful world order by shifting his emphasis from the moral law to national security.

I take a different view. It is true that Dulles underwent a change between 1945 and 1950. But I think Toulouse errs by referring to this change as a “transformation” because Dulles’s perspective did not change that radically. His use of the moral law continued to be fundamental, but he looked at Communists as having declared war against the moral law. For that reason, Dulles thought that the Communists had to be neutralized as a threat to a peaceful world order, because they were a threat to moral law itself. As the most Christian nation in the world, the United States possessed a divine mandate to lead the free nations against Communism. Material weapons like bullets and bombs would help deter Communist aggression, but weapons emerging from religion—spiritual ideas—would ultimately bring victory.

At the beginning of the book, you talk about manifesting Christian generosity in interactions with people of the past. Why do you think that’s important to remember when dealing with someone such as Dulles?

It isn’t our place to judge John Foster Dulles. That doesn’t mean we can’t critically evaluate his choices and the impact of those choices. We’re not moral relativists when it comes to historical analyses. But we are not in a position to pronounce a judgment on Dulles, because like him, our perspective is limited. We don’t have all the answers. And future generations will evaluate our choices, too. How will we want our children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren to write about us? I hope we would want them to tell the truth about our lives, in all their complexity.

Historians are to be truth tellers above all, not judges. Dulles was a human being, just like us. He was flawed in profound ways, just like us. He made decisions that resulted in great good; he also made choices that were terribly unwise and had tragic consequences—like insisting that Americans could succeed in Vietnam where the French had failed. He can’t come back and explain himself. He can’t hear our imprecations against him. He can’t repent of his sins or change his ways. He can’t fix his mistakes. And he can’t receive praise or appreciation. One day, we will lie silent in the grave. We do well to heed the wisdom that comes from considering Dulles’s life, that our times are in God’s hands. Our calling is to be faithful to how He has revealed Himself in Jesus Christ.

T. T. Shields was a vigorous denouncer of all denominational apostasy. In theology Shields and Lloyd-Jones stood close to one another; both were Calvinists, both amillennial in their view of unfulfilled prophecy.

But there was an important aspect of Shields’ ministry with which Lloyd-Jones was not in sympathy. He thought the Baptist leader was sometimes too controversial, too denunciatory, and too censorious. Rather than helping young Christians by the strength of his polemics against liberal Protestants and Roman Catholics, Lloyd-Jones believed that Shields was losing the opportunity to influence those whose first need was to be given positive teaching.

Murray recounts a time when Lloyd-Jones and Shields planned to meet together:

As Dr. Lloyd-Jones spoke with [his wife] Bethan, who was not to accompany him, of this forthcoming meeting and they prayed about it, he came to the conviction that if Shields gave him any kind of opportunity he would raise the matter which limited his admiration of the older preacher’s evangelicalism.

Lloyd-Jones later recounted what took place at the meeting:

Shields came to fetch me and we had lunch. We talked on general subjects and then we went to sit in the garden.

There, as we drank coffee, he suddenly turned to me and said, “Are you a great reader of Joseph Parker?” [Parker was a 19th century English Congregational minister.]

I replied, “No, I am not.”

“Why?” he asked.

“I get nothing from him.”

“Man!” he said, “what’s the matter with you?”

“Well,” I said, “it’s all very well to make these criticisms of the liberals, but he doesn’t help me spiritually.”

“Surely you are helped by the way he makes mincemeat of the liberals?”

“No, I am not,” I responded. “You can make mincemeat of the liberals and still be in trouble in your own soul.”

“Well,” Shields said, “I read Joseph Parker every Sunday morning. He winds me up—puts me right.”

I felt my opening had come, so we began. We had a great debate. He was a very able man and we argued the issue about which I disagreed with him.

In defense of his attitude he said, “Do you know, every time I indulge in what you call one of these ‘dog-fights’ the sales of the Gospel Witness go right up. What about that?” [Gospel Witness was a newspapers, started by Shields in 1922, that had 30,000 subscribers.]

“Well,” I replied, “I have always observed that if there is a dog-fight a crowd gathers; I’m not at all surprised. People like that sort of thing.”

Then he brought up another argument.

He said, “Now, you are a doctor and you are confronted by a patient who has got cancer. You know that if that cancer is not removed it is going to kill the patient. You don’t want to operate but you have to do so because it is going to save the patient’s life. That is my position. I don’t want to be doing this kind of thing, but there is this cancer and it has got to be removed. What do you say to that?”

I responded, “What I say to that is this: I am a physician but there is such a thing as ‘a surgical mentality,’ or of becoming what is described as ‘knife-happy.’ I agree, there are some cases where you have got to operate, but the danger of the surgeon is to operate immediately. He thinks in terms of operating. Never have an operation without having a second opinion from a physician.”

At this point Shields got up, walked down the garden and then came back to reopen the conversation:

“Well,” he queried, “what about this: you remember Paul in Galatians 2? He had to withstand Peter to the face. He did not want to do it. Peter was an older apostle, a leader and so on. Paul did it very reluctantly, but he had to do it for the sake of the truth. I am in exactly that position. What do you say to that?”

“I would say this,” I responded, “that the effect of what Paul did was to win Peter round to his position and make him call him ‘our beloved brother Paul.’ Can you say the same about the people whom you attack?”

Shields was finished. Then, after we had stopped arguing, I made a great appeal to him. I said, “Dr. Shields, you used to be known as the Canadian Spurgeon, and you were. You are an outstanding man, in intellect, in preaching gift, in every other respect, but over the McMaster University business in the early twenties you suddenly changed and became negatory and denunciatory. I feel it has ruined your ministry. Why don’t you come back! Drop all this; preach the gospel to people positively and win them!”

Murray concludes:

Dr. Lloyd-Jones continued this appeal as they drove back in the car. With tears in his eyes, Shields—then fifty-nine years old—at length confessed, “I have never been spoken to like this in my life before and I am most grateful for you. You have moved me very deeply. I will tell you what I will do. I will call a meeting of my board tomorrow night, tell them exactly what we have discussed and put myself in their hands. If they agree with you I will do what you say. If they don’t, I won’t.”

The meeting, as Dr. Lloyd-Jones eventually heard, took place as arranged and Shields’ men told him not to listen to the advice he had received.

Thus no change was to follow the memorable meeting of the two men, except that Dr. Lloyd-Jones became more firmly convinced of the way in which an orthodox ministry can be spoilt by a wrong spirit and by wrong methods.

— Iain H. Murray, D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones: The First Forty Years (1899–1939) (Banner of Truth, 1982), 271–73. Posted with permission.

At first glance this would seem to confirm the trend toward religiously unaffiliated Americans, or the “nones.” And there is no reason to doubt that the rising number of nones is part of the story here. Even evangelical churches like the Southern Baptist Convention, once seen as impervious to the cataclysmic declines affecting the mainline denominations, have been on a pattern of (slow) decline for more than a decade.

But, as I have suggested before, we should take religion polls with a grain of salt. They usually tell us about some trends on the religious landscape, to be sure, but they are almost always open to widely varying interpretation. Polls are at their best when there is little wiggle room for interpretation in the data. For example, you can be pretty certain what the answer means when a pollster asks, “Did you vote for Joe Biden?”

Any time the answers are qualitative, as they usually are with religion, we should be more skeptical. Even something like “church membership” is an elusive category. Does that mean you consider yourself part of a denomination, or a local church? A religious tradition, or a particular congregation?

Gallup lists the actual question as “Do you happen to be a member of a church, synagogue, or mosque?” I imagine that the implication of this question might be clearer for “synagogue or mosque” than “church,” which to some respondents could mean a denomination or religious tradition, although the pollsters seem also to have asked about respondents’ “affiliation” with a religious tradition.

Still, for more parish-based Christian traditions, “being a member” might mean “I was baptized there, married there, and I expect my funeral will be there.” But that would not exactly make you an “active” member of a congregation.

There are also plenty of people who actively attend churches who are not members, either because membership is not emphasized, or because they have some doctrinal or denominational hang-up that keeps them from joining. Thus, you might have many people who identify as “members” but who rarely attend, while others know they are not members, but they’re present every Sunday.

As my Baylor colleague Philip Jenkins recently noted, the phrasing of religion questions can produce wildly different results. Recent polling questions about religious affiliation in the U.K. were phrased slightly differently, and produced data showing that either 50 percent of British people have “no religion,” or 25 percent. That’s a massive difference!

Then there’s the problem that people who may be members of a certain church may not have attended there for years. (We can at least assume that the poll is not reflecting the thousands of people who are still on church membership lists even though they are, in fact, deceased!) “Member” ideally should connote activity, but it doesn’t always mean that, as every pastor knows.

There is also a small but significant number of people who tell pollsters that they do not have a religion, but they are church members. The number of such people is usually about 5 percent to 10 percent of the so-called “nones.” This is a puzzling group, to be sure, but some of them are presumably Christians who would say “I don’t have a religion, I have a relationship with Jesus.”

Finally, there is polling’s dirty little secret: response rates. The Gallup poll is typical in that it does not seem to publicly report its response rate, but you can assume that it was less than 10 percent, if not less than 5 percent. Response rates in the era of landlines used to exceed 85 percent. Pollsters will insist that they have ways to account for this problem. We can assume that Gallup, which is one of the most reliable agencies, is trying their best to do so. Still, the people being polled are the types of people who respond to polls, a vanishingly rare breed today.

But to return to our question: if church membership rates are cratering, why is this the case? This poll undoubtedly was affected by the pandemic, although a lot of the data seems to come from the pre-pandemic years of 2018-19. However, the pandemic will have made the question of church membership even more muddled than before. If a person worships online every week, but they never physically attend a service, are they a member? This issue will not go away once COVID subsides.

Next, it seems clear that with every passing year, more senior adults are dying who assumed that you should be a church member to be a good citizen and a good American, even if a person is not particularly devout. They are not being replaced by younger Americans who share that conviction. The number of people who attend church by default is apparently plummeting. Whether this is mostly good or bad for congregations is unclear. It might be bad for numbers and finances, but it will probably lead to a more uniformly committed church body in many cases.

Virtually all polls show lower rates of religious affiliation for younger generations, eliciting the typical concern that the younger generation has “left the faith.” (Hang around churches very long and you will hear dicey statistics touted about how huge numbers of kids in youth ministries will “leave the faith” in their 20s.)

But virtually all polls are also snapshots of people at one moment in time, and you can bet that large numbers of those young people—especially those who grew up in church—will become active church members again, often at life transition points such as marriage, or when they start having kids. If you really want to worry about a demographic trend, note the plummeting rates of marriage and especially childbearing in America, statistics that have a strong correlation with church attendance.

The overall picture of declining church membership should be of interest, but not special worry to Reformed and evangelical believers. We’re not so much concerned with “mere” church members, but “regenerate” church members. And evangelicals have been at their best—such as during the First and Second Great Awakenings—when they had to work hard at drawing people into church with crystal-clear proclamation of the gospel, and with caring service to the needs of congregations.

A lot of the church decline has to do with the death of cultural Christianity in America. This development is of concern, of course, and may encourage increasingly prominent cultural roles for rabidly anti-Christian views. There is also a risk that churches may supply an ever-dwindling amount of “social capital” that has been a major benefit for attendees since the colonial period. Church attendance, on balance, leads to better outcomes in gauges of human flourishing, such as family stability, supportive friendships, charitable giving and service, and so on.

On the other hand, the death of cultural Christianity represents an opportunity for evangelical churches, as Russell Moore and others have pointed out. As Moore has argued, much of that so-called “Christianity” is really just “a means to an end—even if that end is ‘traditional family values’—[and] is what J. Gresham Machen rightly called ‘liberalism’ . . . it is an entirely different religion from the apostolic faith handed down by Jesus Christ.”

If nominal, utilitarian, civil-religious “Christianity” is mostly what’s fading away with the cratering of American church “membership,” then I say good riddance.

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We must first look into the use of this term “fundamentalist.”

On the most common contemporary academic use of the term, it is a term of abuse or disapprobation, rather like “son of a b*tch,” more exactly “sonovab*tch,” or perhaps still more exactly (at least according to those authorities who look to the Old West as normative on matters of pronunciation) “sumb*tch.”

When the term is used in this way, no definition of it is ordinarily given. (If you called someone a sumb*tch, would you feel obliged first to define the term?)

Still, there is a bit more to the meaning of “fundamentalist” (in this widely current use): it isn’t simply a term of abuse. In addition to its emotive force, it does have some cognitive content, and ordinarily denotes relatively conservative theological views. That makes it more like “stupid sumb*tch” (or maybe “fascist sumb*tch”?) than “sumb*tch” simpliciter.

It isn’t exactly like that term either, however, because its cognitive content can expand and contract on demand; its content seems to depend on who is using it. . . .

The explanation is that the term has a certain indexical element: its cognitive content is given by the phrase “considerably to the right, theologically speaking, of me and my enlightened friends.”

The full meaning of the term, therefore (in this use), can be given by something like “stupid sumb*tch whose theological opinions are considerably to the right of mine.”

—Alvin Plantinga, Warranted Christian Belief (Oxford: 2000), 245.

The easiest decisions come when a denomination starts teaching doctrines or advancing moral positions that contradict longstanding, widely-agreed upon Christian orthodoxy or orthopraxy. If a denomination’s leadership countenances universal salvation, questions the historicity of the physical resurrection of Christ, etc., it’s time for us to get out.

It gets harder to decide whether to leave a denomination based on ethical or political lapses by denominational leadership. I am certainly not comfortable with the way that certain SBC leaders seemed to make support for Donald Trump a litmus test for good standing within the denomination, for example. But does that require a person to leave the denomination? Surely not, especially because that never became the official policy of the whole SBC. In such moments, giving one another the latitude to operate according to conscience is the way to go.

One of the complicating factors in leaving a denomination is that the really important decision is whether one leaves his or her church, which may or may not be required when leaving a denomination. Especially given the Baptist tradition of congregational autonomy, being “part of the SBC” can mean a lot of different things. My SBC church in South Bend, Indiana, was certainly not recognizable to outsiders as being SBC denominationally, even though our theology and practice was firmly within the bounds of the SBC. “Baptist” wasn’t even in the name of the church.

Baptists in Texas also know that being “part of the SBC” in our state is even more complicated, due to the fact that the historic state Baptist convention is not aligned with the SBC, and there is a parallel Southern Baptists of Texas convention. So being “part of the SBC” in Texas Baptist churches might mean even more things. Does it mean that your congregation’s name appears in the SBC directory? That you support Southern Baptist missionaries? That you give to the Lottie Moon Christmas Offering? That “Southern Baptist” appears on your church sign? It’s hard to say what firmly identifies you as being a member of the denomination in such a context.

This denominational ambiguity, especially for Baptists, reminds us that for most people, the decision we face isn’t primarily about leaving a denomination (unless you happen to be an official in said denomination). For most laypeople, or even people who have a prominent parachurch ministry, the question is whether you will remain in your congregation. Local churches are God’s called-out communities for Kingdom living. Denominations are there to support, coordinate, and amplify the work of local churches, and are in that sense more transitory and ephemeral than the local church. Our commitment to our local church is of a higher order than our commitment to a denomination.

Some of the same standards apply when considering whether to leave a local church as a denomination, however, and some forms of aberrant theology or moral teaching would, in my view, necessitate departure. It becomes more complex, however, when your congregation is holding the line (a la many Methodist congregations) while the national leadership drifts from orthodoxy. If you know that your donations to the church are being used to support heterodox beliefs and practices in the larger denomination, it is tough to justify staying in that church.

But once having joined in covenant membership with a local church, the default should always be staying and supporting it, even if that requires struggle and frustration. When you see a denomination (or any Christian institution) drifting from orthodoxy, it surely will not help it to remain faithful if all traditional Christians immediately depart. Ultimately, the choice to leave a church or denomination or Christian institution involves a tradeoff: wanting to remain a faithful witness from within, and the desire not to be associated with beliefs and actions that are clearly heterodox.

Sometimes a church or denomination takes such outlandishly heterodox positions that it really leaves traditional Christians with no choice. More often, we are left with dilemmas of conscience, and the humbling reminder that we all are just flawed members of flawed churches and flawed denominations. Churches, and the denominations they compose, are highly imperfect things, because they are filled with people like me. And yet, God has promised that He would build his church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.

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[TK] The Bible and the Civil War is a vast topic, given how often the Bible was cited in sermons, speeches, and tracts. Tell us how you managed to get a comprehensive view of the uses of the Bible during the war.

[JB] It was quite a challenge, and I could not have done it without technological help. In my previous book, Sacred Scripture, Sacred War, I examined the Bible’s uses in the American Revolution. It was based on a database of biblical citations that I generated by going through primary sources and manually entering biblical citations. There’s no way I could have done that with Civil War sources – there were just too many. So I turned to recent technological advances in digital humanities and received great help and advice from Lincoln Mullen, a history professor and expert in digital humanities at George Mason University. I still had to find all the sources – quite a challenge – then I had to digitize them and convert them to text files.

After that, Mullen scanned them with an application he had coded to identify biblical citations in a large number of documents. I also used Mullen’s outstanding website, America’s Public Bible, which reveals thousands of biblical citations in 19th century U.S. newspapers. That background work gave me an overview of the most cited biblical texts. Then I had to decide how to interpret them in their various contexts, and how to organize the book.

Some Bible verses were cited regularly by both sides in the war. There were also distinctive verses that appealed to particular purposes of the Union or the Confederacy. Can you give us an example of each side’s most-cited verses?

In the Union, the most cited text I found was Paul’s statement in Acts 17:26 (KJV): “God hath made of one blood all nations of men for to dwell on all the face of the earth, and hath determined the times before appointed, and the bounds of their habitation.” This was part of Paul’s speech in Athens, where “his spirit was stirred in him, when he saw the city wholly given to idolatry” (Acts 17:16). Paul was instructing the people in Athens about the one God, the creator of all, in his attempt to convince them to cast off their idols. During the Civil War and well before it this verse became a major text used to attack slavery: if all of humanity were of the same family, then how could anyone justify the argument that some races were superior to others and that the superior races had God’s permission to enslave the inferior?

In the Confederacy, the most cited text I found was Job 1:21, which included the line: “Naked came I out of my mother’s womb, and naked shall I return thither: the Lord gave, and the Lord hath taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord.” This verse’s popularity in the Confederacy speaks to the devastating effect of the war on the South. This was one of the most important functions of scripture throughout the war: as a healing source, a refuge, consolation in the midst of catastrophic loss, and with it assurance that a just and loving God was still in control.

Having written books on the Bible and the American Revolution, and the Bible and the Civil War, what differences did you notice between the biblicism of the two?

There were a lot of similarities, with some of the same texts being quoted, especially Romans 13:1-2: “Let every soul be subject unto the higher powers. For there is no power but of God: the powers that be are ordained of God. Whosoever therefore resisteth the power, resisteth the ordinance of God: and they that resist shall receive to themselves damnation.” These and other verses from Romans 13 were popular in the Union because they implied that God rejected rebellion against an authorized government such as the United States. But that was just one of many applications of this incredibly important chapter. Yet, overall, the Bible of the American Revolution was more of an Old Testament Bible, while Americans in the Civil War cited more New Testament texts. The New Testament had outpaced the Old Testament in popularity in the US by the mid 19th century, as historians like Eran Shalev have shown, likely because of revivalism and the wide use of New Testament texts to debate slavery. That said, the Hebrew scriptures were still important to the Civil War, and some ministers remarked that the war had caused them to cite the Old Testament more than ever.

Abraham Lincoln is a key figure in your book. After your discussion of the Second Inaugural address of 1865, you say that Lincoln “remained transfixed by the mystery of God’s judgment, and that set him apart from most religious leaders of the time.” How so?

Lincoln believed strongly in divine providence; he was almost obsessed with it. Yet he refused to claim that God favored the Union and condemned the Confederacy. By the end of the war, he ruminated on the mystery of God but remained convinced of God’s justice. Perhaps the war was God’s punishment on both sides for slavery? He expressed these views in his Second Inaugural address, which we think of as one of the nation’s greatest speeches although it had mixed reviews at the time. Shortly after the speech Lincoln responded to a letter, admitting that the speech was “not immediately popular” in part because “men are not flattered by being shown that there has been a difference of purpose between the Almighty and them. To deny it, however, in this case, is to deny that there is a God governing the world. It is a truth which I thought needed to be told.”

Some Christians today might feel nostalgic about an era when Americans were vastly more familiar with the biblical text than they are today. Yet your book reminds us of the starkly different ways in which Americans interpreted the Bible during the Civil War. What lessons might your book offer about good and bad uses of the Bible in American civil religion?

The Bible has been cited to support some of the greatest efforts for justice in American history, including abolitionism and the civil rights movement. Yet the Bible has also been cited to support both slavery and white supremacy. The Bible has been used to argue for peace, and it has been cited to justify horrible forms of violence. Throughout American history the Bible has been one of the most read and most cited authorities, so the proper use of that power is an important responsibility. One of the lessons is that Bible readers should approach scripture carefully, with attention to their own biases and prejudices. It is important to ask, am I reading the Bible to enlist it in support of my agendas in ways that may not be faithful to scripture’s meaning in its own context?

[The book links provided here are part of the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to Amazon.com.]

Fairfield insisted that support for Abraham Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation, which was not universally applauded in the North, was a requirement of Christian Patriotism.

“Christian Patriotism demands of us a large humanity,” Fairfield said. “The sublimest patriotism is that which rests upon the broad basis of justice and humanity, and overtops all the stunted growths of prejudice and caste. ‘The Golden Rule’ is the law for all times and all peoples. Every human soul, bearing upon it the impress of God and of immortality, is embraced within the scope of Christian philanthropy, without which there can be no such thing as Christian patriotism.”

Fairfield saw irony and the hand of Providence in the prospect that the South’s secession could ultimately cause emancipation. White southerners thought they were seceding to protect slavery, but God had other plans. Even in the North, freedom for slaves was not a unanimous war aim in 1861. By 1863, however, the circumstances of war had led to the threshold of mass emancipation.

“True national greatness,” he proclaimed, “is not along or chiefly, in wide domain, or brilliant achievements, or material prosperity – but in integrity, inflexible and equal justice, high and noble character and befitting deeds – in the largest liberty to every man to be and become all that God has made him to be.”

In another post I distinguished between Christian patriotism (good in the right measure) and Christian nationalism (bad), but Fairfield’s sermon seems like an outstanding case study of good (if still effusive) Christian patriotism. Elsewhere in the speech Fairfield swerves toward conflating American patriotism and Christianity itself, but that’s a topic for another time. And however noble Christian patriotism might be in its best instances, there’s always a risk of presenting whatever political or cultural agenda you support as an example of Christian patriotism. Not all causes called “Christian” are really Christian.

But I don’t think that Fairfield was just engaging in rhetorical posturing. Antislavery critics in America, such as the mixed-race pastor Lemuel Haynes, had argued (against Thomas Jefferson and others) that Christian benevolence in the republic should extend across the color line, making the blessings of liberty apply to blacks as well as whites. Fairfield similarly argued that the best traditions of Anglo-American liberty and Christianity warranted sacrifice for the benefit of the oppressed in America, as well as fighting to preserve the American Union from the secessionist breakup. This was a principle that animated many white and black Union troops, organizers of the Underground Railroad, runaway slaves, antislavery northern politicians and pastors, and more.

Christian patriotism is at its best when it summons us to make common sacrifices, on a controversial issue (such as emancipation), for the good of the most vulnerable or oppressed in our society, on the basis of Christian principle (the imago dei and the Golden Rule) and the tradition of American liberty. If that’s what Christian patriotism means, sign me up.

Again, a critic could still raise all kinds of plausible objections to Christian patriotism. Does one have to be a Christian to do anything moral or self-sacrificial? (No.) Didn’t Confederates and groups like the Ku Klux Klan cite Christian patriotism too? (Yes.) Yet it is hard to imagine the Emancipation Proclamation succeeding without the grounding principles of Christian patriotism.

“Whoever speaks the truth gives honest evidence, but a false witness speaks deceitfully.” Proverbs 12:17

In this moment, our Christian youth ought to add Sherlock Holmes to their must-read lists, next to C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien. As Sherlock Holmes said, “There is nothing like first-hand evidence.” Unfortunately, whether it comes to politics or science I increasingly find Christian students, friends, family, and academic colleagues making narrative fantasy arguments about good and evil in the political and scientific realms.

For example, with regard to politics, many people “feel” that the election was stolen from Donald Trump, and they build a conspiracy narrative based upon this feeling. When you ask for evidence, or point out that Trump’s legal team lost dozens of legal cases where evidence of fraud was requested, many of them presided over by conservative judges, they still claim that they “feel” like the election was stolen. To two people I know who took this line of thinking, I asked, “What if your neighbors accused you of kidnapping, torturing and shooting their cat (who you never liked), and the only evidence they had was their feelings, what would you think?” No response. “Would you want a jury that merely evaluated based on their feelings about you?” Of course not. It’s maddening. We have lost respect for empirical evidence—the portions of reality that God gives us to help develop wisdom. The expansion of political conspiracy theories are what you get when you focus on producing engaging narratives and stories without evidence.

After the January 6 capitol riots produced by these conspiracy theories, 285 Wheaton College faculty and staff signed a statement reading, “we grieve over the inadequate level of discipleship that has made room for this type of behavior among those who self-identify as Christian.” Perhaps we need to start our repentance in Christian colleges by teaching our students to care about evidence and not just identity and presuppositions. After all, I would argue that we are the ones who have failed to provide intellectual discipleship.

Unfortunately higher education culture has not been much better. With COVID-19 I have seen a significant amount of evidence-free or limited thinking, and been surprised by how often we have had college presidents, leaders of supposedly scientific institutions, writing simple moralistic arguments divorced from the data (see here and here). In August, a major higher education publication reported that one Georgia Tech model showed that ten students could die at the Tech campus alone this past fall. At the time, I thought the prediction odd and over hyped based on scientific abstracts I had been reading (and as we have learned through both COVID-19 and the election polls, our scientific and social scientific prognosticators have left much to be desired), so I tried to find how many COVID-19 deaths had occurred among college students. No one appeared to have bothered to collect that particular set of evidence.

So, I then tried to find this data. Although not every death of college students by COVID-19 may be published online, at the time I found only five 18-23 college students who has died from COVID-19 within the previous six months. Compare that to the fact that during one thirteen month period not long ago, six students took their lives on the University of Pennsylvania campus alone. Not one campus this fall lost six students to COVID-19.

Amazingly, two of the deceased had their deaths covered in People (Cody Lyster) magazine and USA Today (Jordan Byrd) even though college students were only 0.00002 percent of U.S. deaths during that time. There is something about the death of a healthy college student from Covid-19 that fed a particular a national media narrative that “that anyone can die,” even though the data showed we needed to tell a very different story about the risks. Even more recently, the USA Today published a story that tried to reinforce this narrative. The story headline declared, “The Young Die As Well from COVID-19, Even as Many Engage in Denial” (and used mortality statistics for those below 40—a rather generous definition of “young”—while bringing up reckless college student parties). The writer mistook denial for playing the odds.

Please do not misunderstand me—I do not bring up this last example to deny the severity of COVID (most of us know people personally who have died), or the reality that irresponsible college students can be major conduits of the virus to older adults (and thus direct contributors to their deaths). I merely want to point out that a significant portion of the public narrative and moralizing I read this past year did not match empirical evidence. Instead of trying to scare college students by saying they can die (actually with a COVID mortality rate below 1.5/100,000 they are more likely to die from alcohol related accidents and suicide), we should tell a truthful narrative that admits their odds of dying are extremely low but calls upon them to engage in agape love for their parents and grandparents by taking the proper precautions. We should also be very concerned about students’ mental health. One group estimates that 1,100 undergraduates take their life each year (you should always check data produced by an advocacy group, versus an academic group, but if you compare that number with the study cited earlier and the total number of college students the mortality figure appears accurate).

Christian scholars and Christian educational institutions need to help students recover the importance of finding and interpreting evidence. After all, one of the Ten Commandments refers to how we witness about things (Ex. 20:6; see also Ex. 23:1-2). Are we false or unreliable witnesses? A false or unreliable witness does not base their witness upon creating engaging stories without (or with limited) evidence.

Of course, upholding the importance of evidence is counter-culture to our emotivist culture, as the gaggle of papers I receive every semester from students that argue for things based upon how they “feel,” such as, “I feel like this scholar does not make a very good argument.” I always have to remind these students, “You feel sad, glad, mad, or bad, and the evidence, properly interpreted, may lead you to feel that way. However, your disagreement with the argument should stem from the evidence and reasons you offer. It should not come from feelings without evidence.”

Today, students talk about feeling unsafe, and there is evidence that feeling unsafe hurts academic performance. Yet, we must also encourage students to process and question their evidence or reasons for feeling unsafe. The evidence or reasoning may be valid, but it also may be lacking evidence or based in misinterpretation of evidence. Sometimes, their feelings of being unsafe are simply being uncomfortable with academic conflict. Yet, as John Milton said, “Where there is much desire to learn, there of necessity will be much arguing.” The feeling of being unsafe without evidence is not sacrosanct. Students’ feelings must be interrogated based on the evidence.

Why are we so allergic to seeking, requiring and using evidence these days? First, sloppy forms of postmodernism have fed the view that when telling a story or making an argument what matters is your identity and the feelings related to that identity and not the evidence (there are some things from modernism we should miss). Second, it takes hard work and/or expertise to uncover the appropriate evidence. Thus, few pursue evidence themselves. Third, we no longer respect expertise and thus increasingly do not respect those who put in the hard work of finding evidence (as recent political polls and epidemiological recommendations have taught us, sometimes for good reason). Finally, when you or experts do hard work to obtain evidence, you realize that our moral decisions require difficult and complicated moral trade-offs that take serious reflection and not simple, moralistic arguments.

How can we build a Christian academic culture that prizes evidence? Seriously, we can start by having our young children read more Sherlock Holmes. We could use some British empiricism among American evangelical children and youth (as well as adults). At the level of higher education, we need to honor God’s creation by investing in the rigorous study of the sciences and social sciences as part of Christian learning. In this regard, evangelical churches and schools can encourage the training of more empirical scientists and social scientists, instead of just theologians and philosophers.

Maybe one day we will once again be a culture that cares about the connections between our words, sentences and narratives and the natural and social world we inhabit, but right now it is not characteristic of many Christian and academic cultures.

Professor Fea’s concern in the book is that evangelicalism is now known more for its association with fear-based, power-hungry, nostalgia-longing partisan Republican politics than it is with the good news of Jesus Christ.

[It should be noted that the book equivocates on the identity of “evangelicals.” The most fair way to read the book, I believe, is (1) to bracket to one side the more historical definitions of broader evangelicalism; (2) to read the historical references in the book as confined to white right-wing Protestants, and (3) to read contemporary references of evangelicals as white right-wing Protestants who self-identify as born-again or evangelical, whether they are self-consciously part of the historic movement or not.]

On fear and evangelicalism, then, Fea writes: “Despite God’s commands to trust him in times of despair, evangelicals have always been very fearful people” (7).

What follows is an excerpt from the part of the review analyzing what he says about evangelicals and “fear.”

Fear is the organizing principle for three of the book’s five chapters.

Fea rightfully identifies the appeal to fear as “a powerful political tool,” one that has been “a staple of American politics since the founding of the republic” (13). He notes, “Political fear is so dangerous because it usually stems from legitimate concerns shared by a significant portion of the voting population” (14). Citing political scientist Corey Robin, he writes that when it comes to political fear, legitimate concerns metastasize into “imminent threats” (14). “Moral panics” tend to “rely on presumptions more than facts; they dramatize and sensationalize so as to keep audiences in a state of continual alertness” (14).

I appreciated the way in which Fea explained how Christians in particular are to think about fear:

Fear is a natural human response in times of trouble or difficult; the fear we have is evidence that we live in a broken world. We should expect to be afraid. . . . Fear is an ever-present reality on this side of eternity, but when we encounter it, we should feel it leading us toward a deeper reliance on God and his grace. (39)

The Bible teaches that Christians are to fear God—and only God. All other forms of fear reflect a lack of faith, a failure to place one’s trust completely in a providential God who has promised to work all things out for good for those who love him (Rom. 8:28). (37)

Amen.

Questions start to arise, however, when I come across a passage like this:

Despite the biblical passage exhorting followers of Christ to “fear not,” it is possible to write an entire history of American evangelicalism as the story of Christians who have failed to overcome fear. (65)

I don’t believe this is possible—at least not the way in which Fea has articulated it. Can we trace the theme of fear throughout evangelicalism? Sure, as long as

• the term is carefully defined,
• criteria are articulated,
• historical empathy is utilized, and
• counter-examples are acknowledged.

If those things were in place, one could theoretically show that evangelicals are uniquely fearful, provided that sufficient social research is available and that control groups are in place for comparative analysis.

But none of those things really feature in this book. The more sweeping the narrative, the more difficult it is to argue against.

There are differences—sometimes subtle, sometimes substantial—among the concepts of

• worry
• concern
• fear
• moral panic
• fear mongering.

But by and large, those distinctions are ignored here.

The exact form of the argument is not laid out in the book, but here is my best attempt to reconstruct what Fea seems to be arguing implicitly:

1. Fear is understandable, even natural.
2. Failing to overcome fear is always sinful.
3. The act of voting for Trump is itself a sufficient condition to indicate a failure to overcome fear.
4. Therefore, voting for Trump is a sign one does not trust God.

Fea never raises the question of whether the 16% of white evangelical voters who voted for Hillary Clinton—those to whom the book is largely dedicated—did so out of “fear” of electing Donald Trump, and if so, whether their failure to overcome that fear was a sign of their sin. (In fact, 94% of Trump voters said they would feel “scared” if Clinton won; 92% of Clinton voters said they would feel “scared” if Trump won—a statistically insignificant difference, given the margin of error in exit polling.)

John Wilson, the former editor of Books and Culture, has been reading a number of works lately on the “discourse of fear” and made the following observation while reviewing a different book on the subject:

Many instances of what we might call the discourse of fear depend on a rhetorical sleight of hand: To describe those you are arguing against as being driven by fear is thought to be effective, even as you are appealing to fear of the outcome should these fearful types get what they want. . . .

I think Fea identifies some significant areas where evangelicals are indeed susceptible to fear-mongering and moral panic. But the implication seems to be that evangelicals are uniquely bad at this, that this has always been the case, and that this applies to most evangelicals when it comes to most areas of the public square.

I think the argument could have been strengthened here by (1) choosing a more modest thesis, (2) laying out the relevant criteria that would meet a proposed definition, and then (3) producing the quantitative evidence to support the thesis.

So yes, among politically active, self-identified white evangelicals, the majority felt some dismay if not horror about Biden’s win. But let’s never forget that white, politically active Republicans who tell pollsters they’re evangelicals are hardly the sum total of American evangelicals. They’ll be even less so in the decades to come. Instead, American evangelical churches will increasingly be led by Hispanics, Africans, Asians, and other people of color, as well as younger generations whose political consciousness was not formed by the Moral Majority, the Cold War era, and nostalgia for Reagan’s “Morning in America.”

What does Biden’s inauguration and the post-Trump world mean for American evangelicals? Here are a few likely possibilities:

• Evangelicals will be in the news less often. Not just evangelicals, but Protestants in general, are becoming more marginal in the centers of American political power. Observers have long noted the trend away from Protestant justices on the Supreme Court, and Biden’s cabinet is dominated by Catholics and Jews. There are two African American Baptist cabinet nominees, but otherwise Protestants are scarce. Biden and Nancy Pelosi are Catholics, while new Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer is Jewish. Kamala Harris’s family background has Baptist and Hindu influences, and her husband is Jewish. The Democratic control of the White House, Senate, and House, will mean that there is simply less interest (at least until 2024) in the self-identified white evangelical factor in politics. Even Donald Trump had much more of a mainline Protestant than an evangelical (or prosperity gospel) background, despite his great success in retaining the support of white evangelical voters.
• Pastors and churches will have an opportunity to wean people off politics. All but the most hardened evangelical Republican insiders will readily concede that American Christians tend to put too much hope in politics and politicians. Yet we keep doing it. Pastors and teachers can avail themselves of this moment of greater marginality – and perhaps a couple of relatively quiet years for evangelicals in politics – to model the truth that whatever our political alignments, Jesus is the King in the church. No other partisan allegiances should compete with his eternal Kingdom. If Christ’s followers are at each other’s throats over temporal partisan alignments, something has gone wrong.
• Many churches will prepare for a wise, tempered, Kingdom-minded response to 2024. Enough with panicked conspiracy-mongering. Enough with turning our churches and denominational meetings into campaign stops for politicians (Republican or Democrat). Enough with making any politician or party the only Christian choice. We don’t know whether Donald Trump will run again in 2024, and if he does, whether he’ll run as a Republican. Even if he is not a candidate, however, we will almost certainly be facing more politicians who will tell Christians that they’re the only godly alternative. Sure, Christians will continue to believe things that have political ramifications – that all human life (the unborn, the immigrant, the disabled) is precious, that we need racial reconciliation and mutual understanding in Christ, that religious liberty is important, and that the biological categories of “male” and “female” are real. But if the Trump era taught us anything, those beliefs do not have unidirectional political implications among sincere believers. And some issues – like an effective response to COVID – should never have become partisan issues at all. Sometimes what we need is just good governance!

We should no longer expect our beliefs to sync up perfectly with a temporal political party. If they do, we are likely being discipled by party politics and partisan media more than the counsel of Scripture. As dismaying as a Biden/Harris administration may be to some white brothers and sisters, I actually think it may represent a healthy “wilderness time” for many evangelicals. We might remember more clearly now that our hope is not in American politics. It never has been.

Learn more about how American evangelicals arrived at this troubled moment in my book Who Is an Evangelical?: The History of a Movement in Crisis.

My friend actually seemed encouraged by that answer. As bad as things have gotten with the riot/insurrection incited by the president, and his repeated efforts (starting well before November) to undermine the American election and the peaceful transfer of power, we have been in spots like this before.

Here are five really bad moments in American history that were as bad or worse than what we’re dealing with now:

–The early years of the Great Depression and the crackdown on the “Bonus Army”: “The incident that best illustrated the breakdown of the relationship between many of the American people and the Hoover administration was the federal crackdown on the “Bonus Army” of veterans in Washington, DC, in 1932. Tens of thousands of out-of-work World War I veterans had descended upon Washington in the spring of 1932 to demand early payment of a cash “bonus” that Congress had authorized to be paid to them. The bonus was not due until 1945, but the veterans argued that given the dire conditions, Congress should issue the payments early. Congress declined. Many of the Bonus Army’s members left the capital city, but a few thousand stayed in Washington. District police tried to remove them from their encampment in July, but some of the veterans refused to budge. In the ensuing violence, two of the protestors were shot and killed.

President Hoover summoned federal soldiers to assist the police confronting the Bonus Army. Tanks and infantrymen went in, led by Army Chief of Staff Douglas MacArthur, who would later become famous for his roles in World War II and the Korean War. (MacArthur’s assistants in 1932 included future World War II generals George S. Patton and Dwight D. Eisenhower, who would also become US president in 1953.) MacArthur’s forces used tear gas to evict the marchers from their camp, and then they burned down the protestors’ ramshackle tent village. MacArthur’s tactics had clearly exceeded Hoover’s intentions, yet Hoover did not discipline him. MacArthur regarded the marchers as a “mob . . . animated by the essence of revolution,” who threatened the stability of the federal government. The image of the administration turning the force of government against impoverished veterans was one of the last, and worst, public relations disasters for President Hoover.” [descriptions taken from my book American History, B&H Academic]

–The Nullification Crisis (1832-33): “Shortly after Andrew Jackson defeated his old enemy Henry Clay in the 1832 presidential election, the ongoing crisis over tariffs and nullification went to a new level of severity. Jackson had tried to moderate tariff policy, but in 1832 Congress passed another tariff that kept duties high on British textiles. Again, this hurt southern cotton producers. Following through on John C. Calhoun’s earlier threats, the state of South Carolina held a nullification convention in late 1832, declaring the 1828 and 1832 tariffs “null, void, and no law.” The state would not allow federal authorities to collect the tariff in South Carolina.

Jackson had been sympathetic to southerners’ grievances against the tariff, but now he was outraged. As president, he saw nullification as a threat to the Union itself, and he believed that he had no greater responsibility than to preserve the Union. He declared nullification, or “the power to annul a law of the United States, assumed by one State, [as] incompatible with the existence of the Union, contradicted expressly by the letter of the Constitution, unauthorized by its spirit, inconsistent with every principle on which it was founded, and destructive of the great object for which it was formed.” The nullifiers’ ultimate goal, he thundered, was disunion, and disunion was “TREASON.” Jackson began planning to invade South Carolina, and threatened to hang Calhoun if the crisis led to civil war. When Jackson sent in federal forces to protect the Charleston customs house where tariffs were collected, Governor Robert Hayne called up the South Carolina militia.

In 1833, war loomed as Jackson asked Congress to pass the Force Bill, which authorized military intervention to make South Carolina comply with the tariff. But Jackson and many congressmen still hoped they could avert bloodshed. So Henry Clay worked out a compromise measure on the tariff, which lowered duties (though not as much as the nullifiers had hoped) the same day, March 1, 1833, that Congress passed the Force Bill. Calhoun reluctantly backed down, and South Carolina rescinded its ordinance of nullification. To make a point, however, they nullified the Force Bill. But Jackson no longer intended to take military action.”

–The Sedition Act (1798): In the context of the Quasi-War with France, “Many Federalists argued that the growing number of immigrants in the United States was destabilizing the nation, and fueling the growth of the party of Jefferson. These fears led the Federalist-controlled Congress, at Adams’s behest, to craft the Alien and Sedition Acts, the most notorious legislation of the 1790s. The Alien Acts promised to give the president expanded powers to detain and deport foreigners, if war did break out. A new naturalization policy required immigrants to wait fourteen years to apply for US citizenship. This was clearly designed to delay the voting eligibility of the immigrants, who tended to prefer the Democratic-Republicans.

The most ominous of the measures, however, was the Sedition Act. This act represented the first great challenge to the First Amendment to the Constitution, and its guarantees of free speech and a free press. It led Jefferson to call the 1798 furor the “reign of witches.” The Sedition Act made it a crime to “write, print, utter or publish . . . any false, scandalous and malicious writing or writings against the government of the United States.” This was not just an idle threat. The government prosecuted twenty-five people for violating the Sedition Act, all of them Democratic-Republicans. One Vermont congressman spent four months in jail for writing about the “ridiculous pomp, foolish adulation, and selfish avarice” of the Adams administration.

The Sedition Act reminds us that the Constitution may guarantee basic rights and liberties, but maintaining or securing those freedoms often requires vigilance by the people themselves. Democratic-Republicans suggested extraordinary measures to respond to the Sedition Act, with some radicals proposing that secession by the southern states might become necessary. Jefferson and Madison wrote the Kentucky and Virginia Resolutions, respectively, making a strong case for the states’ ability to resist the national government.”

-The War of 1812 and the burning of Washington, DC: One of the main theaters “of the War of 1812 was the mid-Atlantic coast. The British navy controlled much of the Chesapeake Bay region, assisted in part by runaway slaves. As they had during the American Revolution, some British commanders promised to grant slaves freedom if they left their masters and fought on the British side of the war. More than 3,000 slaves from Virginia and Maryland took them up on this offer.

In 1814, the British seized upon American vulnerability on the mid-Atlantic coast to invade Maryland and to destroy Washington, DC. Although the capital remained small during the James Madison administration, it was still humiliating for the British to enter the city largely unchallenged in August. James and Dolley Madison escaped the White House just before the British troops arrived. The Madisons managed to save a portrait of George Washington and a copy of the Declaration of Independence, but the British burned the White House, the Capitol, and other government buildings. [This episode was the last major assault on the capitol building until Jan. 6, 2021.]

The British then turned north, descending upon the burgeoning city of Baltimore, Maryland. In September 1814, they bombarded Fort McHenry in Baltimore Harbor, but the American defenders would not crack. Baltimore was saved. A Baltimore lawyer named Francis Scott Key had watched the bombardment and was moved to write a poem, “The Star-Spangled Banner” (or “Defense of Fort McHenry”) when he saw the American flag still flying over the fort at daylight.”  

Obviously, the crisis leading to the Civil War “takes the cake” for the most volatile and violent series of political episodes in American history. By 1850, senators had already engaged in violent confrontations in Congress, and in 1856, Senator Charles Sumner was nearly beaten to death in the Senate chamber by South Carolina Representative Preston Brooks. Then in 1859, the fanatical abolitionist John Brown captured the federal arsenal at Harpers Ferry, [West] Virginia. This made the stakes of 1860 the highest they’ve ever been in American history:

“The 1860 election was an exceptional one in the history of American politics. The northern sectional candidate Lincoln depended on deep divisions in national politics to have any hope of success. Often in American elections, a major presidential candidate has received few or no electoral votes from a particular region of the country. But Lincoln was different. He literally got no popular support in most of the South. In ten slave states, he was not even on the ballot. In Kentucky and Virginia, where Lincoln did appear on the ballot, he only received about 1 percent of the vote.

John Breckenridge, the southern Democratic candidate, and John Bell, the “Constitutional Union” nominee, likewise received virtually no popular support in parts of the North. Stephen Douglas was the only one of the four candidates to receive a respectable level of support in all areas of the nation (although he only got 12 percent of the southern vote). Broad popular support was not the issue, however. Constitutionally, what a presidential candidate needed was support in a sufficient number of states to win the Electoral College. In the end, Lincoln won the election by taking all of the free states except for New Jersey, which he split with Stephen Douglas. That gave Lincoln a strong majority in the Electoral College, though he garnered less than 40 percent of the popular vote nationally.

In the fall of 1860, white southerners, especially the Fire-Eaters, began to see the scenario unfold that could put Lincoln into the White House and made dire predictions about what Republican victory would mean. In the months before the election, the South trembled with rumors of slave insurrections and John Brown–type conspiracies. One Methodist periodical in Texas ran a column claiming that the Republicans and abolitionists intended to “deluge” the slave states in “blood and flame . . . and force their fair daughters into the embrace of buck negroes for wives.” A Georgia newspaper warned, “Let the consequences be what they may—whether the Potomac is crimsoned in human gore, and Pennsylvania Avenue is paved ten fathoms deep with mangled bodies . . . the South will never submit to such humiliation and degradation as the inauguration of Abraham Lincoln.”

[1] Let him begin by treating the Patriotism or the Pacifism as a part of his religion.

[2] Then let him, under the influence of partisan spirit, come to regard it as the most important part.

[3] Then quietly and gradually nurse him on to the stage at which the religion becomes merely part of the “cause”, in which Christianity is valued chiefly because of the excellent arguments it can produce in favour of the British war-effort or of Pacifism.

He continued:

The attitude which you want to guard against is that in which temporal affairs are treated primarily as material for obedience.

Once you have made the World an end, and faith a means, you have almost won your man, and it makes very little difference what kind of worldly end he is pursuing.

Provided that meetings, pamphlets, policies, movements, causes, and crusades, matter more to him than prayers and sacraments and charity, he is ours—and the more “religious” (on those terms) the more securely ours. I could show you a pretty cageful down here.

[Emphasis and numbering added.]

One of the oldest and greatest of Advent hymns concludes with the haunting lines,

Come desire of nations, bind
In one the hearts of all mankind
Bid thou our sad divisions cease
And be thyself our King of Peace.

But what does it mean for us to welcome Christ as the “desire of nations”? How do we live rightly as members of particular nations between the two Advents of Christ?

Patriotism vs. Nationalism?

In a recent article for The Gospel Coalition, evangelical historian Thomas Kidd sounds the alarm over what he calls “Christian nationalism.” Of course, “ism”s can be slippery and seductive terms, promising to relieve us of the moral burden of discriminating between all the goods and evils that are done under the sun, lumping different people and ideas together under abstract “ism”s that we can define en masse as “good” or “bad.” Kidd is aware of the danger, acknowledging that “Christian nationalism” is a “slippery category,” and tries to steer us in the direction of clarity with a distinction between patriotism, which he calls “good in moderation,” and nationalism, which he labels “bad.”

Even his defense of the former, however, seems somewhat halfhearted: “measured patriotism still seems appropriate, and somewhat unavoidable for most Christians.” And it is not at all clear whether such “measured patriotism” even includes such basic patriotic duties as fighting and dying for your fellow citizens in a just war. Kidd states that “many of us cherish such intense patriotic commitment that we would lay down our lives (or those of our children) to defend our country, and to promote its power around the globe. Obviously, traditional Christians ought to limit that kind of nationalistic fervor.”

But this blurs together, as a pacifist might, two different things: the traditional Christian moral duty to die in defense of one’s country, and the pagan imperialistic (and thus not very nationalistic) aspiration to project power around the globe. To be sure, in practical politics the distinction can be a blurry one, but that has not prevented the Christian tradition from endorsing and praising the courageous sacrifice of military service in defense of one’s nation. When Kidd categorizes this as the kind of “nationalistic fervor” that Christians should “limit,” it is unclear what he means. If military service is appropriate for Christians, a certain fervor is perhaps unavoidable; most armies don’t march successfully into battle without a fierce pride in their homeland.

He continues, “As ‘strangers and exiles on the earth,’ our ultimate allegiance is to Christ’s kingdom. Our love for a non-American brother or sister in Christ should exceed our comradeship with unbelieving American patriots, whose numbers are legion.”

Kidd gestures toward a biblical truth here, but how are we to apply such a moral calculus?

It is perhaps telling that Kidd equivocates in mid-sentence, arguing that “our love” for a Chinese believer should exceed “our comradeship” with an unbelieving American down the street, because in reality, it is hard to know how to measure such different loves against one another. Should my love for a Christian stranger exceed my love for my unbelieving grandmother? In some sense, perhaps, but probably not in terms of either emotional intensity or practical duty. Similarly, while celebrating my spiritual bond with a Chinese Christian, I cannot conclude that it should trump my moral and affective relationship to an unbeliever down the street. Certainly, in a just military conflict, my love for the former should not lead me to aid him against the latter. I would submit that the question of “who should we love more?” is unintelligible in the abstract. Rather, we must distinguish, with C. S. Lewis, between different kinds of loves, and, with the whole Christian moral tradition, between different kinds and spheres of duties.

Christian Nationalists?

Within the Christian order of love and order of duties, I would submit that there is a clear place for love of nation. The nation, like the family, is not just an “imagined community” but a natural category, basic to the structuring of our social lives, loves, and obligations. From the earliest chapters of the Old Testament, the biblical authors organize their moral universe in terms of “nations,” and the entire story of God’s redemptive covenants, from Genesis 12 onward, is a national one: “I will make of you a great nation.” To be sure, Israel’s story is unique, and the American nation is not the continuation of the Davidic kingdom. But what is the next act in the redemptive story? Is it the abolition of nations? Quite the contrary:

“In that day the root of Jesse, who shall stand as a signal for the peoples—of him shall the nations inquire, and his resting place shall be glorious. . . . He will raise a signal for the nations and will assemble the banished of Israel.” (Is. 11:10, 12)

This promise is so basic to the Messianic and eschatological vision that Isaiah repeats some version of it at least a dozen times in his prophecies and it is echoed in the final verses of Revelation:

“By its light will the nations walk, and the kings of the earth will bring their glory into it, and its gates will never be shut by day—and there will be no night there. They will bring into it the glory and the honor of the nations.” (Rev. 21:24, 26)

These passages do not tell us simply that Christ will bring into his kingdom individuals out of every nation, as if the nations were to be dissolved into a homogenous mass of deracinated saints, but that the nations, each with its distinct glory and honor, will find a place within his greater kingdom.

If this is the case even in the future consummation of Christ’s rule on earth, how much more so in this time between his two advents, when the reign of Christ is mostly hidden! Although modern nation-states have come a long way from the more informal and tribal biblical “nations,” their role in framing moral and political community remains: this side of the eschaton, we must continue to organize ourselves and seek justice within particular communities defined by common roots, common histories, common languages, and common cultures.

Should Christians absolutize any of these identity markers, using them as an excuse to hate or oppress those who look or act or speak differently? Absolutely not. To do that would be to deny the first coming of Christ.

But should Christians ignore these identity markers, pretending that we can live outside of history as citizens of nowhere, with equal obligations to all Christians everywhere, and equal disregard for all nonbelievers? To do that would be to pretend that the second coming of Christ has already happened.

So should Christians be nationalists? Well, in this sense of the word at least, absolutely!

Christian Nation-ists?

It becomes increasingly clear in Kidd’s essay, however, that his real concern is less over “nationalism” in the traditional sense than what we might call “Christian-nation-ism.” When he turns to describe “when patriotism is actually nationalism,” two of the three “warning signs” he isolates are actually forms of this danger.

Kidd warns us first against letting “the story of the American nation” take “a central place in our understanding of redemptive history.” And make no mistake: Kidd is right to call this bad theology. Such a move effectively denies the first coming of Christ, imagining that the people of God are still fundamentally a political nation, and that our nation is somehow the continuation of Old Covenant Israel. Few would say this in so many words, but many allow such a notion to color their political imaginations, leading to apocalyptic and idolatrous rhetoric and actions, like the recent Jericho March.

Still, we should not race to the opposite extreme. The biblical theology glanced at above makes clear that nations are actors on the stage of redemptive history; in God’s providence, they have their own distinct “glory and honor” to bring into the City of God. We cannot peer behind the curtain of God’s secret purposes to know whether our nation is destined for a starring role or a bit part, but should not try to write it out of the script either.

Kidd’s second warning sign is an extension of the first: “the effort to turn the ostensible defenders of the Christian nation into devout believers, in spite of all evidence to the contrary.” Again, Kidd is right to denounce such bad historiography in service of bad theology. Indeed, even Old Testament Israel’s king list was a litany of failures, tyrants, and idolaters; why pretend otherwise for our nation’s leaders? There really is absolutely nothing to be gained by acting like Thomas Jefferson or Donald Trump were/are Christian believers.

But there is an opposite extreme to which many intellectuals today would hasten us; in fleeing David Barton, we had better not stagger into the arms of Howard Zinn. Just as we should cover over in love and discretion the faults and foibles of our family members, and honor their memories and virtues wherever possible, so there is nothing wrong with celebrating the achievements of our national founders and leaders and refusing to draw undue attention to their vices. We cannot very well bring the honor of our nation into the kingdom of God if we have forgotten what it means to honor our nation.

Kidd concludes on a positive note, admonishing us that we might avoid the evils of Christian nationalism by celebrating the international diversity of Christ’s kingdom. On this, I heartily agree. But notice what this requires. How can I celebrate the heritage of my Ethiopian or Estonian brothers and sisters without acknowledging the historical, cultural, and (at present) political realities of the Ethiopian and Estonian nations? And must not they, in turn, celebrate with me the historical, cultural, and political reality of the American nation, and its just claims on my loyalty? This, I would submit, is authentic Christian nationalism, by which the church prefigures the eschatological kingdom of Christ by bringing into its fellowship, without dissolving or denying, the glory and honor of the nations.

Brad Littlejohn (PhD, University of Edinburgh) is a senior fellow of the Edmund Burke Foundation and president of the Davenant Institute. He is the author most recently of The Peril and Promise of Christian Liberty: Richard Hooker, the Puritans, and Protestant Political Theology (Eerdmans), and he writes and speaks widely on topics of Christian ethics, political theology, and the history of the Christian political tradition.

George Marsden: “We have long need a first-rate biography of Henrietta Mears.”

John Fea: “[Migliazzo] has convinced me that all future accounts of modern evangelicalism must place a California Sunday school teacher at the center.”

Kristin Kobes Du Mez: “Quite simply, Henrietta Mears belongs at the center of any history of twentieth-century American evangelicalism.”

Here is an excerpt from the introduction summarizing what she did and how she shaped and influenced twentieth-century evangelicalism.

When she arrived in Hollywood from Minneapolis in 1928, the massive sanctuary had just recently been completed, the communicant membership hovered just above 2,100, and, on any given Sunday, attendance at the church’s Sunday school averaged 450.

When the church hosted her memorial service thirty-five years later, the Sunday school under her care was purported to be the largest in the Presbyterian Church and one of the ten largest Protestant Sunday schools in the entire nation.

In the half century between 1913 and 1963, Mears either originated, actively participated in, or significantly inspired a formidable array of organizations that would transform Christianity in the United States. Earlier than any other twentieth-century American Protestant, she shaped the contours of what would become known as the modern evangelical movement.

Mears founded a successful publishing company that grew into one of the country’s largest independent religious publishing houses, whose products serviced a global clientele.

She negotiated the purchase of a Southern California resort, which under her guidance became a major interdenominational conference center that today hosts upward of sixty thousand participants annually at multiple sites.

She authored Sunday-school curricula used by thousands of churches around the world and helped launch the first formal organized ministry to the entertainment industry.

She administered deputation service programs that were created initially for Christian youth to help underserved populations in Southern California but eventually expanded to encompass other areas of need, including war-ravaged Europe and Asia.

She was an early leader of the National Association of Evangelicals—serving as a charter member of the association’s Commission on International Relations—and a seminal force behind the formation of the National Sunday School Association.

She created a nonprofit foundation to strengthen Christian education programs worldwide and train indigenous leaders using their own languages.

A sought-after speaker, Mears regularly addressed audiences around the country and overseas on topics ranging from Christian youth work and leadership to church growth and evangelism. She carved only enough time out of her hectic schedule to author short articles, but her collected lesson materials and related notes have been in print since their release in book form. More than four million copies of her most popular volume, What the Bible Is All About, circulate today in at least four different editions.

. . . . Excluding his mother and wife, evangelist Billy Graham called her the greatest female influence on his life and one of the greatest Christians he ever knew.

Bill Bright, founder of the international ministry of Campus Crusade for Christ, patterned his lifework on principles he gleaned from her.

Jim Rayburn, the visionary behind the Young Life Campaign, fashioned his ministry among high school students around what he learned from Mears. . . .

Nearly four hundred students from her renowned Hollywood Presbyterian College Department went into full-time Christian ministry, and hundreds more emerged as important civic and business leaders who served local churches as active laypersons. She motivated young women from her Fidelis Sunday school class in Minneapolis to live out their faith fearlessly in the world. They and hundreds of others trained by her or by her protégés became an integral part of the renewal of a brand of theological conservatism that developed in the wake of the fundamentalist-modernist controversy of the 1910s and 1920s, grew to prominence in the 1940s and 1950s, and continues to affect American culture in the twenty-first century. Her predominant role in the revitalization of evangelical Christianity helped transform the lives of thousands and opened a new direction for Christian orthodoxy that remains viable today, six decades after her death. And she did all this with a generosity of spirit worthy of imitation.

. . . Historian Margaret Lamberts Bendroth contended that among fundamentalists and evangelicals of her time, Mears was the most renowned religious educator and perhaps the best known woman of them all.

Until now, Henrietta Mears (1890–1963) was something of a footnote in the histories of modern evangelicalism. This book should change that for good.

Elizabeth L. Jemison, Christian Citizens: Reading the Bible in Black and White in the Postemancipation South (UNC Press). “Bringing together the histories of religion, race, and the South, Elizabeth L. Jemison shows how southerners, black and white, drew on biblical narratives as the basis for very different political imaginaries during and after Reconstruction. Focusing on everyday Protestants in the Mississippi River Valley, Jemison scours their biblical thinking and religious attitudes toward race.”

John Fabian Witt, American Contagions: Epidemics and the Law from Smallpox to COVID-19 (Yale Press). Talk about timely! “The legal history of epidemics shows that, throughout American history, public health laws have been liberal for some communities and authoritarian for others.”

William G. Thomas, A Question of Freedom: The Families Who Challenged Slavery from the Nation’s Founding to the Civil War (Yale Press). The Wall Street Journal review says that “Mr. Thomas’s valuable and provocative book follows a constellation of freedom suits over nearly 70 years, most prominently those lodged by the Queen family, whose members were held in bondage on several plantations on Maryland’s western shore (west of the Chesapeake Bay)—plantations that were owned by the Jesuit religious order.”

Aaron Griffith, God’s Law and Order: The Politics of Punishment in Evangelical America (Harvard Press). Darren Dochuk says that “with a balanced and sympathetic touch, Griffith reveals the surprising extent to which law and order concerns have not just driven evangelicalism’s public engagement since the mid-twentieth century, but also stirred its passions for ministry and reform.”

Paul Harvey, Howard Thurman and the Disinherited: A Religious Biography (Eerdmans). Paul Harvey, one of our finest historians of race and religion in American history, takes on the biography of one of the most influential but controversial figures in the history of the civil-rights movement. Thurman was a mentor to Martin Luther King Jr., and author of Jesus and the Disinherited.

[The book links provided here are part of the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to Amazon.com.]

Taken from Richard Popkin, “Spinoza and Bible Scholarship,” in Don Garrett, ed., The Cambridge Companion to Spinoza (2006):

Starting with Thomas Hobbes’s Leviathan, “there is an increasingly forceful questioning of whether Moses can have been the author of all of [the Pentateuch], and whether we have an accurate text. A further strong challenge appeared in the work of the Quaker Bible scholar, Samuel Fisher, 1605-65. Fisher was one of the few early Quakers who had a university background. He had graduated from Oxford, where he learned Hebrew. Then he became a Baptist minister. In 1654 he became a Quaker.

He took the message of the Quakers to Jewish communities in Amsterdam, Germany, and Italy, and held long discussions with Jewish leaders wherever he went. When he returned to England in 1660, he wrote his 900-page answer to the Puritan contention that Scripture is the Word of God, The Rustic’s Alarm to the Rabbies, combining the popular English Bible criticism with his own learned case (Fisher 1660). Christopher Hill has called Fisher “the most radical Bible critic of the time.”

The question of the Mosaic authorship comes up in a marginal note questioning whether Moses could have written the passage about his own death. But for Fisher there are two central questions, one whether the text that we possess is an accurate version of the ancient Hebrew or Greek text, and the other, whether a written document, written sometime in human history, can be the Word of God.

On the first point Fisher brought up two central problems. One was that of whether there is any basis for calling the particular collection of documents that have come down to us “Scripture,” and the other whether these documents have been passed down to us in exact copies of the originals. Scholars knew the history of the Old Testament canon, as reported in Josephus’s History of the Jews, and in the Talmud, namely that a rabbinical council, either in Ezra’s time, or around 300 B.C., decided which texts were canonical. Fisher challenged the reliability of such a human decision to have determined which texts were revealed ones, and stressed that there were more books available than those now bound in the Bible. Why are only the included books “Scripture”?

Fisher spent an inordinate amount of time on the second point, the transmission problem. The Westminster Confession of 1658 had declared that the text had been transmitted exactly and that God had guaranteed and protected the text. But then what about all of the thousands of variants in different manuscripts? Fisher learned from various Jewish and Christian authorities . . . that Hebrew vowel markings did not exist in the original Bible, and were introduced much later. Therefore the text has changed, and we do not possess an exact fixed text of God’s Word. None of the manuscripts now existing is a holograph manuscript written by Moses, by any of the Prophets, or by Ezra. The manuscripts we have are copies of copies of copies, made by fallible human beings. . . .

The upshot for Fisher is that one cannot tell whether a given manuscript or book contains the Word of God exact and entire, unless one knows independently what the Word of God is. The Word of God presumably existed before any attempt was made to write it down. It was known before Moses by Adam, Noah, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and so forth, none of whom had a copy. It was even known to Moses before he supposedly wrote it down.

Fisher rushed further to a form of Quaker universalism. The Word of God can be known anywhere at any time in any language —why should it only be stateable in Hebrew and Greek? Fisher was in Amsterdam for around six months in 1657-8, before he left for Rome and Constantinople to try to convert the Pope and the Sultan. He attended Synagogue services, and spent lots of time trying to convince members of the community of the Quaker message. He was then also translating two pamphlets by Margaret Fell, the mother of the Quakers, into Hebrew, to try to convert the Jews.

I have offered evidence elsewhere that Benedict de Spinoza, after his excommunication [from Synagogue], became involved with the Quakers, and that he joined with Samuel Fisher in translating the pamphlets. If this was the case, Fisher and Spinoza could easily have shared their views about the Biblical text. Spinoza, in the Theological-Political Treatise, expressly set forth the thesis that the Word of God is not a physical object. The Word of God would remain and be recognizable even if all physical books disappeared. For Fisher the Word would be recognized by the Spirit or Light within, for Spinoza by reason.”

[The book links provided here are part of the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to Amazon.com.]

Most of the political issues we’re confronting in 2020 are enormously complicated. COVID-19 is a generational health emergency, but how best to handle it? We don’t know. The health care system in America is broken and inequitable—do we need more of a free market, or more government intervention? We can’t agree on the best path of action.

Even the issues surrounding abortion are massively complex. Evidence would suggest that the typical woman who has an abortion does not do so with gusto, or with a guilt-free conscience. She would be far less likely to have an abortion if marriage were better supported culturally and politically in America. A woman in a stable two-parent marriage, who knows that they can afford another child, is far less likely to have a physician terminate the baby’s life. So what can government do to undergird marriage and family, especially for the poorest Americans? We don’t know.

But to evangelicals and faithful Catholics, the core ethical issue is not complicated: abortion ends the life of arguably the most vulnerable person in our society, the unborn child. Unlike many of the “structural” sins we lament, abortion happens at a specific place and time, to a living victim who does not deserve to die. That elegant but grim simplicity is one of the main reasons why the pro-life movement is alive and well almost a half-century after Roe v. Wade.

Another reason that pro-life sentiment has remained strong is that this moral issue flows with the current cultural trend toward protecting victims in America. Protecting victims (appropriately) has become perhaps the most compelling type of moral cause even for secular Americans (as seen in the #MeToo movement, the anger about police violence against African Americans, and so on). Who is a more vulnerable victim than the unborn infant?

The clarity of the pro-life cause is also the key to the enduring white evangelical attachment to the Republican Party, in spite of the GOP’s manifest faults with Donald Trump at the helm. At the time of Roe, Democrats had a deeper pro-life tradition than did Republicans, but Republicans saw a major opportunity to attract Catholics and white evangelicals with the pro-life issue. (In spite of some historians’ erroneous claims, key evangelical outlets and organizations such as Christianity Today and the National Association of Evangelicals immediately condemned Roe when it came down).

Many white evangelicals in 2020 might appreciate a realistic alternative to the boorishness and chaos of the Trump presidency. Joe Biden may not be the most articulate person, and he may well get run over by the extreme left wing of the party, but he’s a tempting choice after four years of Trump. And yet. And yet. Biden’s increasingly hardline pro-abortion views, especially in light of his former moderation on the issue, make him a deeply problematic alternative. (See further explanation on this problem from Justin Taylor.)

I have been reading an advance copy of Daniel K. Williams’s The Politics of the Cross, who makes about the best case I have seen against a pro-lifer’s uncritical attachment to the GOP. Overturning Roe has proven futile for pro-lifers, though the looming appointment of Amy Coney Barrett has breathed new life into that old strategy. State-based efforts to limit abortions have proven somewhat more successful, thanks partly to the proliferation of crisis pregnancy centers, which provide exactly the type of financial and social support that can help tip wavering mothers over to the choice for life.

Williams notes that the Democrats’ promotion of financial support programs for the poor may have the ironic effect of being more functionally pro-life than Republicans’ opposition to Roe, which often seems more obligatory than sincere. If all working women could receive living wages, for example, it would certainly reduce the number of abortions performed out of a sense of financial or familial desperation. Single women are more likely to be poor, and unmarried women account for 86 percent of all abortions. So maybe one of the best things we could do to actually reduce abortions would be to enhance the financial and health safety net for working women (though again we would debate about what programs work to empower the poor).

In spite of his apparent recent adoption of pro-life views, and nomination of pro-life judges, Donald Trump’s longtime image as a womanizer and playboy (even appearing on the cover of Playboy itself) comes straight out of the pro-abortion culture, too, with its embrace of pornography, recreational sex, and marital infidelity. Williams argues that many Christians have a valid rationale for voting for Democrats, who (in this line of thinking) are more pro-life than Republicans in practice, though he believes that Christians who do so are under a special obligation to publicly condemn the Democrats’ rigid pro-choice stance with regard to the act of abortion itself.

And yet. And yet. Democrats, led by Biden, have moved from the 1990s mantra of “safe, legal, and rare” to demanding unlimited, taxpayer-supported abortion access as a universal right. More troubling still is Biden’s flip on the Hyde Amendment, which prohibits the use of taxpayer money to pay for abortions. Biden, like many older Democrats—especially Catholics—used to support the Hyde Amendment, but he caved in order to become a leading contender for the Democratic nomination. As Williams notes, if Hyde was repealed, the use of taxpayer funds would likely increase the number of abortions in America by the hundreds of thousands. Their desire to repeal Hyde makes it tough to sustain the argument that Democrats are really more pro-life in practice than Republicans, however complacent the GOP may be on the issue.

There are myriad reasons why we might not vote for Donald Trump, from the administration’s constant chaos, to his race-baiting, anti-immigrant policies and rhetoric, and his hush payments to porn stars. But then we’re reminded of the elegant clarity of the moral case against the act of abortion itself, and it feels like we’re back to square one: only one party nominally objects to abortion per se.

This election, Christians will undoubtedly land at points across whole range of voting conclusions: reluctantly voting for Trump, reluctantly voting for Biden, voting for a third-party candidate, or not voting for president at all. I have a harder time understanding the Christian voter who is zealously enthusiastic about any of these choices. May the Lord use this season to help us to stop putting our trust in princes.

The greatest human evils and body counts of the past century—the Russian Gulags, the Holocaust, the Holodomor (the human-made Ukrainian Famine), the Chinese Cultural Revolution, the Armenian Genocide, the Cambodian Killing Fields, and the Rwandan Genocide—all share the same three ingredients: (1) concentrated state power; (2) an enraged mob (usually the majority) motivated by comprehensive secular ideology and/or tribal loyalties; and (3) a passive and seemingly helpless population, including the victims. As Rene Girard helpfully reminds us, the victims often serve as scapegoats for the enraged mob, so the mob can avoid confronting the deeper moral rot within their whole society.

In his invaluable new book, Live Not By Lies, Rod Dreher warns Christians that certain forms of these ingredients are now present and growing in the United States. Although he does not expect anything like state-sponsored genocide, he contends we must be ready for what he calls soft totalitarianism. Hard totalitarianism occurs when the state seeks total control of defining truth, including your actions, your thoughts, and your emotions. In contrast, soft totalitarianism occurs when elites who control public opinion also control permissible actions and speech. He divides this argument into two parts. In the first, he makes his case for why America is inching toward soft totalitarianism. In the second, he provides Christians with suggestions for surviving the coming soft totalitarianism, based on interviews with Soviet dissidents.

Dreher makes his case in the first part of his book by pointing out that Hannah Arendt’s description of a pre-totalitarian society accurately describes America today. We share: (1) loneliness and social atomization; (2) a lost faith in hierarchies and institutions; (3) the growing desire to transgress and destroy; (4) an increase in propaganda and the willingness to believe useful lies; (5) a mania for ideology; and (the one I often see in American higher education); (6) a society that values loyalty more than expertise. Dreher draws upon observations of post-communist immigrants who saw them under communism and now see these characteristics emerging in America. Despite this evidence, in making this comparison between Soviet totalitarianism and the United States, Trevin Wax’s TGC review suggests that Dreher “overplays his hand.” Actually, I think he underplays it.

Dreher does not mention one of the most important ingredients that would allow American elites to turn soft totalitarianism into hard totalitarianism—the increasing concentration of political power in American life. Consider that before World War I, we had no federal income tax; Supreme Court decisions did not generally apply to the states; the federal government had no role in education; the vast majority of college students attended private colleges and universities; entities such as the FBI, CIA, and the Department of Homeland Security did not exist; federal regulatory agencies were almost nonexistent; and our military was miniscule. These things made us very different from the monarchies across the Atlantic Ocean, including Russia. All those things have now changed, to make us more like the former USSR. Today, one letter from one federal bureaucrat, or one decision with a one-person Supreme Court majority, can radically alter the price of faithfulness for Christians in education, business, or health care. As Ross Douthat recently noted after the death of Justice Ginsburg, “A system in which the great questions of our country are settled by the deaths of octogenarians is too close to late-Soviet Politburo politics for comfort.” Structurally, we are more like authoritarian and totalitarian governments than ever before.

Americans tend to be naïve about this concentration of federal power, since most do not recognize this historical change. The elites who do recognize it believe they have largely been a force for good. After all, the expansion of federal government power has helped us address great ills such as poverty (e.g., Social Security and Great Society programs), racial injustice (e.g., civil-rights laws and court decisions), health problems (e.g., Obamacare), the rights of minorities (with the Bill of Rights applied to the states), educational inequities (e.g., federal loans), educational advances (e.g., the mass growth of higher education) and more.

Of course, concentrated power does help get certain good things accomplished, but we cannot be blind to the possible future costs. This is where Trevin Wax is wrong. The potential increasingly exists for secret police (for the first time, we have what Czarist Russia had for centuries—a national internal police that watch citizens), strict censorship (ask most professors how they feel about their free speech these days), deprivation from jobs (ask people fired for posting and saying the “unwoke” thing), and more. An increasingly nationalized and centralized education system also makes it easier for governments to “reeducate” millions. Just ask the Chinese Uyghurs.

We also have newly woke revolutionaries to support the elites. I recently had a student defend communism on the basis that Lenin and Stalin did advance literacy and extend the life span of the Russian people. In response I seriously joked, “I guess those life span stats did not include the life spans of the tens of millions of deaths directly attributable to Lenin and Stalin in the Gulags or the Holodor.”

Admittedly, I needed little convincing in this first section. Like Dreher, a book project on moral education in Russia led me to spend a significant part of my career reading about Soviet life, living and traveling in post-communist Russia and Europe, and interviewing post-communists in Russia, Ukraine, and Eastern Europe about their moral and spiritual lives. Through these interviews and the relationships, I encountered the same fiendish effects of communist totalitarianism and the trauma faced by dissidents.

The Trump presidency seems to have awakened some Americans to the dangers of having malign officials using this enormous and continually expanding state power for nefarious ends. However, rather than creating new and strengthening old safeguards (e.g., making Congress actually matter) against the abuse of centralized state power (the answer of early American political architects), most think the solution is simply to have the right people in the power centers (especially the executive branch and Supreme Court). These odd optimists remind me of friends who believe in total depravity, but for some reason are quite confident about what “the right people” with concentrated state power can accomplish for the common good or the Christian cause. Based on my experience studying and talking to people in totalitarian regimes, I tend not to share this optimism. My view is also colored by the fact that countries such as Austria, Romania, and Ukraine persecuted my own ancestors for their Anabaptist beliefs.

This last point, however, brings up one key reason for optimism that both Dreher and Wax overlook. One of the reasons state authorities expelled my ancestors from these countries was that the established churches (Catholic and Eastern Orthodox) were part of the state’s elite culture, cozying up to state power and encouraging the state to do their dirty monopoly-maintaining work. Neither Anabaptists/Baptists nor the freedom to evangelize has fared well in countries where Eastern Orthodox Christians are the majority. In fact, the Eastern Orthodox Church has a history of asking the state to squash dissent and religious liberty (e.g., Russia, Greece).

The church monopoly institutionalized through state partnership helped Soviet totalitarianism emerge more quickly. The Soviets easily took over education because state authorities already had a habit of using Russian Orthodoxy to buttress state educational institutions and, as a result, the Orthodox Church never started their own private universities. Whether conservative or liberal theologically, centralized state governments love using the church for their ends. Thus, the only Christian university that existed in communist lands after World War II was a private Catholic Polish university (Pope John Paul II’s alma mater and now namesake).

Here is where the United States does have an advantage that should give us hope (sociologically and politically speaking; theologically speaking, our hope comes only from God). America’s tradition of religious freedom and disestablishment has meant that we have fashioned space for religious creativity in all areas of life. A diverse array of religious traditions have built educational institutions, hospitals, charities, parachurch groups, and more. Fifteen percent of our population still attends private K-12 educational institutions or is homeschooled, and 22 percent still attend private colleges. Despite recent travails, we have the most diverse and robust system of Christian higher education in the world. The diversity of this system can help stem the tide of totalitarianism. Unsurprisingly, one of the first things Hugo Chavez did to enforce totalitarian rule in Venezuela was to outlaw private education.

What could our churches, private Christian schools, private Christian colleges and universities, private parachurch groups, private Christian charities, and so on, teach Christians in the face of concentrated state power? Here is where Dreher’s book shines. He distills some of the most vital lessons from dissidents under communism. He sets forth six of them.

Value Nothing More than the Truth

First, we need to value nothing more than truth. As Ephesians 6 says, buckle the belt of truth around your waist. Dreher also helpfully reminds us of a couple reasons we accept lies. We desperately want to preserve our own comfort and survival. Such a person, Dreher reminds us (quoting Havel) is “a demoralized person.” I would merely add one more thing. At universities, I find that students, staff, and faculty also tend to accept lies to make other people emotionally comfortable. In their mind, this makes accepting lies morally justifiable, since it is showing hospitality to the stranger. As I remind my students, we often use such misunderstandings of virtue to excuse our moral failings.

Cultivate a Cultural Memory

Second, Dreher advocates cultivating cultural memory. He tells the story of a 26-year-old Californian Communist who had never heard about the gulags. I remember interviewing leaders at the Ukrainian Catholic University in 2007 who shared how their students did not know anything about Lenin or Stalin. To help “jog their memory,” they asked every student to interview survivors of the underground Catholic Church that the communists outlawed in Ukraine (communists did not outlaw the Eastern Orthodox Church in Ukraine but did control it). Every student learned how to cultivate memory and the institution collected all the memories. We can learn from them. Only now is my own city and university collecting those memories of a loathsome lynching that occurred in 1916.

See Families as Cells of Resistance

Third, Dreher maintains that families must become resistance cells. He tells the heroic story of the Benda family in the Czech Republic and how these isolated Christian academics raised a family of six children to be faithful Catholics in the midst tremendous ideological pressure. The moral pedagogy of the parents is a model for all parents. They had the children watch High Noon to understand how to develop courage against the larger communist society. They read to the children two to three hours a day. A favorite was The Lord of the Rings, because “we knew Mordor was real. We felt that their story . . . was our story.” They dressed their kids differently, so they learned how to be different and showed them they were accountable to God and not humans. They asked their children to participate in their dangerous advocacy for human rights, since they wanted their children to know that they were engaged in a “fellowship” struggling for the cause of justice. Every parent should read this chapter of Dreher’s book.

Rely on Christ, the Solid Rock

Fourth, you have to rely upon Christ, the solid rock of one’s faith. As one former prisoner shared, “You can’t simply be against everything bad. You have to be for something good. Otherwise, you can get really dark and crazy.” Totalitarians are masters of fueling bitterness and resentment among various interest groups on the basis of past and present injustices. In contrast, Dreher shares about dissidents such as Silvester Krčméry, who survived prison by giving himself totally to what Ephesians describes as the shield of faith (“the more I depended upon faith the stronger I became”) and the sword of the Spirit, the Word of God (“Memorizing texts from the New Testament proved to be an excellent preparation for critical times and imprisonment”).

Resist Evil through Communal Prayer

Fifth, Dreher advises that we need to engage in the work of resistance to evil with a small, praying community (a la Eph. 6:18-20). You pray together for the courage to resist, and as one Christian recounts, “When you were with your friends in these communities, you had freedom.” Not surprisingly, our recent Baylor Character and Spirituality Study of students found that the key to their spiritual and moral flourishing in college was involvement in Christian small groups. Although a staple of evangelical circles, Catholics and the Eastern Orthodox could learn from this insight. As my Russian friends would often tell me: if I want to pray, I go to the Orthodox Church, but if I want to understand something, talk to other believers, and experience fellowship, I go to Protestant small groups.

Resist the idolatry of Comfort

Finally, as any good Eastern Orthodox Christian will do, Dreher reminds us in the end that to live for Christ involves suffering under either soft or hard totalitarianism. It is a timely lesson he illustrates with powerful examples. In the Baylor Character and Spirituality Study I mentioned, when we asked Baylor students what the good life looks like to them 10 years from now, what they describe is the opposite of suffering. They do not want riches; they merely want one of the most dangerous idols of them all, “to be comfortable.” As Father Kirill Kaleda says in Dreher’s book, “this current ideology of comfort is anti-Christian in its very essence.”

We will increasingly be tempted to deny bits of Christian theology and ethics to keep our level of comfort. God save us and help us stand against that spreading evil. Dreher’s book will help us do that.

Some book links provided here are part of the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to Amazon.com.

Anti-Catholicism was a central force in British colonial history in America, not least because the colonies were routinely involved in wars between Britain and Catholic powers including France and Spain. These wars, including the Seven Years’ War (or French and Indian War), were interpreted by British colonists as conflicts against the power of “Antichrist” (not “the Antichrist,” as would become common later). Some pastors even worried that Britain itself had become infected with the spirit of “popery and arbitrary government” in the leadup to the American Revolution.

Anti-Catholicism became somewhat more muted as Americans struck an alliance with their old Catholic enemy France in 1778, but anti-Catholicism remained a ready resource in American culture, especially once Catholic immigrants from Ireland and Germany became a demographic force in antebellum America. The 1850s was a high moment of anti-Catholic sentiment, as the Know-Nothing, or American Party, briefly enjoyed national political power through their commitment to the supremacy of native-born Protestant Americans. As Tyler Anbinder explains in his definitive book Nativism and Slavery: The Northern Know Nothings and the Politics of the 1850s,

America went through a similar paroxysm of anti-Catholic and anti-immigrant sentiment in the 1910s and ’20s. The second Ku Klux Klan (especially in Northern states) was as much an anti-Catholic as an anti-African American organization. Through 1960 and the election of John Kennedy, Catholic politicians routinely had to face questions about whether their top political allegiance was to the United States or the Vatican. Such questions were as likely to be raised by mainliners and liberal Christians as by fundamentalists and evangelicals.

Conservative Protestant hostility toward Catholics became more muted in the 1970s and ’80s, as Protestants aligned with conservative Catholics such as Phyllis Schlafly, arguably the person most responsible for the downfall of the Equal Rights Amendment. Many evangelicals who appreciated their alliance with Catholics on issues such as the pro-life cause have wanted to maintain clear lines of theological difference, as they should. But outright anti-Catholicism among conservative American Protestants has become more rare over the past six decades.

Overt hostility today against Catholics is often limited to media and progressive outlets—but normally only against Catholics who defend their church’s teachings against abortion and same-sex marriage. (House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, for example, is a Catholic mother of five children, but gets no anti-Catholic flak from the media due to her progressive views on cultural issues.)

So prospective SCOTUS nominee Amy Coney Barrett gets subjected to breathless accounts tinged with anti-Catholic paranoia, such as the one from Reuters that, in all seriousness, presented the dilemma over Barrett as whether her fellowship group People of Praise was “totalitarian” or just “ultraconservative.” Newsweek had to issue a humiliating correction to an article, the headline of which “originally stated that People of Praise inspired ‘The Handmaid’s Tale.'” It turns out this was not true in any sense. They did not take the article down at the time of the correction, however.

When those sneaky Catholics—especially pro-life Catholic women with many kids—are having fellowship meetings, you can bet that the red robes with the funky white visors are coming out next. They must be! Isn’t that what Catholics do?

The Hebrew phrase standing behind the English phrase “the wealth of nations” appears in Isaiah 60:5, 60:11, and 61:6. The Hebrew phrase is chayil goyim. Chayil can be understood as referring to “strength,” “ability,” “wealth,” and “army” or military “force.” Goyim is the Hebrew word for “nation” or “people,” most often in reference to non-Hebrew people groups…

The earliest English bibles and translations of the Old Testament illustrate a diversity of ways of understanding the underlying words in Hebrew, Greek, and Latin. John Wycliffe’s fourteenth-century translation of the Bible into Middle English renders the text as “the wealth of the heathen.” There are a number of translations of the Old Testament into English in the sixteenth century, and these render the phrase either as “the strength of the Gentiles” (Coverdale Bible [1535]; Matthew’s Bible [1537]; Great Bible [1539]; Taverner’s Bible [1539]; Douay-Rheims [1582/1610]), or “the riches of the Gentiles” (Geneva Bible [1560]; Bishops’ Bible [1568]).

The most famous and influential translation of the Bible into English was made under the auspices of King James in 1611, the so-called King James or Authorized Version (KJV), which is still the dominant version among contemporary English-language Bible readers (at least in the United States). The version of the Bible that Smith himself owned, the 1722 edition of the KJV Bible published in Edinburgh by James Watson, would have been the natural source for any intended biblical allusion.

The KJV renders the relevant text in Isaiah 60:5 and 60:11 with the phrase “the forces of the Gentiles.” Isaiah 61:6 is translated as “the riches of the Gentiles” in the KJV, and the phrase “the wealth of all the heathen round” appears at Zechariah 14:14…

More proximate to Smith’s own time, the major Roman Catholic English-language Bible, the Douay-Rheims translation, was put out in a new edition in 1752. This eighteenth-century edition retains the language of the earlier versions, translating Isaiah 60:5 as “the strength of the Gentiles.” The only other published English-language version of the Bible that I have been able to identify before 1776 is the Quaker Bible of 1764, which renders the text into English as “The Forces of the Nations.”

The earliest version of the text of the book of Isaiah in English that I have found that uses “the wealth of nations” or a close variant is a 1778 publication by Robert Lowth (1710–1787). At the time, Lowth was the bishop of London and a famed expert on biblical poetry. Lowth translates Isaiah 60:5 in this way: “Then shalt thou fear, and overflow with joy; / And thy heart shall be ruffled, and dilated; / When the riches of the sea shall be poured in upon thee; / When the wealth of the nations shall come into thee” (p. 157).

In 1808, the American Charles Thomson undertook a new translation from the Septuagint, which, as we have seen, represents a different text tradition at this point from the major Hebrew texts. Thomson (1808) thus renders the conclusion of Isaiah 60:5 as referring to “the riches of the sea and of nations and peoples.” Other nineteenth-century versions include Webster’s Revision (1833), which reads “the forces of the Gentiles,” and Young’s Literal Translation (1862), which renders the text as “the forces of the nations.” It is only toward the conclusion of the nineteenth century that “the wealth of nations” and close variants come into widespread use in English Bible translations. The Revised Version of 1885 translates Isaiah 60:5 as “the wealth of the nations,” as does the Darby Bible (1890) and the American Standard Version (1901).

Although there is some diversity among English translations of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, “the wealth of nations” has by this time become a standard translation choice. Thus, the New American Bible (1970), the New American Standard Bible (1971), the New Revised Standard Version (1989), the Contemporary English Version (1995), the English Standard Version (2001), the Holman Christian Standard Bible (2004), and the Lexham English Bible (2010) all use “the wealth of nations” or “the wealth of the nations.” The New King James Version (1982) uses “the wealth of the Gentiles,” while the New International Version (1984) renders the text as “the riches of the nations.”

This survey of the history of translation of the Hebrew chayil goyim into English illustrates the diversity of translation choices across the centuries. Nevertheless, a couple of patterns can be found. First, prior to 1776, no major Bible translation uses “the wealth of nations” to translate Isaiah 60:5. Second, this phrase and close variants begin to appear in biblical translations toward the end of the nineteenth century, and become more popular through the twentieth century to the present day…

The lack of any English Bible translation before the time of Adam Smith that uses the phrase “wealth of nations” to translate the relevant source words in Isaiah 60:5 and similar passages renders practically impossible the claim that, as [one author] puts it, “[i]n a biblically literate culture, many would have known the allusion in the title to Smith’s revolutionary 1776 publication.”

For Ballor’s complete argument and sources, see the original article.

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[TK] Your book came out in the 400th anniversary year of the founding of Plymouth Colony. Can you explain who the Plymouth “separatists” were in the context of the English Reformation? Were they “puritans”?

[JT] Many of the passengers on the Mayflower had separated from the Church of England. Like other “puritans,” they thought England’s church was insufficiently reformed. They objected to anything that smacked of Catholicism—like priestly garments, the set liturgy of the Book of Common Prayer, and the sign of the cross during baptism. Most puritans retained hope that reform efforts would eventually succeed, and they clung to the ideal of a national church. Some men and women, however, insisted that true Christians could not wait. They were obliged to reclaim their liberty to form covenanted congregations, elect their own leaders, exercise church discipline, and worship according to their understanding of the Bible. For them, Jesus Christ—not a king or queen—is the church’s only head. Royal officials understood separatism as rank sedition, and a number of separatists were executed in the 1580s and 1590s.

Persecution never fully extinguished separatism, though. During the first decade of the 1600s, men and women in several English communities—Scrooby, Gainsborough, Sandwich, London—withdrew from the church and formed their own congregations and other religious gatherings. They too experienced persecution, in the form of fines, imprisonment, and harassment, and they chose to leave England before they suffered worse. They took refuge in the Netherlands, many joining a congregation in Leiden led by John Robinson.

Where does the title “they knew they were pilgrims” come from? Would the Plymouth separatists understand what we mean when we call them “the Pilgrims”?

The title comes from a phrase in a history of Plymouth Colony written by William Bradford, its long-term governor. In 1620, a portion of the Leiden congregation prepared to leave the Dutch Republic, sailing back to England in preparation for their voyage across the Atlantic. Other members of the congregation came to bid them farewell and to pray and worship with them for a final time. They wept. Bradford recounted that despite their sorrow, “they knew they were pilgrims, and looked not much on those things, but lift[ed] up their eyes to the heavens, their dearest country, and quieted their spirits.” The words allude to the Hebrews 11, which calls exemplars of faith “strangers and pilgrims on the earth.”

The separatists on the Mayflower never talked about themselves as the Pilgrims. For them, like the author of Hebrews, all true Christians are pilgrims whose earthly journeys are uncertain but whose ultimate destination is heaven. Only in the early 19th century did Americans start referring to them as “the Pilgrims.”

As an aside, I love this phrase in Bradford’s history. This year has been a reminder of the uncertainty that characterizes mortal existence. It’s hard not to be fearful about what is transpiring in our world and nation, especially if we keep our eyes fixed only on news headlines and tweets. Bradford wasn’t saying that Christians should pretend that suffering and afflictions are not part of earthly life. Rather, lifting up our eyes to God helps us find the strength to face those trials.

You say that your book uses Plymouth Colony as a “fresh lens for examining the contested meaning of liberty” in early America. How so?

Many generations of Americans have lauded the Pilgrims for planting the seeds of democracy and religious freedom that blossomed during the Revolution and the Constitutional Convention. There were always voices that dissented from this hackneyed hagiography. Especially over the last 50 years, Native Americans and others have critiqued the Pilgrims as conquerors whose descendants stole Indian lands and killed those who resisted. In this vein, the Plymouth story is one of dispossession and slavery, not liberty.

Both of those versions of Plymouth Colony’s history are well-worn arguments. What I do in my book is take a fresh look at the ways that the Pilgrims—and others within Plymouth Colony—understood liberty. For them, “Christian liberty” was preeminent. By this, they meant liberty from the “yoke of bondage” as described by the apostle Paul in Galatians, the liberty to form and govern their own churches, and the liberty to worship according to their reading of the Bible. Political liberty also mattered to the Pilgrims. In the Mayflower Compact, the Pilgrims articulated the widely held English principle that the validity of laws and offices rests on the consent of the people, in this case the adult male passengers on the ship. Other groups of English settlers brought and developed different understandings of liberty, which was always a matter of contention rather than consensus.

Any discussion of liberty in Plymouth Colony also has to reckon with slavery. Slavery was not just a Southern phenomenon. Even in tiny Plymouth Colony, there were African slaves, and in later decades of the colony, settlers enslaved many Natives.

Speaking of which, how would you assess the Plymouth colonists’ relationship with the Native Americans living around them?

The Mayflower arrived in the wake of an epidemic that devastated the Wampanoag people of what is now southeastern Massachusetts. In some cases, entire communities disappeared. The Pilgrims, meanwhile, lost half of their population during their first winter at Plymouth. So two weakened peoples formed an alliance that at first was mutually beneficial. Starting in the 1630s, however, the English population grew quickly. English settlers encroached on Wampanoag lands, and colonial magistrates treated the Wampanoags as subjects rather than allies. In 1675, this conflict turned into a war—known as King Philip’s War—that soon spread across most of New England. When the English prevailed, they enslaved hundreds if not thousands of Wampanoags. Many of those Native were exported. Some were taken to the Caribbean; others ended up in Spain and Tangiers. It is a grim story.

TGC readers might also be interested in the fact that many Wampanoags embraced Christianity, either before or after the war. It is worth emphasizing that the story of early American Christianity includes Wampanoags who insisted that they too possessed the liberty to form their own churches and select their own leaders.

If you could choose one myth to dispel about “the Pilgrims,” what would it be?

Just one? There are a lot of myths surrounding the Pilgrims, from the rock to the First Thanksgiving to the excessive credit they have received for the birth of religious liberty and democracy. What stands out to me is that there is so much in the history of Plymouth Colony even after one sets these myths aside. We should at least begin with an examination of the 17th century on its own terms. We should try to figure out how English settlers and the Native peoples of New England thought about the world in which they lived and why they acted in the ways they did. People in the past—like those in the present—are always more complex than we might think at first glance.

[The book links provided here are part of the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to Amazon.com.]

Until the 1960s people of color—especially African Americans—could not count on being able to vote, so this analysis is somewhat limited to whites. Even if you only consider whites, however, conservative Christians have often voted for candidates depending on what region of the country they lived in, rather than voting as a faith-oriented bloc.

In 1800, the first truly divisive presidential election in our history, evangelicals may have been slightly more likely to support the religious skeptic Thomas Jefferson, a champion of religious liberty, than the Unitarian John Adams, who was friendly to state support for religion. But region was a greater predictor of voting patterns than differences of faith in 1800, with white Southerners overwhelmingly supporting Jefferson, seeing him as a defender of their economic interests. There were also major differences between denominations, with Baptists more likely than (for example) Congregationalist evangelicals to support Jefferson.

It may be that the closest we have ever gotten to unified support of traditionalist Protestant voters for one party was for the Whigs, from the 1830s to the 1850s. The Whigs were the party of moral reform in causes such as temperance, so they enjoyed considerable support from evangelicals in the North and South. William Henry Harrison, the first Whig elected president, received broad-based electoral votes in 1840, including victories in the majority of Southern states. Most American blacks could not vote before the Civil War, of course. In Northern states, the small number of black voters often supported the Whigs, since northern Whigs tended to be antislavery. (Southern Whigs were generally proslavery.)

African American voting in the South saw a brief flowering after the Civil War, and they were overwhelmingly Republican because of the memory of Lincoln and emancipation. By the late 1870s, white Democrats “redeemed” the South, which included barring blacks and white Republicans from voting. Northern blacks who retained the vote tended to vote Republican until the 1930s, when many African Americans became part of FDR’s New Deal coalition. White Southerners, including evangelicals, overwhelmingly supported Democrats for a century after the Civil War.

That began to change in the aftermath of the LBJ-sponsored civil-rights legislation of the mid-1960s, when many Southern Democrats, such as U.S. Senator Strom Thurmond of South Carolina, switched to the GOP. Thurmond was one of the most prominent Southern Democrats in 1964 to support Republican presidential candidate Barry Goldwater, who opposed the Civil Rights Act. The year 1976 and the election of Georgia Democrat Jimmy Carter was the last cycle in which many Southern African Americans and whites voted for the same presidential candidate. By that time, strong majorities of white Northern evangelicals already supported GOP nominees, starting with the (vaguely religious) Dwight Eisenhower in the 1950s.

The past 50 years have seen the emergence of more rigid ethnic voting patterns in America, replacing older regional alignments. Over the past half-century, whites (especially self-identified evangelicals) have tended to support Republicans, and African Americans (including traditionalist Protestants) have overwhelmingly supported Democrats. The largest ethnic group whose conservative Christian voters are still “up for grabs” are Latinos.

So when insider Republican evangelicals such as Franklin Graham tell us that Christians must vote Republican, one of the great unaddressed questions is why so many traditionalist Christians, especially African American Christians, take an entirely different view? In any case, political disagreement among American Christians has almost always been the norm, and that will certainly remain the case in 2020.

For more on evangelicals’ history of political engagement, see my book Who Is an Evangelical? The History of a Movement in Crisis.

Ariel Sabar, Veritas: A Harvard Professor, a Con Man and the Gospel of Jesus’s Wife (Doubleday). “From National Book Critics Circle Award-winning author Ariel Sabar, the gripping true story of a sensational religious forgery and the scandal that shook Harvard.”

Peter J. Thuesen, Tornado God: American Religion and Violent Weather (Oxford). “In this groundbreaking history, Peter Thuesen captures the harrowing drama of tornadoes, as clergy, theologians, meteorologists, and ordinary citizens struggle to make sense of these death-dealing tempests.”

Tara Isabella Burton, Strange Rites: New Religions for a Godless World (Public Affairs). Barton Swaim’s excellent review of this book in the The Wall Street Journal piqued my interest.

Tom Zoellner, Island on Fire: The Revolt That Ended Slavery in the British Empire (Harvard). Because I am fascinated by the 1831 Jamaican slave rebellion that is often called the “Baptist War.”

Sean Wilentz, No Property in Man: Slavery and Antislavery at the Nation’s Founding (Harvard). I recently finished this excellent book, published in 2018, which gave me a whole new perspective on the reasons for the Constitution’s silences (evasions?) on the subject of, and even the term “slavery.”

[The book links provided here are part of the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to Amazon.com.]

J. I. Packer was a wonderful theological biographer, writing several sketches that seemed to capture the essence of his subjects. Of Lloyd-Jones, he wrote in 1985:

What a fascinating human being he was! Slightly built, with a great domed cranium, head thrust forward, a fighter’s chin and a grim line to his mouth, he radiated resolution, determination, and an unwillingness to wait for ever. A very strong man, you would say, and you would be right. You can sense this from any photograph of him, for he never smiled into the camera.

There was a touch of the old-fashioned about him: he wore linen collars, three-piece suits, and boots in public, spoke on occasion of crossing-sweepers and washerwomen, and led worship as worship was led a hundred years before his time.

In the pulpit he was a lion, fierce on matters of principle, austere in his gravity, able in his prime to growl and to roar as his argument required.

Informally, however, he was a delightfully relaxed person, superb company, twinkling and witty to the last degree. His wit was as astringent as it was quick and could leave you feeling you had been licked by a cow. . . . He did not suffer fools gladly and had a hundred ways of deflating pomposity. Honest, diffident people, however, found in him a warmth and friendliness that amazed them.

For he was a saint, a holy man of God: a naturally proud person whom God made humble; a naturally quick-tempered person to whom God taught patience; a naturally contentious person to whom God gave restraint and wisdom; a natural egoist, conscious of his own great ability, whom God set free from self-seeking to serve the servants of God.

Packer goes on to write:

Nearly forty years on, it still seems to me that all I have ever known about preaching was given me in the winter of 1948–49, when I worshipped at Westminster chapel with some regularity. Through the thunder and the lightning, I felt and saw as never before the glory of Christ and of his gospel as modern man’s only lifeline and learned by experience why historic Protestantism looks on preaching as the supreme means of grace and of communion with God. Preaching, thus viewed and valued, was the centre of the Doctor’s life: into it he poured himself unstintingly; for it he pleaded untiringly. Rightly, he believed that preachers are born rather than made, and that preaching is caught more than it is taught, and that the best way to vindicate preaching is to preach. And preach he did, almost greedily, till the very end of his life. . . .

Thanks for the Lloyd-Jones Trust, audio recordings of his 1,600 sermons are now widely available.

Lloyd-Jones was of such an age that video recordings were more scarce. (He was born one year after C. S. Lewis, of whom not one video has emerged.)

Fortunately, with Lloyd-Jones, a few have survived. Below are some excerpts from family home videos, two interviews he conducted in his retirement, and a documentary he filmed about George Whitefield.

Jonathan Den Hartog, Samford University

John Turner, They Knew They Were Pilgrims: Plymouth Colony and the Contest for American Liberty (2020). This just-released book marks the 400th anniversary of the founding of Plymouth, a story that looms large in our national memory. Turner widens our understanding of these devout settlers to think about the world they helped build. [I endorsed this book for Yale Press, saying “This highly important book will become the new standard work on the Plymouth Colony.” – TK]

Two Revolutionary War books by David Hackett Fischer: Paul Revere’s Ride (1994) and Washington’s Crossing (2004). Both books delve into significant moments to tell detailed stories about the many participants and in the process shed light on significant American patterns of politics.

Joanne Freeman, The Field of Blood: Violence in Congress and the Road to the Civil War (2018). Teaching a class on the Civil War this semester, I’ve been thinking a lot about both the causes of the war and its ongoing effects. This lively book shows that fights in Congress occasionally went from mere squabbles to fisticuffs and even duels.

Barry Hankins, Jesus and Gin: Evangelicalism, The Roaring Twenties and Today’s Culture Wars (2010). Although much has been written about the 1920s, this is an extremely accessible introduction, including several laugh-out-loud lines.

Grant Wacker, One Soul at a Time: The Story of Billy Graham (2019). Grant Wacker is a masterful writer, and here he delivers a thoughtful biography of one of the most significant preachers of the 20th century. [See the Themelios review.]

Ron Johnson, Texas State (and soon to be at Baylor)

Frederick Douglass, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass (1845). This book is one of the best-written, accessible narratives a formerly enslaved person of the 19th century. In short order, the reader receives a great deal of firsthand information about one of the most famous people in U.S. history—along with his complex view of early American Christianity. [See Justin Taylor’s post on Douglass, “One of the Most Haunting Paragraphs I Have Read.“]

Laurent Dubois, Avengers of the New World: The Story of the Haitian Revolution (2004). If there was only one book someone could read about the Haitian Revolution, I recommend this one. The writing is clear and accessible, offering the reader a broad knowledge of slavery, revolution, and the evolution of Black empowerment within an enlightened Atlantic world. Many U.S. readers will draw connections with the American Revolution without prodding from the author.

Emily Conroy-Krutz, Christian Imperialism: Converting the World in the Early American Republic (2015). This book describes in brilliant detail and analysis how early 19th-century American missionaries interacted with foreign locations, including India, Liberia, the Middle East, the Pacific Islands, North America, and Singapore, to provide a new perspective on how Americans thought of their young nation’s role in a world of empires.

David Oshinsky, Polio: An American Story (2005). In the midst of a pandemic, the superbly written book informs and reminds readers of the dedication that scientists and scholars possess in terms of doggedly researching and pursuing knowledge that changes the lives of people.

Charles Marsh, God’s Long Summer: Stories of Faith and Civil Rights (1997). This engaging book, featuring the often overlooked civil-rights figure Fannie Lou Hamer, illustrates from a relatively balanced perspective the ways—not unlike today—in which people of the same faith can move in divergent ways when faced with major historical questions.

Andrea Turpin, Baylor University

James M. Ault Jr., Spirit and Flesh: Life in a Fundamentalist Baptist Church (2004). Nonfiction that reads like a novel, this book sympathetically narrates the lives of members of a small 1980s fundamentalist church—and how, by the end, the secular participant-observer author converts to Christianity, albeit Christianity of a different kind.

Michelle Lee-Barnewall, Neither Complementarian nor Egalitarian: A Kingdom Corrective to the Evangelical Gender Debate (2016). A great example of how to bring history to bear on theology, the first half of the book recounts how Americans’ changing beliefs about gender roles since the 1800s have led both sides to frame the current debate in terms of authority and equality, while the second half then critiques the assumptions both sides bring to the issue by putting the relevant biblical passages in their cultural context to reveal how scriptural authors were more concerned with questions such as inclusion, unity, and community holiness. [See TGC’s review.]

Melton McLaurin, Separate Pasts: Growing Up White in the Segregated South (1987). Southern historian McLaurin vividly recounts his experiences growing up in the tiny segregated village of Wade, North Carolina—and how deeper personal encounters with individual African Americans eventually made him question the town’s ways of life.

Adam Laats, Fundamentalist U: Keeping the Faith in American Higher Education (2018). As a sympathetic outsider to the institutions he studies, Laats pairs depth of research and analysis with a commitment to rigorous fairness to his subjects as he recounts the history of fundamentalist and evangelical American colleges—with a great eye for story and flair for turn of phrase. [See Justin Taylor’s post on Laats, “Three Reasons to Read a New Book on Fundamentalism.”]

Nancy Koester, Harriet Beecher Stowe: A Spiritual Life (2014). Koester’s highly readable biography pays particular attention to the development of the spiritual life of the author of Uncle Tom’s Cabin—the single most popular book written in the 19th century—and the relationship of her faith to her anti-slavery activism and other writings, all the while portraying Stowe as a very human, and hence relatable, woman. [See TGC’s review.]

[Some book links provided here are part of the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to Amazon.com.]

[TK] As you note, there is no lack of books on pregnancy, especially in the What to Expect When You’re Expecting genre. What is different about your approach?

[AH] Many pregnancy books give advice about hygiene, fetal development, and getting ready for birth. This is useful as far as it goes. But by aiming at exterior, physical symptoms and at the hidden events of the uterus, and then skipping to the endpoint of the process, they almost completely miss the pregnant woman herself, who she is, and what this experience is about. The experience is not just about getting a live baby out at the end, any more than a symphony is just for arriving at the last measure, or a football game matters just for a final score.

Studying historic Christian writings, devotional and theological, and old maternity guides helped me take a different approach. Antique guides offer useful contrasts to our current birth practices. They make clear the strangeness and newness of the way we view childbearing. The contrasts point out some things to appreciate and some to regret now. The way older manuals for women and midwives explain the duties of pregnancy helped me describe it as a work of care, laudable for women who are doing it. These sources also made me wish for common language about the significance of pregnancy. The nature of childbearing demands a cultural framework, an interpretive scheme to make sense of it beyond the clinical events. That’s a chief goal of the book.

You write, “Thinking well about pregnancy necessarily is part of thinking well about being human.” How so?

We wonder where we come from. People ponder their origins—from the start of the universe to one’s personal genetic code–so it should occur to us to think about where we came from more immediately. Every single person alive on the planet owes that status to the work of some woman who carried him or her around in utero. It’s right to be curious about this. That might invite us to respect more truly a particular woman who once awaited our arrival, sure, but also to grasp that self-aware caretaking and sometimes suffering is prerequisite to having people exist.

Being “self-aware” is important. People in other times had ideas about the baby growing in secret, but here and now a big part of being pregnant is awareness of it, followed by careful action because of it. What does it mean, practically and imaginatively, that each new human being does not sprout up like a seedling or get toted in the beak of a stork? In her actions and physical changes, the pregnant woman is showing some non-negotiable facts of human life: our reliance on each other for care, for physical presence, for relationship. Pregnancy gives visible reminder that this generosity grounds human life.

In spite of the welcome medical advances associated with pregnancy, you note that our culture’s rigidly medicalized treatment of pregnancy is limited and impoverished. How do pregnancy and childbirth change when we view them through the lens of the virtues?

The lens of virtues helps us name the good things that women do on behalf of expected babies. First, it’s an advance even to say that a woman does good things for the fetus. Older ideas of reproduction assumed a mother was just kind of waiting around passively until the baby decided to exit. We know that women do lots of things to help gestation along. The challenge is knowing how to describe these actions. They are not just self-care, and they don’t just directly improve the health of the baby. Instead, taken together they show a way of being a good human, demonstrating charity, hospitality, courage, prudence, and hope. That deserves admiration and imitation.

If the only language we have to describe pregnancy is medical—weight gain, blood pressure, glucose count—we miss this. Please note, I am not condemning medicine. Medical advances may make it possible to view pregnancy through the lens of virtue. Science that explains how a fetus grows has helped us realize what astonishing work women do. Having less cause to fear death of mother or baby gives space to appreciate this beauty.

How can we take a more robust Christian view of pregnancy, without succumbing to the idealized, sentimental talk about motherhood that we hear in many churches (maybe especially in evangelical churches)?

It would be healthy if pregnancy could be mentioned in contexts other than Christmas, abortion, or Mother’s Day. We can also follow the lead of Catholic philosopher Susan Windley-Daoust, who extends the theology of the body laid out by Pope John Paul II. She argues that by God’s creation the human body is a sign. A sign of what? God made our bodies to mean something, and it’s a worthy activity for Christians to reflect on what this feature of bodily life might mean. That’s one aim of my book.

I know that what I say about it is not the only way pregnancy might be a sign. So Christians could have fruitful conversations about what else God might be saying by bringing us to life this way. Using the language of virtues with pregnancy could be another way to imagine a robust Christian view, focusing attention on whatever is lovely, true, and worthy of praise [Phil. 4:8]. An alternative to sentimentalizing motherhood is for men and women both to imagine regarding a pregnant woman as a moral exemplar.

If you could suggest one thing for churches to do to create a healthier culture of pregnancy and childbearing, what would it be?

There are others, but I’d imagine practical help for pregnant women similar to what churches do after a birth or for people who are housebound, like coordinating meals and such. Offering food is a great help. But beyond that, other services specific to pregnancy could be useful, like accompanying women to doctor’s appointments, providing transportation or childcare for women who would otherwise tote toddlers along to prenatal visits. It could be envisioned as a “ministry of the Visitation,” potentially women at later stages of motherhood coming alongside newer parents. To offer this support would not imply that the new mother is incompetent, just that there’s a lot of new and sometimes intimidating changes in this process.

Churches could make a point to pray for mothers and awaited babies and make good on promises to help when due dates draw near, perhaps arranging for a safe, familiar person to stay with other children when parents go overnight to deliver the baby. A church could do this for its own members, a way of taking seriously pledges often made at baptism or dedication of babies, that the new ones be embraced by the whole congregation. These practical helps also could be a community ministry, maybe even more valuable to women lacking such support.

As with everything else in our consumer society, however, our options for history books are not equal. Think of books as being like food. Food quality runs along what we might call a “palatability” continuum. On one end of the continuum are highly processed foods like Pringles or Reese’s cups. They taste really good, but have virtually no nutritional value.

On the other end of the palatability scale are foods that are really good for you, but don’t taste so great. My son is on a healthy eating kick, and he recently made a smoothie. It involved celery, kale, and similar ingredients. It was extremely healthy, but it looked and tasted awful.

What we’re ideally looking for in food (and books) is a “just right” option in the middle—something that tastes great but also has nutritional value. For example, a locally farmed roasted chicken, with a side of well-seasoned steamed broccoli. Sorry if you don’t like broccoli—I do!

History books are a lot like those food choices. On one end of the spectrum are breezy, easily digested books about topics that might be interesting (usually about war or well-known politicians) but don’t challenge us intellectually. On the other end are well-researched books by academic scholars which are not very accessible except to a few other specialists. They often sell only a couple hundred copies. (I am setting aside the question here of history books that are really just polemics and, at worst, invent or hide evidence, are intellectually dishonest, or are even plagiarized.)

We’d ideally want to spend most of our reading time in the happy middle of the history and nonfiction book continuum, feasting on books that are intellectually robust AND well-written.

How do we find such books? It is often not easy. The books that are the easiest to find are often intellectual junk food. Marketers push junk food hard, and they do the same with ephemeral books. We often hear about or see books (on the front table of bookstores, in Amazon results, or in newspaper ads) because big trade publishers paid to have you see those books. Occasionally those books are intellectually serious, but often they are not.

There are three great ways to discern the intellectual value of a book. First, consider the author’s profile. Does the author have a position or track record that would suggest that he or she is a qualified expert in the topic? If you’re reading on a specifically Christian history topic, for example, does the person hold a position at a seminary or similar scholarly employer that suggests they have credentials and trustworthiness? Conversely, one of the most common warning signs is when an author parlays political, religious, or media connections in order to write on a history topic on which they (or their co-author/ghost writer, who did most of the work) have no obvious expertise.

Candidly, Fox News is the worst offender on this point—their hosts and former hosts have produced dozens of history-themed books in recent years. Some of these books may be modestly worthwhile, but why would we look to a Fox News host to tell us about a history topic that many other scholars and experts have devoted years to understanding? Often I’m afraid that the reason we choose them is that Fox hosts have unparalleled ability to market their books.

Second, look at the publisher. Some publishers traffic mainly in junk food history, while others stake their brand on publishing highly qualified, respected authorities. (I am speaking here mostly of the secular publishing business; many at TGC know the Christian publishing business far better than I do.) Trade publishers like Knopf and Basic Books, and academic houses like Yale and Oxford University Press, base their reputations on doing books that are readable but are serious, influential, and academically credible. Rarely books at such presses turn out not to be credible, but in general these are the types of presses that base their business on hitting the sweet spot—intellectual seriousness plus readability. (Major academic presses like Oxford tend to have both academic and trade book divisions—their books that are priced less than about $30 are the trade books.)

Finally, use reliable sources to vet books before you buy. The primary reason that I subscribe to The Wall Street Journal is because of their book reviews (daily, and in their weekend book review section). They generally only review books from credible authors and presses, and use credentialed experts to do the reviews. Reading reviews in the Journal, the New York Review of Books, and similar outlets, introduces me to a wide range of books that I might be interested in reading, but are not in my field. (It is part of my job to keep up with books in colonial and Revolutionary American history, the history of evangelicalism, and related topics—I tend to find out about such books through more specialized academic sources like history journals.)

I do a lot of reading in nonfiction and history topics that are well out of my specialty. I always try to apply the standards above to my own reading choices. One example of such a terrific nonfiction book, which I have been re-reading under shelter-in-place, is John Vaillant’s The Tiger: A True Story of Vengeance and Survival (2010). This book is an all-time favorite of mine, but it is _way_ outside of my specialty—it is the true story of a hunt for a man-eating tiger in southern Siberia. The riveting story is interspersed with reflections in politics, economy, and the environment in post-Soviet Russia.

It’s been a while since I first purchased and read the book, but I believe that I came across it first in a laudatory New York Times review of the book. That review vetted the book for me as a serious title in a field in which I had virtually no bearings. Vaillant himself has written for a host of well-known national periodicals and has won major American and Canadian awards for his writing. The book is with Knopf, one of my recommended publishers in nonfiction and history writing.

It is on a geographic topic that interests me personally, partly because of a summer I spent doing missionary work in nearby Vladivostok, Russia. But the incredibly well-researched book opened up a cultural and environmental world to me that I knew almost nothing about. Plus, the story of the tiger was utterly riveting. You won’t always have that kind of success in picking a book, but a little discernment can help make your history reading profitable and enjoyable at the same time.

See also my periodic “5 Great Books” posts, such as “5 Great Books on Thomas Jefferson.”

One of Perry’s students observed in his Christian higher education class, “I see Baylor is going to cut $64 million to $80 million from its budget next year.” Then he asked, “You have talked a lot about Christ animating learning this semester, so what would it mean to take a Christian approach to budget cutting?” His question is a good one. Unfortunately, in light of COVID-19, Christian higher education leaders now need to be prepared with a thoughtful answer.

Why Is COVID-19 So Dangerous to Colleges?

Before we consider this question, it might be helpful to understand why the COVID-19 crisis is so dangerous to higher education generally. Although private institutions charging $40,000 or more a year seem to make a lot of money, most colleges and universities operate on increasingly thin margins—margins thin enough that even a 5 percent decrease in first-year enrollment (a mere 29 students for a college of 2,300) could lead to budget cuts and potentially to layoffs.

These challenges have been exacerbated for private colleges by unrelenting competition, such as state programs that aim to provide free tuition for low-income students to state institutions only. To compete, private institutions give significant tuition discounts to achieve their needed enrollment. In fact, few enrollees outside of international students pay full price. This precarious situation led a writer at Forbes to predict the closure of 25 percent of all colleges within the next decade. And that was in 2018.

Expenses remain largely fixed in our current crisis, while revenue from tuition and other sources will decrease significantly. Colleges had to refund housing, meal plans, parking tickets, student fees, and other charges associated with living on campus. Revenue-generating summer camps and similar programs have disappeared. Finally, existing students may not return this fall. Entering students may choose not to come. The result will be a reduction in revenue that will be somewhere between significant and cataclysmic.

Amazoning and Walmarting Christian Higher Education

Because of their size, and the competition described above, many Christian institutions have had to survive with limited resources even before the coronavirus. The major outliers have been larger institutions that can take advantage of economies of scale, such as Baylor, and institutions that have cashed in on the online education phenomenon (e.g., Liberty University and Grand Canyon University). Yet even these institutions were preparing for the coming enrollment plunge anticipated in the mid-2020s, when the number of potential college students in the United States will decrease dramatically.

COVID-19 will only exacerbate these trends, producing a “Walmarting” and “Amazoning” of Christian higher education. Every institution will have to make budget cuts, and small Christian liberal arts colleges with small endowments—like a mom and pop grocer or an independent bookstore—may not survive. The giants and the major online educators will likely endure, and perhaps even prosper, as smaller institutions shut down. Christian colleges and universities are not uniquely susceptible to the effects of coronavirus, but they will likely feel the effects in unique ways.

Responding Christianly

How does Christ animate budget and personnel decisions that will become necessary in the coming storm?

Cut Budgets with Transparent Honesty

During this time, educational leaders need to communicate honestly and frequently with faculty, staff, and students. We can think of three Christian institutions recently (here, here, and here) in which the faculty and staff were either totally blind-sided by the financial health of the institution or faced severe repercussions due to it. In another case not listed, the president was admired by all for his scholarly work, but his lack of financial candor has left a tragic and mixed legacy. In contrast, we can fortunately point to Baylor’s institutional leadership in these months as a model. Our president has communicated frequently and honestly about the financial difficulties—including the prospect of layoffs—facing the university as a result of COVID-19.

The tendency of Christian organizations towards “nice-ness” will not serve us well now. It may seem “nice” to shield employees from dire circumstances, but it is not ultimately the most loving mode of operation. Instead, leaders should seek to be loving truth-tellers, sharing what they can as soon as they can. This gives employees time to adjust their expectations, start making alternative plans, and think creatively about possible solutions.

Re-Focus on Mission

Budget cutting can provide a unique opportunity to return our focus to our core mission. What are we doing that is not central—or even distracts from—our mission of Christ-animated learning? When we recall that medieval Christian universities grew out of monasteries, we recognize that we have added much to the Christian educational experience beyond its original simplicity. Indeed, there are models of simple Christian institutions from which we can learn.

Even though surviving institutions will ideally maintain their unique contributions, we could all use a big dose of simplicity. We also need innovation and institutional diversity—residential liberal arts models are effective, but they are not the only means by which to cultivate the minds and shape the affections of college students.

Faithfully Fight to Stay Alive, But Don’t Lose Faith to Live

Churches should help quality institutions faithfully fight to stay alive during these times. But we must also remember that, unlike the church, God has made no promises that Christian colleges will survive until Christ’s return. In a fallen world, few of our creations last for long. The Oxfords and Cambridges that exist for 800 years are the exception, not the norm.

Thus, sometimes fighting the good fight means letting go of some faculty and staff, or even shutting the doors. When it comes to layoffs or institutional closures (and those will happen), we should mourn, honor, and remember that which is lost. Some faculty and staff will have lost employment at schools to which they gave their hearts and minds. If they have to leave school, students will have lost a community of intellectual and spiritual cultivation. In the case of closure or a significant reduction in size, alumni will have lost an institution to which they have given their love, their time, and their money.

Final Thought

Through COVID-19, God has called all of us to a time of stewardship, suffering, and mourning. May we not give in to the temptation to compromise Christian convictions in order to preserve what we had before, as individuals or as institutions.

Fortunately, Christians have proven creative in building colleges and universities throughout the world. Christians will always be in the education business, as we seek to love God with all of our minds. Being faithful to that calling may look very different in the post-coronavirus landscape of Christian higher education.

Whenever we are able to go back to some sort of normalcy, I don’t see those contact rituals coming back until an effective COVID-19 vaccine is available (sometime in 2021, Lord willing). That will mean that church will remain strange, because tactile religion is such a common feature of Christianity that we don’t notice it until it is gone. I am no big fan of “greeting time,” because I am an introvert and not great at making small talk. But I readily understand that physical contact with fellow believers is a foundational part of what it means to be the peculiar people of God in the world. For example, I hug certain close male friends when I see them, and that is part of how I feel like a brother to them in the Lord.

As much as physical touch is woven into our church life, it is not nearly so pervasive as it was in earlier times, especially among Baptist churches in the colonial era. I was recently reading Janet Moore Lindman’s Bodies of Belief, which argues that among early American Protestants, Baptists practiced an especially “corporeal” religion. This was partly because of their strong attachment to the local church as the body of Christ, but also because of the distinctly tactile nature of their rituals, beginning with believer’s baptism by immersion.

Believer’s baptism gave Baptists their name, but it was one of nine church rituals that at least some Baptist churches across America practiced during the colonial era and into the 1800s. These included the Lord’s Supper, the laying on of hands (usually following baptism), the right hand of fellowship (for new members), the love feast, washing of feet, the kiss of charity, the fellowship of children or dry christening (often called “baby dedication” today), and anointing with oil. All of these practices had precedent in Scripture, though the extent to which they were mandatory was debated (except perhaps for baptism and the Lord’s Supper). James Leo Garrett notes that all nine rites were practiced in churches associated with Separate Baptists and the Sandy Creek network of churches emanating from North Carolina in the mid-1700s.

It would be fascinating to know just how common these rituals are (except for baptism and the Lord’s Supper, which are presumably ubiquitous) around the world today in Baptist churches. I suspect that baby dedication is nearly universal, too. The kiss of charity in America is mostly gone as a literal act, but has morphed into greeting times and/or the welcoming of new members (which also entails the right hand of fellowship).

Laying on of hands is probably less common, but is used sometimes as a way to pray intensely for people at particular moments, such as sending them out as missionaries or ordaining them to the ministry. Anointing with oil is probably also less common, but remains in some churches, especially those influenced by the charismatic movement. Foot washing is a distinctive practice of Primitive Baptist churches but is less common among Baptists in the “missionary” tradition, of which the Southern Baptist Convention is a part. Love feasts have largely morphed into fellowship meals as part of small groups, but they remain common in German-background Baptist denominations.

In any case, we can see that contact rituals were more varied and common in early American Baptist churches than in typical Southern Baptist churches today. The question for Baptists (and all churches going forward, at least until the availability of a vaccine) is how many of our contact rituals are essential? And how might the essential practices (such as baptism or the Lord’s Supper) be delayed or modified for medical safety? Hopefully all churches can combine medical wisdom with biblical fidelity in this extraordinary time. And hey, at least Southern Baptists don’t have to deal with the issue of the common communion cup!

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My class is focused on parents of teenagers, broadly construed. We typically do studies of books of the Bible, with above-average attention to parenting issues, as opposed to doing specialized studies of parenting itself. This semester we have been going through Isaiah 40-66. Ordinarily I would have been doing about a 45-minute lesson, with a good bit of discussion interspersed with my teaching.

Shelter-in-place hit in the midst of our spring break, and we didn’t meet for one week. Then one of my most tech-savvy class members offered to host a class meeting on Zoom, and we have been meeting ever since. If you have someone in class who can handle the tech side of the meeting, that will free you as the teacher/leader to focus on the lesson, discussion, prayer, and so on. As far as I know, we do not have anyone in the class who is unable to participate in an online meeting—obviously, if your class includes folks without an internet connection at home, that presents additional challenges.

We tend to start right on time now (10 a.m.), instead of having the usual 10 to 15 minutes of people chatting, arriving after dropping off kids, and so on. I have typically asked one of our doctors to give an update on how things are going, from their perspective. Then I pray and open our study of Isaiah. I am still probably teaching for about 45 minutes, but I am coming to class with a little more structured sense of what discussion questions I want to put before the class. (I mostly use the ESV Study Bible and Alec Motyer’s commentary to prepare.)

I am always mindful that when you as a teacher (in church, college, or whatever) ask a discussion question, you have to be comfortable with letting people think in silence for seconds that can feel like hours. This issue is more acute in an online meeting. Silence online can feel extremely awkward. But I still have found that if I just wait, take another sip of coffee, and so on, someone generally will chime in. Or, I sometimes call on people/couples to answer a question (especially one I know they will have something to say about).

After the lesson, I have the Zoom host break us into two to three small groups/breakout rooms to share prayer requests and pray (we have generally had about 15 to 20 people on the call). I do this when we meet in person, as well, as I find that it gives more people a chance to share prayer requests, and generally produces more personal requests. Small-group prayer has gone exceptionally well, but I frankly would not know how to do the breakouts without my “tech guy” running the meeting.

Finally, there has been a wonderful development that would not have happened without us meeting online. We have a missionary couple based in Russia who was in our class while stateside last year. They went back to Russia before the crisis hit. We were sad to see them go, and implicitly assumed that they would not be in our class for some time (though it would have occurred to me that we could have had them “visit” online to give us an update on their work). Instead, meeting online has meant that they have continued to be part of the class, just from the other side of the world! What an unexpected blessing! Look for God to do new, unexpected things like that as we get used to this “new normal.”

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In 1874, legendary Baptist leader Charles H. Spurgeon, the “Prince of Preachers,” published a commentary on Psalm 91, under the title “The Privileges of the Godly.” That psalm famously includes the lines

Surely he shall deliver thee from the snare of the fowler, and from the noisome pestilence. . . . 

Thou shalt not be afraid for the terror by night; nor for the arrow that flieth by day;

Nor for the pestilence that walketh in darkness; nor for the destruction that wasteth at noonday. . . . 

Thou shalt tread upon the lion and adder: the young lion and the dragon shalt thou trample under feet.

As Spurgeon remarked,

“A German physician was wont to speak of [Psalm 91] as the best preservative in times of cholera, and in truth, it is a heavenly medicine against plague and pest. He who can live in its spirit will be fearless, even if once again London should become a lazar-house, and the grave be gorged with carcasses.”

A lazar house or lazaretto is a quarantine place, originally for lepers. Now that’s a timely image. (By the way, there is an interesting recent post on Spurgeon’s reaction to the actual cholera outbreak that occurred in London in 1854.)

I have long followed the uses and readings of Psalm 91, and on occasion I have even contemplated writing a whole book-length history of how the psalm has resonated in different eras. There is just so much material. In various ways, it has been one of the most quoted texts from the Bible, and that is true now more than ever, around the world.

The story goes back to the New Testament. Cast yourself down from this high place, said the Devil to Jesus in the wilderness. Don’t you know the Scripture?, asked Satan. God’s angels will protect you, so that you won’t dash your foot against a stone. Satan is quoting Psalm 91. . . .

For many centuries, Psalm 91 has supplied both Jews and Christians with a refuge in time of trouble of all kinds, including supernatural assault, deadly plague, and worldly violence. It imagines the believer surrounded by threats, but nevertheless passing through unharmed, defended by angels. Thus girded, the faithful would encounter supernatural enemies, yet remain secure. As the psalm declares

I will say of the Lord, He is my refuge and my fortress: my God; in him will I trust.

That verse gave Martin Luther the basis for the hymn “Ein feste Burg ist unser Gott” [“A Mighty Fortress Is Our God”], arguably the greatest work of its kind from the Reformation era, and the anthem of German Protestantism through the centuries. The hymn’s verses include multiple references to that theme of resisting and combating Satan and his demons.

Through much of Christian history, the psalm retained that element of exorcism, of spiritual warfare, and by extension, of healing. “A thousand may fall at your side, ten thousand at your right hand, but it will not come near you.”

For obvious reasons, this is also known as the Soldiers’ Psalm. It was massively used in the First World War, when it acquired a whole body of legend and mythology, such as this story from the Military Christian Fellowship of Australia:

In the standard version of this much-told tale, the soldiers were from the United States, and the three battles were Chateau Thierry, Belleau Wood, and the Argonne. But that is only one story of many, which have found a whole new life on the internet. Psalm 91 materials, cards, and memorabilia continue to circulate, and were popular in Vietnam, and the war in Iraq. . . .

The psalm has acquired a whole new life in the churches of Christian Africa and Asia, which find a powerful resonance in the promise of protection from spiritual evil. Even the reference to serpents has an additional power in tropical regions where snakes and other deadly creatures are a far more familiar quantity than in the North, giving a special relevance to the comparison with diabolical forces.

The African love affair with Psalm 91 can be traced back to the ancient Coptic churches. St. Antony, the third-century Egyptian founder of monasticism, used the psalm to scatter those demonic enemies who manifested as lions and serpents; 1,700 years later, modern Africans likewise treasure the text. . . .

As Nigerian scholar David T. Adamo notes, the Bible offers many promises of protection, “but in Psalm 91 all the promises seem to be brought together in one collection, and forming a covenant.” The phrase “I pray Psalm 91” over a particular city or nation has become a natural reflex to disaster.

Read the rest of Jenkins’s post here.

Now before the Feast of the Passover, when Jesus knew that his hour had come to depart out of this world to the Father, having loved his own who were in the world, he loved them to the end. During supper, when the devil had already put it into the heart of Judas Iscariot, Simon’s son, to betray him, Jesus, knowing that the Father had given all things into his hands, and that he had come from God and was going back to God, rose from supper. He laid aside his outer garments, and taking a towel, tied it around his waist. Then he poured water into a basin and began to wash the disciples’ feet and to wipe them with the towel that was wrapped around him. He came to Simon Peter, who said to him, “Lord, do you wash my feet?” Jesus answered him, “What I am doing you do not understand now, but afterward you will understand.” Peter said to him, “You shall never wash my feet.” Jesus answered him, “If I do not wash you, you have no share with me.” Simon Peter said to him, “Lord, not my feet only but also my hands and my head!” Jesus said to him, “The one who has bathed does not need to wash, except for his feet, but is completely clean. And you are clean, but not every one of you.” For he knew who was to betray him; that was why he said, “Not all of you are clean.”

When he had washed their feet and put on his outer garments and resumed his place, he said to them, “Do you understand what I have done to you? You call me Teacher and Lord, and you are right, for so I am. If I then, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you also ought to wash one another’s feet. For I have given you an example, that you also should do just as I have done to you. Truly, truly, I say to you, a servant is not greater than his master, nor is a messenger greater than the one who sent him. If you know these things, blessed are you if you do them. . . .

A new commandment [Latin translation of the Greek = mandatum novum] I give to you, that you love one another: just as I have loved you, you also are to love one another. (John 13:1–17, 34)

Francis Schaeffer (1912–1984), a Presbyterian minister and founder of the L’Abri mission fellowship in Switzerland:

If we have the world’s mentality of wanting the foremost place, we are not qualified for Christian leadership. This mentality can . . . fit us for being a big name among men, but it unfits us for real spiritual leadership.

To the extent that we want power we are in the flesh, and the Holy Spirit has no part in us. Christ put a towel around Himself and washed His disciples’ feet.

We should ask ourselves from time to time, “Whose feet am I washing?”

Some churches have made foot-washing into a third sacrament; members wash each other’s feet during their worship service.

While most of us think it is a mistake to make this a sacrament, let us admit that it is 10,000 times better to wash each other’s feet in a literal way than never to wash anybody’s feet in any way.

— Francis Schaeffer, No Little People (1974; reprint, Crossway, 2003), 69

Crippling Fear

In 2006 my wife and I welcomed our first child, a daughter named Victoria, who was born during our time abroad at St. Andrews, Scotland. We gushed over the gift God bestowed upon us. Yet, like most other first-time parents, our joy was always muted by fears. Was Victoria healthy? What if she got sick? What if the unthinkable happened and unforeseen tragedy took from us what God had given?

In those early days, no single thing came to embody my fears more than our baby monitor. A baby monitor is like a walkie-talkie that allows parents a lifeline into their infant’s crib. And cling to it I did. Every night and multiple times a day during naps I kept our baby monitor near. I listened intently for any signs of distress and to make sure that nothing stole our sweet baby girl from us. Soon this baby aid became more than a precaution. It became an obsession. With every creak and coo coming through the monitor, waves of panic washed over me, as I rushed to our daughter’s bedside to make certain she was all right. I simply could not lose her. I would not allow it.

I am a nervous, controlling person by nature, so this drama was crippling and unending. I frequently asked myself: How can a person training for ministry be so engrossed by my circumstances? Intellectually, I knew that God was sovereign and in control. I believed what the Scriptures teach about our providential God. So why was I still so consumed by fear? This question dogged me for years.

Zwingli’s ‘Plague Song’

I first came across Huldrych Zwingli’s “Plague Song” while studying the Protestant Reformation at the University of St. Andrews:

Help, Lord God, help in this trouble! I think death is at the door.
Stand before me, Christ, for you have overcome him.
To you I cry: If it is your will, take out the dart that wounds me,
nor lets me have an hour’s rest or repose.

Will you, however, that death take me in the midst of my days, so let it be.
Do what you will, nothing shall be too much for me.
Your vessel am I, to make or break altogether.

Early Protestant Spirituality, ed. Scott H. Hendrix (New York: Paulist Press, 2009), 184.

I was immediately struck by the reformer’s resolve. His commitment to the providential hand of God was unwavering, even if that meant embracing his own demise. I hung a copy of Zwingli’s song on my desk and reflected on it every day. The reformer’s concluding statement, “Your vessel am I, to make or break altogether,” haunted and inspired me. How did Zwingli get to that point? Could I get there too?

No Warning

Zwingli penned this stirring song about plague following dramatic events during his first year of ministry at Zürich. On January 1, 1519, the Swiss reformer arrived at Zürich to serve as the people’s principle preacher (Leutpriestertum). Guided by his commitment to scriptural authority, Zwingli immediately preached revolutionary ideas to his congregation through a verse-by-verse expositional style of preaching that dazzled the Swiss people. Zwingli thundered sermons about God’s great gift of salvation through Jesus Christ from the pulpit of the visually imposing Grossmünster church building. And the people loved him for it. Reformation was being spiritually planted in Swiss hearts, and Zwingli appeared to be in control of a forthcoming Reformation.

That all changed just a few months later. In fall 1519 plague ravaged the picturesque city of Zürich. Without the modern advancements of medicine, disease was particularly devastating to early modern communities. “The Black Death,” as it was often labeled, struck the Swiss people hard and without warning. Most estimates suggest a mortality rate of roughly one-third the population during such waves of pestilence. No sector of society was immune, no demographic was spared the plague’s cruel hand of death. Amid such dire circumstances Reformation would have to wait. A greater battle than the one with Rome was at hand, a battle for life itself.

As with most other clergy, the reformer’s care of those infirm required his ministerial attention. This demand put his own life at grave risk. In September 1519 Zwingli took ill. For months, the preacher who had previously stood as a picture of strength in the Zürich pulpit was now reduced to a feeble man, bed-ridden and clinging to life. Hours of struggle turned into days. Days into weeks. And as the warmth of Spring brought restoration to the Swiss lands, so too was health miraculously restored to Zwingli’s body.

Reformation could continue, but now with an important guiding principle learned during Zwingli’s duel with death. The Lord was providential; God’s providence meant that he could be trusted, no matter what the outcome. And trust him Zwingli did. In fact, the themes of providence and sovereignty were woven so strongly throughout the tapestry of Zwingli’s theology that he even held to a more robust view of election than other reformers like Martin Luther and John Calvin.

Darkest Days

In 2009 my wife and I received the shocking and wonderful news that she was pregnant with identical twins. We were both elated and honored that God chose us to be the parents of multiples. However, during a second ultrasound our joy was replaced by devastation—an early diagnosis of a rare condition called Twin-to-Twin Transfusion Syndrome. In short, our babies were dying, and the doctors gave us little to no hope for their survival. We were heartbroken. Feelings of helplessness and despair soon set in. Just like with our first child, Victoria, I was crippled by fears. But this time my fears were being realized. Our twins were being taken from us.

The next few months were the darkest of my life as I wrestled with faith and despair. Again, I knew God is sovereign, but where was he now? How could he be so distant at this time? Feelings of anxiety and hopelessness overwhelmed me. Despite being asked to abort one child in the hopes of saving the other, we continued the pregnancy. Ultrasound after ultrasound we waited to hear that they were gone, yet each time we found our twins fighting for life. Somewhere amid the 30 total ultrasounds that my wife underwent during her pregnancy I found myself alone with the Lord on a long drive to Washington, D.C. I can vividly remember screaming at God. With tears running down my cheeks I defiantly asked where he was and why he was not saving our twins.

In that moment I remembered Zwingli. His words, “Your vessel am I, to make or break altogether,” kept coming to my mind. Although 500 years separated us, our human condition had left us in the same place of dependence. Zwingli could not save himself any more than I could save our twins. But what dawned on me in that moment was that I did not have to save them. At the opening of the “Plague Song” Zwingli declared, “Stand before me, Christ, for you have overcome him.” It was that simple. My hope for my twins wasn’t in my ability to save them, but in the sovereign Lord who created them. Jesus’s victory over death at Calvary was the surest proof that the apostle Paul was correct in his claim that “to live is Christ, and to die is gain.” Either way, live or die, my twins were in the hands of the Lord. And that truth was enough to rest in.

Miraculous Gift and New Freedom

God was merciful and gracious to us in a unique way according to his will. Miraculously, in fall 2009 our identical twin girls, Emma and Sophia, were born healthy, having cheated death much like Zwingli did. They were a gift from God. But the preceding months taught me that every second with them was now a gift from God undeserved, time we never thought we would have. So, instead of jealously longing for more time with them fearing for their lives, I would cherish every moment knowing they were the Lord’s. He was just loaning them to us for as long as he would will it.

We used those same baby monitors for our twins, but this time they were no longer the shackles for me that they once were. In fact, I would often joke with my wife that I could hear them going to sleep as I turned off the baby monitor, knowing full well they were awake and making all kinds of racket. This freedom had eluded me before. This is the liberty that trusting in a providential heavenly Father can offer. In the end, as those silly baby monitors revealed, I had come to affirm God’s providential hand not only in doctrine, but also in practice. The Scriptures had sown the seeds of this theological dogma in my mind, but, as with Zwingli, the hard, painful experiences of life planted that truth deep in my heart.

The German reformer Martin Luther, a contemporary of Zwingli’s, offers us some helpful reflections on illness and mortality. In a letter penned to Nicolas von Amsdorf, Luther addressed the spiritual realities that accompanied his Wittenberg home being transformed into a makeshift hospital: “So there are battles without and terrors within, and really grim ones. . . . We can confront Satan’s fury with the Word of God, which we have and which saves souls even if that one should devour our bodies” (Luther’s Works 43:116).

My Prayer for Us All

As we face the fearful uncertainty surrounding COVID-19 or whatever future fears that stand before us, may we face them with a boldness based upon his providential character and the divine promises made in God’s Word. May we find a steadying anchor in him, the resurrected Lord Jesus, who triumphed over death and the grave.

And may those of us who have tasted this hope boldly share it with each other and with non-believers around us in our great time of need.

On December 31, 2019, health officials from China alerted the World Health Organization of a new pattern of pneumonia in the city of Wuhan that they had never seen previously. By January 7, 2020, health officials announced they had identified a new virus in the coronavirus family, which they designated 2019-nCoV. Coronaviruses include the common cold and SARS (severe acute respiratory syndrome). They spread by being in proximity to an infected person and inhaling droplets when they cough or sneeze, or by touching surfaces where these droplets land and then touching one’s face or nose. Since January 7, this new coronavirus has spread to almost every nation on earth with the WHO reporting 118,000 cases and more than 4,200 deaths. Stock markets have crashed, and global travel and commerce have been radically affected.

Christians are facing this health crisis with a variety of feelings and serious questions, and as always it is essential to seek our ultimate guidance from the Scripture alone. Yet it is also helpful to look back in time to see how Christians in the past have faced similar crises. And it isn’t hard to find lessons in the dreadful circumstances connected with the bubonic plague (Black Death), which devastated Europe in the 14th through 16th centuries. The Black Death came out of China from 1347 to 1350 and killed one-fourth of Europe’s population at that time. Later outbreaks occurred in the 15th century as well, leaving deep emotional scars and terror in the memories of many Europeans. When this disease was in epidemic levels, the mortality rate ranged from 30 percent to 90 percent.

‘Whether One May Flee from a Deadly Plague’ (1527)

This is the historical backdrop for a fascinating pamphlet written in 1527 by Martin Luther, “Whether One May Flee from a Deadly Plague.” In August 1527, the plague had struck Luther’s city of Wittenberg, and many of Luther’s fellow citizens ran for their lives. Luther’s prince, Elector John, ordered Luther to leave immediately to save his own life, but Luther chose to stay to minister to those stricken. Luther himself was surrounded by the disease and its suffering victims. The wife of mayor Tilo Dene virtually died in Luther’s arms. So Luther boldly stood in the gap along with many others to minister hope and the Word of God in a desperate situation.

Many Germans from other cities and towns mocked the Wittenbergers for fleeing. One German pastor named Johann Hess wrote Luther asking how a pastor should behave when facing such a plague. The pamphlet was Luther’s response, and its wisdom may prove helpful to many Christians even in our 21st-century crisis.

Who Can Leave?

In this tract, Luther began by addressing those with the strong conviction that one should never flee because the plague is God’s judgment for our sins, and Christians should stand humbly and accept his will in repentance. While Luther considered such views praiseworthy, he acknowledged that not everyone is equally strong in the faith. Luther also asserted that it should be obvious that people with leadership roles (like pastors, mayors, judges, and physicians) should remain in the community until the crisis has passed. Especially pastors must be like the Good Shepherd who lays down his life for the sheep (John 10:11).

Just as strongly, Luther said it would be sinful for parents to abandon their children, or for any person to flee if a family member depends on them. The same applies to our neighbors, for loving our neighbor as ourselves includes being certain they are free from harm. Beyond this, however, seeking to save one’s life was natural and biblically allowable, as was using medicine. Luther was no fatalist.

Fear of Death

Concerning one’s demeanor, Luther made it plain that fear of death was the Devil’s work, and that no Christian should yield to it. Christ’s resurrection should make all Christians fearless in the face of the grave. Yet Luther allowed that some are stronger in this faith than others, and may choose to go boldly into the fire of deadly danger, expecting great reward from the Lord for their service, while others are weaker and flee in the normal way.

Luther said Christians who trust God and minister directly to the dying should not fear boils and infection, for in the end, caring for the sick is like caring for Christ. Jesus said, “I was sick, and you cared for me” (Matt. 25:36). John wrote that Christ laid down his life for us, and we ought to lay down our lives for others (1 John 3:16). On the other hand, Luther warned against the over-confident who underestimated the seriousness of the plague and were frivolous toward God.

Word of God

Luther strongly urged those in the presence of the dying to pour into them the Word of God, teaching them both how to live and also how to die in faith. Anyone who is dying in unbelief should be urgently warned to repent while there’s still time, but they should call for a pastor while they can still understand his words.

Anyone who is aware of outstanding sins should do everything they can to make restitution and receive the Lord’s Supper if they are able. So also the dying should write a will as soon as possible.

Practical Steps

Beyond that, Luther advocated practical steps to contain the spread of the disease. We who live after Louis Pasteur discovered his germ theory, and who benefit from the scientific development of medical research and modern hospitals, can hardly imagine how different conditions would have been in Wittenberg in Luther’s day.

Luther had to advocate for certain public buildings to be set aside as hospitals for the sick rather than allowing the sick to be in hundreds of private homes. He also urged Christians to fumigate their homes, yards, and streets to stop the spread of the plague. And Luther urged that the Wittenberg cemetery should be moved outside the city limits, with its walls decorated with biblical scenes to minister to the grieving.

Love of Christ

Ultimately Luther left all personal decisions on whether to flee to each individual in light of the Word of God. Times like these are intense and serious, and everything we do should be in light of God’s Word and the call of the gospel of Jesus Christ.

Our journey with the coronavirus has just begun, and it may soon fizzle out into the dim memories of the medical history books. But it is also a God-ordained opportunity for many Christians to display the love of Christ in service to their neighbors, and to live out the fearlessness of death that Christ has won for all his children.

History is made by unexpected people in unexpected places. It is a fact often not recognized until later, when the consequences of the small things, the particular things, begin to appear on the historian’s radar screen. This fact, that history is the art of the particular, will have been on the mind of many of the world’s evangelical historians with the passing of our colleague Edith Waldvogel Blumhofer. Across nearly four decades at Wheaton College and through such discipline-defining programs as Wheaton’s Institute for the Study of American Evangelicals (ISAE), Edith gently broke the standard accounts and broadened the American evangelical mind.

Her ability to remove barriers for others was entrenched in who she was. Born in 1950 in Brooklyn, New York, Edith grew up in a German-American Pentecostal community pastored by her father, E. H. Waldvogel, and moved easily among the leaders of the expanding post-war globalization of the Assemblies of God. After an education at Hunter College (BA, MA, 1971) Edith took a PhD at Harvard (1977), and, while taking up teaching roles, continued the research that would result in her first books: The Assemblies of God: A Popular History (1985); The Assemblies of God: A Chapter in the Story of American Pentecostalism (1989); and ‘Pentecost in My Soul’: Explorations in the Meaning of Pentecostal Experience in the Assemblies of God (1989). Like many of her colleagues, she could have stayed in the relatively confined world of AG-USA higher education, but Edith had “pepper”—in 1987, she accepted a role at Wheaton College in the ISAE, a vehicle developed by George Marsden, Mark Noll, and Joel Carpenter to help put a more informed study of evangelicalism back into the mainstream of American intellectual life.

It was an inspired choice. Not only would Blumhofer’s role as project director (1987-1995) then assistant director (1996-1999) produce some of the cutting-edge scholarship of the time (Modern Christian Revivals, 1993; Pentecostal Currents in American Protestantism, 1999; Singing the Lord’s Song in a Strange Land, 2004), but it put a female scholar skilled in the history of American Christianity and familiar with transnational Pentecostalism in a key position. Edith’s brilliance lay in hard work, a focus on the particular, and (as Wheaton’s Timothy Larsen has noted) a “refusal to patronize” popular Christian movements. Her teaching was warm, collegial, massively well-informed and supportive. Modern Christian Revivals (which she edited with Randall Balmer), for example, marshaled the art of the particular to implicitly critique the normative story of Christian revivalism by demonstrating its transnational roots. This focus would re-situate the history of American Christianity within a global framework not just in her own work, but also in the work of her colleagues.

What a tremendous legacy she would leave, in her work and life. For those of us who work mainly on the history of Pentecostalism, Blumhofer’s books (particularly Aimee Semple McPherson: Everybody’s Sister, 1993; and Restoring the Faith, 1993) were visions of what a humane, well-researched, and intelligent account of the discipline could be. Again, she wrote without patronizing, opening up elements of the American experience like few others. For international historians in the discipline, her name became a commonplace in every disciplinary conversation. Whether teaching in the history program at Wheaton or in the public religion program at the University of Chicago, Edith influenced colleagues, brought popular denominational traditions into contact with scholarship, and taught a great crowd of students, many of whom have gone on to doctoral work and followed her lead to treat the lives and experiences of people in detail, and with respect.

Though some of them are the best in the field (Tim Larsen for example), her students have big shoes to fill. Edith didn’t just get under the skin of her subjects: unlike many scholars, she could really write. This precision of mind, heart and pen meeting on the page can, in her marvelous biography of “America’s sweet singer in Israel,” be heard in her description of Fanny Crosby’s mental world:

Focus, relentless detail, and personality all woven within an expansive vision of what the particular constructs. This is the work of a virtuoso historian.

Many of us have “Edith stories.” As an Australian historian of global evangelicalism, I arrived at the work I do because I was blessed to be among those who learned from Mark Noll that work in the Christian humanities is fundamentally a collegial response into a calling, but that calling was no excuse for second-rate scholarship. What Mark Noll and Joel Carpenter inspired, however, Edith Blumhofer and Larry Eskridge wrestled into being. On one occasion, Edith and I found ourselves in a post-ISAE event group restaurant conversation over the “what was next” for the work of the institute. Edith and I had already had a conversation in the foyer of the Barrows Auditorium at Wheaton College, where she dropped the casual phrase “Well, Pentecostalism just is world Christianity.” So when the question was asked, I just quoted Edith back to herself. That was the seed for the Evangelicalism and Globalization Project, and then (merged with the North Atlantic Missions Project, NAMP) the Currents in World Christianity Project (run by Brian Stanley at the University of Cambridge). For me, and I know for others, Edith’s affirmation of what I knew to be true continues to inform much of what I continue to write through to the present. So, though distance meant I didn’t get to work as closely with Edith as others, her transnational vision continues to turn up in surprising corners of the globe.

We mourn with Edith’s husband, Edwin, and their children, the award-winning musician Jonathan, Judy (a medical doctor serving in Central America), and Christopher, a rising New Testament professor currently at Fuller, all Wheaton graduates. The apples haven’t fallen far from the tree, and in them Edith’s legacy is assured. As with her account of Fanny Crosby, moreover, one might say that the Waldvogel family saga shaped Edith’s sense of self and country. Her penetrating work continues to “offer glimpses into the lives of some of the nameless people whose choices have woven the fabric of the American dream.” For that we are grateful to our common Lord, who now holds her in his hands.

See also Wheaton College’s obituary, “Remembering Dr. Edith Blumhofer (1950-2020).”

We know that many Christians, both blacks and whites, were in the front ranks of the abolitionist movement, starting in the era of the American Revolution. So what was Whitefield’s problem? Why didn’t he see the immorality inherent within the slave system, including the rampant manstealing, the physical and sexual abuse of slaves, and the indiscriminate breakup of slave families? Part of the problem is timing: if he had lived longer, he might possibly have been moved by the antislavery views expressed by English evangelicals such as John Wesley and John Newton.

But the fact that many of us are puzzled by Whitefield’s slaveowning and proslavery advocacy also points to our fundamental misunderstanding of white Christians’ views of slavery from the founding of Virginia (1607) to the Great Awakening of the 1740s. As Katharine Gerbner’s outstanding but sobering book Christian Slavery shows, the main alternatives among white Christians during that period in the American colonies (including Caribbean colonies) were not proslavery and antislavery.

The main alternatives were white Christians who opposed Christianizing blacks, especially slaves, and white Christians who supported evangelizing blacks. Black Christians presumably opposed slavery itself in great numbers, but they rarely had the opportunity to express that antislavery view publicly. The idea that Christians could not hold other Christians as slaves, and that Christian slaves could appeal for their freedom on the basis of their religious identity, was a common but not universal concern among whites during the early colonial period. Whites who opposed slavery per se, however, were few and far between.

Gerbner shows that laws in the 1600s often contrasted “Christians” and “negroes” in a way that directly suggested that Africans and African Americans could not be Christians. “Christian” implied “white.” But a few masters allowed a few slaves to receive baptism, undermining any absolute correlation of “white” and “Christian.” Throughout the Protestant colonies of the Western Hemisphere, laws gradually changed to use the term “white” as a substitute for “Christian” by the early 1700s, in a tacit admission that there were in fact some Christian non-whites.

British and European missionaries, including the Anglican Society for the Propagation of the Gospel, the Quakers, and the Moravians, were among the staunchest advocates for the idea that Christians had a mandate to bring all people, including blacks, into the church. Plantation masters in the colonies might or might not have accepted this Christian mandate in theory, but in practice many of them opposed the evangelization of slaves. They became especially wary if evangelization entailed teaching slaves to read and write, which the masters almost universally saw as a dangerous concession.

In the debate over the merit of Christianizing blacks, the pro-evangelism whites commonly argued that if slaves became Christians it would not make them unruly, but would make them better, more obedient slaves. It is not always clear whether pro-missionary advocates were making this argument as a pragmatic way to soothe the fears of masters, or whether they genuinely believed in and supported a proslavery Christian society. In any event, those who were the most committed to the evangelization of blacks in America were also the ones who helped to construct proslavery Christian ideology.

Viewed from this perspective, Whitefield was not a pioneer of the proslavery Christian argument, but an inheritor of white Christian pro-evangelism, proslavery sentiment that had been developing in England and its colonies since the late 1600s. To the masters who worried about Christianity giving the slaves unstable notions about liberty and equality, Whitefield and other white Christians assured them they need not fear: Christianity would bolster a slave society. The later Christian antislavery cause was important and highly commendable. But it followed a century and more of white Christian evangelists insisting that there was no reason to oppose proselytizing among the slaves. Doing so would only make slavery stronger.

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It is undoubtedly true that at secular private and at public colleges, outspoken Christian faculty are in a decided minority. But before we consider why that might be, a few caveats are in order. First, I suspect that there is even more hostility toward Republicans than Christians per se, especially in the age of Trump. If you are a self-identified evangelical whose work or opinions are clearly anti-Trump or anti-Republican, your faith is less likely to be a problem.

Second, there are a number of fields where faith is less likely to be an overt issue—math or physics, for instance. In those fields, faculty are more capable of making their faith a private matter. People who study religious topics are more likely to attract questions about the reasons why they chose to write or teach about religion.

Finally, faculty members run the same gamut of faith that average Americans do. Many of them are from a nominal Christian background and might still be theists of some sort, even if they aren’t sure about doctrinal Christianity. But Christian faith typically makes no discernible difference in the teaching or research of such faculty.

In any case, outspoken Christians in secular academic circles are few and far between. Why? There are a number of potential factors:

1. Conservative Christians have the impression that academia is hostile, and they self-select out.
2. As fewer Christians are represented in academia, promising Christian students are less likely to be encouraged to consider an academic career path. (This is also true of students from middle-class or poor backgrounds generally.)
3. Christians have built their own subculture of Christian colleges and seminaries, which are welcoming to people of faith but often marginal to the scholarly discussions in elite institutions.
4. Even when it is not overtly hostile to Christians, secular academia is methodologically naturalistic, making faith-based claims “out of bounds” there.
5. Some fields, such as biblical studies or evolutionary science, entail certain convictions that are inimical to the faith of many evangelical Christians. It can be tough to participate in elite, secular scholarly conversations in biblical studies while affirming divine inspiration of Scripture, much less the inerrancy of Scripture.

Is all this a problem? In some ways not—Christians throughout history have often been excluded from elite institutions, and that has never kept the church from being the church. Nevertheless, most of us would agree that great Christian scholars, from Augustine to Jonathan Edwards to C. S. Lewis, have had a sanguine enduring effect on the life of the church. Christian subculture is, on balance, less likely to produce such scholars. We also need Christians who influence the highest levels of academic discourse, even if just by forcing secular elites to contend with Christian perspectives.

We also need credentialed and tested Christian scholars to help the church perceive the difference between experts and charlatans. Christian subculture is teeming with the latter, pop “experts” in science, history, and the Bible who are peddling misleading or fraudulent information. When we accept what the charlatans are selling, it is bad for the church and bad for our witness. The influence of faithful scholars, teachers, and professors can steel Christians intellectually to face challenges to a life of faith, to operate within orthodox boundaries, and to relish the best traditions of the church.

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Pekka Hämäläinen, Lakota America: A New History of Indigenous Power (Yale). I am listening to this book on Audible, and I am recommending it partly because of Hämäläinen’s previous book, Comanche Empire, which may be the book on Native Americans that has had the most profound effect on the way I view and teach early American history.

Brenda Wineapple, The Impeachers: The Trial of Andrew Johnson and the Dream of a Just Nation (Random House). Kind of relevant in 2020.

Timothy Tyson, The Blood of Emmett Till (Simon & Schuster). Published in 2017, I just finished reading this recently. It is a harrowing but authoritative account of how the murder of a black teenager in Mississippi, and the exoneration of the murderers by an all-white jury, improbably came to fuel the civil-rights movement.

Alec Ryrie, Unbelievers: An Emotional History of Doubt (Harvard). From Andrew Wilson’s review at TGC: “The intellectual case for unbelief, [Ryrie] argues, only emerges after many generations of emotional and practical unbelief.”

John G. Turner, They Knew They Were Pilgrims: Plymouth Colony and the Contest for American Liberty (Yale), forthcoming April 7. There will be many books on the Pilgrims coming out in this 400th anniversary year of the Mayflower, but this is my contender for the best one. In my endorsement for the book I say, “This highly important book will become the new standard work on the Plymouth Colony.” Turner has incredible range as a historian, with fabulous previous books on subjects including Campus Crusade for Christ and Brigham Young.

[The book links provided here are part of the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to Amazon.com.]

Where did today’s evangelical crisis come from? The crisis did not result from evangelicals just becoming political, as evangelicals have been more or less politically involved since the Great Awakening of the 1740s. And it can’t just be that evangelicals of different ethnicities seem to inhabit different political planets. Racial tension among evangelicals also dates back to the Great Awakening, when some of its leading figures owned slaves. But politicization and ethnic misunderstanding are definitely two of the key components of the problems American evangelicals are facing in this fraught moment.

The evangelical problem in America runs even deeper, however, because of widespread confusion about the meaning of the term itself. Understanding that confusion requires a quick review of the origins of “evangelical.” The Greek word euangelion, many readers will recall, just means “good news” in the Bible, so the Greek root of the term “evangelical” has been with the church since the time of Christ. During the Reformation, the German word evangelisch tended just to mean Protestant. Sometimes the Puritans of the English Reformation were known as evangelical pastors or believers, but in the era before about 1800, “evangelical” was almost always an adjective, not a noun (as in an evangelical preacher, or an evangelical sermon). One of the first instances of the use of “evangelicals” came in 1807, when a British writer referred to the followers of the late George Whitefield as evangelicals.

Still, the term “evangelical” was not usually used as a noun until the time of the founding of the National Association of Evangelicals (NAE) in 1942. Some evidence suggests that the founders of the NAE chose the word “evangelicals” because it was not used very often, so it could set them apart from the inward-focused “fundamentalists” of the era. By 1958, a young J. I. Packer stated on behalf of his Anglo-American cohort of believers, “We prefer to call ourselves ‘Evangelicals’ rather than ‘Fundamentalists.’” (“Evangelical” was more likely to be capitalized in England than in America. “Evangelicalism” is almost exclusively a scholars’ or journalists’ term employed in the second half of the twentieth century.)

Packer and his English and Canadian evangelical community faced a starkly different cultural landscape than did American evangelicals. The prominence and political ambitions of British and Canadian evangelicals faded during the mid-twentieth century, while white American evangelicals found themselves with increasing connections to national political leaders. This insider GOP trend began with Billy Graham, whose remarkable success as an evangelist brought him to the attention of politicians such as Dwight Eisenhower. Graham helped to convince the former general to run for president in 1952, and Eisenhower enlisted Graham to inject spiritual themes into his speeches. Eisenhower and his vice president, Richard Nixon, had no place for evangelical beliefs in their speeches, such as the need for conversion or the authority of the Bible. They did, however, tout the value of the Judeo-Christian tradition and American civil religion. Graham (as he later conceded) got a taste for the highest echelons of political authority, and that access sometimes blurred his focus on the unadulterated gospel message.

Read the rest of the article here.

I was reminded of this problem recently when I read a scholarly article (identifying it is unnecessary to make my point) where the epigraph referred to Catholic converts potentially “reverting to the vomit.” The author discussed the quote at length, but she seemed unaware that this was referring to Proverbs 26:11. Instead of being a neologism that told us something interesting about the rhetoric and culture of early modern Catholicism, that phrase was widely known to Christians and Jews for millennia. Seemingly no one involved in the publication of this article picked up on the source of the reference.

This omission speaks to a lost world of biblical literacy that is not easy to recapture. Exacerbating the situation is that we no longer even have a standard English translation of the Bible, a role that the King James Version played from at least the mid-1600s to the mid-1900s.

Scholars must be more inquisitive about the source of quotes than the author above was, or else they can end up in embarrassing situations where a key quote is read out of context. The problem is, how do you know when to look into the origins of a quote? Obviously you can’t do it for every phrase, or you’d get bogged down in your research. Sometimes your source will flag the source (“as St. Paul said . . .”) but sometimes you just have to cultivate curiosity about where an interesting-sounding phrase came from.

To give just one example, in research for the biography I am writing on Thomas Jefferson, I came across a reference to him using the phrase “God of battles.” I wondered—does the King James use that phrase? It doesn’t, although “Lord of hosts” and similar phrases are not far off. Finding out if a quote like that is in the Bible is as simple as using Bible Gateway or another online version to search for it, but make sure you use the version they were using at the time.

To keep looking, you can employ databases such as Early English Books or Eighteenth Century Collections Online, but these require access to a research library. The most obvious free database to use is Google Books. Searching on “God of battles” in Google Books gives you many results, so you want to date limit it to before the date of your source (in this case, 1777).

That search still gives a fair number of hits, so you want to organize results by date. On the first page of the results you begin to get your answer—”God of battles” appears both in Shakespeare, and in English translations of Homer and Virgil. Jefferson probably wasn’t quoting one of these directly, but the phrase was well-known enough to be used—albeit somewhat infrequently—by writers in English for a century and more before Jefferson. Somehow he had come across this evocative title for God and probably internalized it. But it wasn’t original to him.

This lost world of biblical literacy (and classical Christian learning) was shared even by relatively skeptical Founding Fathers such as Jefferson and Franklin. We should remember that when we enter their rhetorical world, they are drawing on a bank of sources that are effectively lost to many of us, even to scholars of their time.

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We the undersigned clergymen are among those who, in January, issued “an appeal for law and order and common sense,” in dealing with racial problems in Alabama. We expressed understanding that honest convictions in racial matters could properly be pursued in the courts, but urged that decisions of those courts should in the meantime be peacefully obeyed.

Since that time there had been some evidence of increased forbearance and a willingness to face facts. Responsible citizens have undertaken to work on various problems which cause racial friction and unrest. In Birmingham, recent public events have given indication that we all have opportunity for a new constructive and realistic approach to racial problems.

However, we are now confronted by a series of demonstrations by some of our Negro citizens, directed and led in part by outsiders. We recognize the natural impatience of people who feel that their hopes are slow in being realized. But we are convinced that these demonstrations are unwise and untimely.

We agree rather with certain local Negro leadership which has called for honest and open negotiation of racial issues in our area. And we believe this kind of facing of issues can best be accomplished by citizens of our own metropolitan area, white and Negro, meeting with their knowledge and experience of the local situation. All of us need to face that responsibility and find proper channels for its accomplishment.

Just as we formerly pointed out that “hatred and violence have no sanction in our religious and political traditions,” we also point out that such actions as incite to hatred and violence, however technically peaceful those actions may be, have not contributed to the resolution of our local problems. We do not believe that these days of new hope are days when extreme measures are justified in Birmingham.

We commend the community as a whole, and the local news media and law enforcement officials in particular, on the calm manner in which these demonstrations have been handled. We urge the public to continue to show restraint should the demonstrations continue, and the law enforcement officials to remain calm and continue to protect our city from violence.

We further strongly urge our own Negro community to withdraw support from these demonstrations, and to unite locally in working peacefully for a better Birmingham. When rights are consistently denied, a cause should be pressed in the courts and in negotiations among local leaders, and not in the streets. We appeal to both our white and Negro citizenry to observe the principles of law and order and common sense.

There were eight signees: Two Episcopalians and two Methodists, along with a Roman Catholic, a Jew, a Methodist, a Presbyterian, and a Baptist. Three of them were in their forties; three in their fifties; one in his sixties; and one who was seventy. All were white.

• Bishop C.C.J. Carpenter, D.D., LL.D., Episcopalian Bishop of Alabama
• Bishop Joseph A. Durick, D.D., Auxiliary Bishop, Roman Catholic Diocese of Mobile, Birmingham
• Rabbi Milton L. Grafman, Temple Emanu-El, Birmingham, Alabama
• Bishop Paul Hardin, Methodist Bishop of the Alabama-West Florida Conference
• Bishop Nolan B. Harmon, Bishop of the North Alabama Conference of the Methodist Church
• Rev. George M. Murray, D.D., LL.D, Bishop Coadjutor, Episcopal Diocese of Alabama
• Rev. Edward V. Ramage, Moderator, Synod of the Alabama Presbyterian Church in the United States
• Rev. Earl Stallings, Pastor, First Baptist Church, Birmingham, Alabama

These eight clergy members who signed the letter were not segregationists but moderates who preferred for the issue to be handled at the local level, rather than by outsiders (like Martin Luther King Jr.).

They urged the use of negotiations and the legal system rather than public protests. They call for peace, not violence. They advocated the rule of law and common sense. And they questioned both the wisdom and the timing of these actions. (For example, King and the other protesters had marched the day after Bull Connor lost a run-off election for mayor, and many wondered why they seemed to be inciting a conflict rather than waiting to seeing the policies of the new administration.)

King had been arrested the same day the letter appeared (April 12, 1963), after violating Circuit Judge W. A. Jenkins’s injunction against “parading, demonstrating, boycotting, trespassing and picketing. Ralph Abernathy and Fred Shuttlesworth were among the marchers also arrested.

When King read the letter from a small prison cell at the Birmingham Jail, he began composing notes of a response in the margins of the newspaper. His reply was eventually composed and stitched together to form what is now known as the 6,921-word “Letter from Birmingham Jail,” dated April 16, 1963.

As explored by S. Jonathan Bass, Blessed Are the Peacemakers: Martin Luther King Jr., Eight White Religious Leaders, and the “Letters from Birmingham Jail” (LSU Press, 2001), some of these clergy labored for racial justice and were stung by King’s public criticism, never able to live it down as they were immortalized as literally a “textbook example” of those on the wrong side of history. (It should be noted that Billy Graham shared their views at the time.)

I have reprinted King’s famous letter in its entirety below, along with some headings that can serve as an outline as you read along. It’s an important and relevant work that speaks powerfully to the need for justice, love, and action, under a natural-law theory that recognizes the divine basis of moral law.

(For a more comprehensive approach than what I’ve provided below, including an outline and historical background in footnotes, see Peter Lillback’s very helpful Annotations on a Letter That Changed the World from a Birmingham Jail.)

My Dear Fellow Clergymen:

[King’s circumstances, and the white clergy’s charges that led to this response] 

While confined here in the Birmingham city jail, I came across your recent statement calling my present activities “unwise and untimely.”

[Why King does not usually answer criticism]

Seldom do I pause to answer criticism of my work and ideas. If I sought to answer all the criticisms that cross my desk, my secretaries would have little time for anything other than such correspondence in the course of the day, and I would have no time for constructive work.

[Why King is making an exception here, and how he hopes to answer it]

But since I feel that you are men of genuine good will and that your criticisms are sincerely set forth, I want to try to answer your statement in what I hope will be patient and reasonable terms.

[Why King is in Birmingham (he lives in Memphis, 250 miles away)]

I think I should indicate why I am here in Birmingham, since you have been influenced by the view which argues against “outsiders coming in.”

[Organizational reason]

I have the honor of serving as president of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, an organization operating in every southern state, with headquarters in Atlanta, Georgia. We have some eighty five affiliated organizations across the South, and one of them is the Alabama Christian Movement for Human Rights. Frequently we share staff, educational and financial resources with our affiliates.

Several months ago the affiliate here in Birmingham asked us to be on call to engage in a nonviolent direct action program if such were deemed necessary. We readily consented, and when the hour came we lived up to our promise.

So I, along with several members of my staff, am here because I was invited here. I am here because I have organizational ties here.

[Religious reason]

But more basically, I am in Birmingham because injustice is here.

Just as the prophets of the eighth century B.C. left their villages and carried their “thus saith the Lord” far beyond the boundaries of their home towns, and just as the Apostle Paul left his village of Tarsus and carried the gospel of Jesus Christ to the far corners of the Greco Roman world, so am I compelled to carry the gospel of freedom beyond my own home town. Like Paul, I must constantly respond to the Macedonian call for aid.

[Communal reason]

Moreover, I am cognizant of the interrelatedness of all communities and states. I cannot sit idly by in Atlanta and not be concerned about what happens in Birmingham. Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly. Never again can we afford to live with the narrow, provincial “outside agitator” idea. Anyone who lives inside the United States can never be considered an outsider anywhere within its bounds.

[The protests are unfortunate, but the causes even more so]

You deplore the demonstrations taking place in Birmingham. But your statement, I am sorry to say, fails to express a similar concern for the conditions that brought about the demonstrations. I am sure that none of you would want to rest content with the superficial kind of social analysis that deals merely with effects and does not grapple with underlying causes. It is unfortunate that demonstrations are taking place in Birmingham, but it is even more unfortunate that the city’s white power structure left the Negro community with no alternative.

[A review of the process of the non-violent protest and the history behind it]

In any nonviolent campaign there are four basic steps: collection of the facts to determine whether injustices exist; negotiation; self purification; and direct action. We have gone through all these steps in Birmingham.

[1. Collection of facts to determine if injustice exists]

There can be no gainsaying the fact that racial injustice engulfs this community. Birmingham is probably the most thoroughly segregated city in the United States. Its ugly record of brutality is widely known. Negroes have experienced grossly unjust treatment in the courts. There have been more unsolved bombings of Negro homes and churches in Birmingham than in any other city in the nation. These are the hard, brutal facts of the case.

[2. Negotiation]

On the basis of these conditions, Negro leaders sought to negotiate with the city fathers. But the latter consistently refused to engage in good faith negotiation.

Then, last September, came the opportunity to talk with leaders of Birmingham’s economic community. In the course of the negotiations, certain promises were made by the merchants–for example, to remove the stores’ humiliating racial signs. On the basis of these promises, the Reverend Fred Shuttlesworth and the leaders of the Alabama Christian Movement for Human Rights agreed to a moratorium on all demonstrations. As the weeks and months went by, we realized that we were the victims of a broken promise. A few signs, briefly removed, returned; the others remained. As in so many past experiences, our hopes had been blasted, and the shadow of deep disappointment settled upon us.

[3. Self-purification]

We had no alternative except to prepare for direct action, whereby we would present our very bodies as a means of laying our case before the conscience of the local and the national community. Mindful of the difficulties involved, we decided to undertake a process of self purification. We began a series of workshops on nonviolence, and we repeatedly asked ourselves: “Are you able to accept blows without retaliating?” “Are you able to endure the ordeal of jail?”

[4. Direct action]

We decided to schedule our direct action program for the Easter season, realizing that except for Christmas, this is the main shopping period of the year. Knowing that a strong economic-withdrawal program would be the by product of direct action, we felt that this would be the best time to bring pressure to bear on the merchants for the needed change.

Then it occurred to us that Birmingham’s mayoral election was coming up in March, and we speedily decided to postpone action until after election day. When we discovered that the Commissioner of Public Safety, Eugene “Bull” Connor, had piled up enough votes to be in the run off, we decided again to postpone action until the day after the run off so that the demonstrations could not be used to cloud the issues. Like many others, we waited to see Mr. Connor defeated, and to this end we endured postponement after postponement. Having aided in this community need, we felt that our direct action program could be delayed no longer.

[Answer to the charge that they should have negotiated instead of engaging in direct action]

You may well ask: “Why direct action? Why sit ins, marches and so forth? Isn’t negotiation a better path?”

You are quite right in calling for negotiation. Indeed, this is the very purpose of direct action. Nonviolent direct action seeks to create such a crisis and foster such a tension that a community which has constantly refused to negotiate is forced to confront the issue. It seeks so to dramatize the issue that it can no longer be ignored.

[In defense of creating “tension”]

My citing the creation of tension as part of the work of the nonviolent resister may sound rather shocking. But I must confess that I am not afraid of the word “tension.” I have earnestly opposed violent tension, but there is a type of constructive, nonviolent tension which is necessary for growth. Just as Socrates felt that it was necessary to create a tension in the mind so that individuals could rise from the bondage of myths and half truths to the unfettered realm of creative analysis and objective appraisal, so must we see the need for nonviolent gadflies to create the kind of tension in society that will help men rise from the dark depths of prejudice and racism to the majestic heights of understanding and brotherhood. The purpose of our direct action program is to create a situation so crisis packed that it will inevitably open the door to negotiation. I therefore concur with you in your call for negotiation. Too long has our beloved Southland been bogged down in a tragic effort to live in monologue rather than dialogue.

[Answer to the charge that they didn’t give the new city administration time to act]

One of the basic points in your statement is that the action that I and my associates have taken in Birmingham is untimely. Some have asked: “Why didn’t you give the new city administration time to act?”

The only answer that I can give to this query is that the new Birmingham administration must be prodded about as much as the outgoing one, before it will act.

We are sadly mistaken if we feel that the election of Albert Boutwell as mayor will bring the millennium to Birmingham. While Mr. Boutwell is a much more gentle person than Mr. Connor, they are both segregationists, dedicated to maintenance of the status quo. I have hope that Mr. Boutwell will be reasonable enough to see the futility of massive resistance to desegregation. But he will not see this without pressure from devotees of civil rights. My friends, I must say to you that we have not made a single gain in civil rights without determined legal and nonviolent pressure. Lamentably, it is an historical fact that privileged groups seldom give up their privileges voluntarily. Individuals may see the moral light and voluntarily give up their unjust posture; but, as Reinhold Niebuhr has reminded us, groups tend to be more immoral than individuals.

We know through painful experience that freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed. Frankly, I have yet to engage in a direct action campaign that was “well timed” in the view of those who have not suffered unduly from the disease of segregation. For years now I have heard the word “Wait!” It rings in the ear of every Negro with piercing familiarity. This “Wait” has almost always meant “Never.” We must come to see, with one of our distinguished jurists, that “justice too long delayed is justice denied.”

We have waited for more than 340 years for our constitutional and God given rights. The nations of Asia and Africa are moving with jetlike speed toward gaining political independence, but we still creep at horse and buggy pace toward gaining a cup of coffee at a lunch counter.

Perhaps it is easy for those who have never felt the stinging darts of segregation to say, “Wait.”

But when you have seen vicious mobs lynch your mothers and fathers at will and drown your sisters and brothers at whim;

when you have seen hate filled policemen curse, kick and even kill your black brothers and sisters;

when you see the vast majority of your twenty million Negro brothers smothering in an airtight cage of poverty in the midst of an affluent society;

when you suddenly find your tongue twisted and your speech stammering as you seek to explain to your six year old daughter why she can’t go to the public amusement park that has just been advertised on television, and see tears welling up in her eyes when she is told that Funtown is closed to colored children, and see ominous clouds of inferiority beginning to form in her little mental sky, and see her beginning to distort her personality by developing an unconscious bitterness toward white people;

when you have to concoct an answer for a five year old son who is asking: “Daddy, why do white people treat colored people so mean?”;

when you take a cross county drive and find it necessary to sleep night after night in the uncomfortable corners of your automobile because no motel will accept you;

when you are humiliated day in and day out by nagging signs reading “white” and “colored”;

when your first name becomes “nigger,” your middle name becomes “boy” (however old you are) and your last name becomes “John,” and your wife and mother are never given the respected title “Mrs.”;

when you are harried by day and haunted by night by the fact that you are a Negro, living constantly at tiptoe stance, never quite knowing what to expect next, and are plagued with inner fears and outer resentments;

when you are forever fighting a degenerating sense of “nobodiness”

—then you will understand why we find it difficult to wait.

There comes a time when the cup of endurance runs over, and men are no longer willing to be plunged into the abyss of despair. I hope, sirs, you can understand our legitimate and unavoidable impatience.

[Answer to the charge that they are willing to break the law]

You express a great deal of anxiety over our willingness to break laws. This is certainly a legitimate concern. Since we so diligently urge people to obey the Supreme Court’s decision of 1954 outlawing segregation in the public schools, at first glance it may seem rather paradoxical for us consciously to break laws.

[Two types of law: just and unjust]

One may well ask: “How can you advocate breaking some laws and obeying others?”

The answer lies in the fact that there are two types of laws: just and unjust. I would be the first to advocate obeying just laws. One has not only a legal but a moral responsibility to obey just laws. Conversely, one has a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws. I would agree with St. Augustine that “an unjust law is no law at all.”

[The difference between just and unjust laws]

Now, what is the difference between the two? How does one determine whether a law is just or unjust?

A just law is a man made code that squares with the moral law or the law of God.

An unjust law is a code that is out of harmony with the moral law.

To put it in the terms of St. Thomas Aquinas: An unjust law is a human law that is not rooted in eternal law and natural law.

Any law that uplifts human personality is just.

Any law that degrades human personality is unjust.

[Example #1]

All segregation statutes are unjust because segregation distorts the soul and damages the personality. It gives the segregator a false sense of superiority and the segregated a false sense of inferiority. Segregation, to use the terminology of the Jewish philosopher Martin Buber, substitutes an “I it” relationship for an “I thou” relationship and ends up relegating persons to the status of things. Hence segregation is not only politically, economically and sociologically unsound, it is morally wrong and sinful. Paul Tillich has said that sin is separation. Is not segregation an existential expression of man’s tragic separation, his awful estrangement, his terrible sinfulness? Thus it is that I can urge men to obey the 1954 decision of the Supreme Court, for it is morally right; and I can urge them to disobey segregation ordinances, for they are morally wrong.

[Example #2]

Let us consider a more concrete example of just and unjust laws.

An unjust law is a code that a numerical or power majority group compels a minority group to obey but does not make binding on itself. This is difference made legal.

By the same token, a just law is a code that a majority compels a minority to follow and that it is willing to follow itself. This is sameness made legal.

[Example #3]

Let me give another explanation. A law is unjust if it is inflicted on a minority that, as a result of being denied the right to vote, had no part in enacting or devising the law. Who can say that the legislature of Alabama which set up that state’s segregation laws was democratically elected? Throughout Alabama all sorts of devious methods are used to prevent Negroes from becoming registered voters, and there are some counties in which, even though Negroes constitute a majority of the population, not a single Negro is registered. Can any law enacted under such circumstances be considered democratically structured?

[Example #4]

Sometimes a law is just on its face and unjust in its application. For instance, I have been arrested on a charge of parading without a permit. Now, there is nothing wrong in having an ordinance which requires a permit for a parade. But such an ordinance becomes unjust when it is used to maintain segregation and to deny citizens the First-Amendment privilege of peaceful assembly and protest.

[Disobeying an unjust law and bearing the consequences expresses the highest respect for law]

I hope you are able to see the distinction I am trying to point out. In no sense do I advocate evading or defying the law, as would the rabid segregationist. That would lead to anarchy. One who breaks an unjust law must do so openly, lovingly, and with a willingness to accept the penalty. I submit that an individual who breaks a law that conscience tells him is unjust, and who willingly accepts the penalty of imprisonment in order to arouse the conscience of the community over its injustice, is in reality expressing the highest respect for law.

[Predecessors to this type of civil disobedience]

Of course, there is nothing new about this kind of civil disobedience.

It was evidenced sublimely in the refusal of Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego to obey the laws of Nebuchadnezzar, on the ground that a higher moral law was at stake.

It was practiced superbly by the early Christians, who were willing to face hungry lions and the excruciating pain of chopping blocks rather than submit to certain unjust laws of the Roman Empire.

To a degree, academic freedom is a reality today because Socrates practiced civil disobedience.

In our own nation, the Boston Tea Party represented a massive act of civil disobedience.

We should never forget that everything Adolf Hitler did in Germany was “legal” and everything the Hungarian freedom fighters did in Hungary was “illegal.” It was “illegal” to aid and comfort a Jew in Hitler’s Germany. Even so, I am sure that, had I lived in Germany at the time, I would have aided and comforted my Jewish brothers. If today I lived in a Communist country where certain principles dear to the Christian faith are suppressed, I would openly advocate disobeying that country’s antireligious laws.

[Two honest confessions]

I must make two honest confessions to you, my Christian and Jewish brothers.

[1. Disappointment with the white moderate]

First, I must confess that over the past few years I have been gravely disappointed with the white moderate. I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro’s great stumbling block in his stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen’s Counciler or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate, who is more devoted to “order” than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says: “I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I cannot agree with your methods of direct action”; who paternalistically believes he can set the timetable for another man’s freedom; who lives by a mythical concept of time and who constantly advises the Negro to wait for a “more convenient season.” Shallow understanding from people of good will is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will. Lukewarm acceptance is much more bewildering than outright rejection.

I had hoped that the white moderate would understand that law and order exist for the purpose of establishing justice and that when they fail in this purpose they become the dangerously structured dams that block the flow of social progress.

I had hoped that the white moderate would understand that the present tension in the South is a necessary phase of the transition from an obnoxious negative peace, in which the Negro passively accepted his unjust plight, to a substantive and positive peace, in which all men will respect the dignity and worth of human personality. Actually, we who engage in nonviolent direct action are not the creators of tension. We merely bring to the surface the hidden tension that is already alive. We bring it out in the open, where it can be seen and dealt with. Like a boil that can never be cured so long as it is covered up but must be opened with all its ugliness to the natural medicines of air and light, injustice must be exposed, with all the tension its exposure creates, to the light of human conscience and the air of national opinion before it can be cured.

[Answer to the charge that their actions, though peaceful, precipitate violence]

In your statement you assert that our actions, even though peaceful, must be condemned because they precipitate violence.

But is this a logical assertion?

Isn’t this like condemning a robbed man because his possession of money precipitated the evil act of robbery?

Isn’t this like condemning Socrates because his unswerving commitment to truth and his philosophical inquiries precipitated the act by the misguided populace in which they made him drink hemlock?

Isn’t this like condemning Jesus because his unique God consciousness and never ceasing devotion to God’s will precipitated the evil act of crucifixion?

We must come to see that, as the federal courts have consistently affirmed, it is wrong to urge an individual to cease his efforts to gain his basic constitutional rights because the quest may precipitate violence. Society must protect the robbed and punish the robber.

[Answer to the myth that time will inevitably cure all social ills]

I had also hoped that the white moderate would reject the myth concerning time in relation to the struggle for freedom.

I have just received a letter from a white brother in Texas. He writes: “All Christians know that the colored people will receive equal rights eventually, but it is possible that you are in too great a religious hurry. It has taken Christianity almost two thousand years to accomplish what it has. The teachings of Christ take time to come to earth.”

Such an attitude stems from a tragic misconception of time, from the strangely irrational notion that there is something in the very flow of time that will inevitably cure all ills. Actually, time itself is neutral; it can be used either destructively or constructively. More and more I feel that the people of ill will have used time much more effectively than have the people of good will. We will have to repent in this generation not merely for the hateful words and actions of the bad people but for the appalling silence of the good people. Human progress never rolls in on wheels of inevitability; it comes through the tireless efforts of men willing to be co workers with God, and without this hard work, time itself becomes an ally of the forces of social stagnation. We must use time creatively, in the knowledge that the time is always ripe to do right.

Now is the time to make real the promise of democracy and transform our pending national elegy into a creative psalm of brotherhood.

Now is the time to lift our national policy from the quicksand of racial injustice to the solid rock of human dignity.

[Answer to the charge that their activity is extreme]

You speak of our activity in Birmingham as extreme.

At first I was rather disappointed that fellow clergymen would see my nonviolent efforts as those of an extremist. I began thinking about the fact that I stand in the middle of two opposing forces in the Negro community.

[1. Force of complacency in the Negro community]

One is a force of complacency, made up in part of Negroes who, as a result of long years of oppression, are so drained of self respect and a sense of “somebodiness” that they have adjusted to segregation; and in part of a few middle-class Negroes who, because of a degree of academic and economic security and because in some ways they profit by segregation, have become insensitive to the problems of the masses.

[2. Force of bitterness and hatred in the Negro community]

The other force is one of bitterness and hatred, and it comes perilously close to advocating violence. It is expressed in the various black nationalist groups that are springing up across the nation, the largest and best known being Elijah Muhammad’s Muslim movement. Nourished by the Negro’s frustration over the continued existence of racial discrimination, this movement is made up of people who have lost faith in America, who have absolutely repudiated Christianity, and who have concluded that the white man is an incorrigible “devil.”

[3. An alternative, or a more excellent way]

I have tried to stand between these two forces, saying that we need emulate neither the “do nothingism” of the complacent nor the hatred and despair of the black nationalist. For there is the more excellent way of love and nonviolent protest. I am grateful to God that, through the influence of the Negro church, the way of nonviolence became an integral part of our struggle. If this philosophy had not emerged, by now many streets of the South would, I am convinced, be flowing with blood.

And I am further convinced that if our white brothers dismiss as “rabble rousers” and “outside agitators” those of us who employ nonviolent direct action, and if they refuse to support our nonviolent efforts, millions of Negroes will, out of frustration and despair, seek solace and security in black nationalist ideologies–a development that would inevitably lead to a frightening racial nightmare.

Oppressed people cannot remain oppressed forever. The yearning for freedom eventually manifests itself, and that is what has happened to the American Negro. Something within has reminded him of his birthright of freedom, and something without has reminded him that it can be gained. Consciously or unconsciously, he has been caught up by the Zeitgeist, and with his black brothers of Africa and his brown and yellow brothers of Asia, South America and the Caribbean, the United States Negro is moving with a sense of great urgency toward the promised land of racial justice. If one recognizes this vital urge that has engulfed the Negro community, one should readily understand why public demonstrations are taking place. The Negro has many pent up resentments and latent frustrations, and he must release them. So let him march; let him make prayer pilgrimages to the city hall; let him go on freedom rides—and try to understand why he must do so. If his repressed emotions are not released in nonviolent ways, they will seek expression through violence; this is not a threat but a fact of history. So I have not said to my people: “Get rid of your discontent.” Rather, I have tried to say that this normal and healthy discontent can be channeled into the creative outlet of nonviolent direct action. And now this approach is being termed extremist.

[Were not these men extremists, too?]

But though I was initially disappointed at being categorized as an extremist, as I continued to think about the matter I gradually gained a measure of satisfaction from the label.

Was not Jesus an extremist for love: “Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you.”

Was not Amos an extremist for justice: “Let justice roll down like waters and righteousness like an ever flowing stream.”

Was not Paul an extremist for the Christian gospel: “I bear in my body the marks of the Lord Jesus.”

Was not Martin Luther an extremist: “Here I stand; I cannot do otherwise, so help me God.”

And John Bunyan: “I will stay in jail to the end of my days before I make a butchery of my conscience.”

And Abraham Lincoln: “This nation cannot survive half slave and half free.”

And Thomas Jefferson: “We hold these truths to be self evident, that all men are created equal . . .”

[The question is: what kind of extremist will one be?]

So the question is not whether we will be extremists, but what kind of extremists we will be.

Will we be extremists for hate or for love?

Will we be extremists for the preservation of injustice or for the extension of justice?

In that dramatic scene on Calvary’s hill three men were crucified. We must never forget that all three were crucified for the same crime—the crime of extremism. Two were extremists for immorality, and thus fell below their environment. The other, Jesus Christ, was an extremist for love, truth and goodness, and thereby rose above his environment. Perhaps the South, the nation and the world are in dire need of creative extremists.

I had hoped that the white moderate would see this need. Perhaps I was too optimistic; perhaps I expected too much. I suppose I should have realized that few members of the oppressor race can understand the deep groans and passionate yearnings of the oppressed race, and still fewer have the vision to see that injustice must be rooted out by strong, persistent and determined action.

[Gratitude for those white brothers in the South who have helped]

I am thankful, however, that some of our white brothers in the South have grasped the meaning of this social revolution and committed themselves to it. They are still all too few in quantity, but they are big in quality. Some—such as Ralph McGill, Lillian Smith, Harry Golden, James McBride Dabbs, Ann Braden and Sarah Patton Boyle—have written about our struggle in eloquent and prophetic terms. Others have marched with us down nameless streets of the South. They have languished in filthy, roach infested jails, suffering the abuse and brutality of policemen who view them as “dirty nigger-lovers.” Unlike so many of their moderate brothers and sisters, they have recognized the urgency of the moment and sensed the need for powerful “action” antidotes to combat the disease of segregation.

[2. Disappointment with the white church and its leadership]

Let me take note of my other major disappointment. I have been so greatly disappointed with the white church and its leadership. Of course, there are some notable exceptions.

I am not unmindful of the fact that each of you has taken some significant stands on this issue.

I commend you, Reverend Stallings [one of the signers of “A Call to Unity”], for your Christian stand on this past Sunday, in welcoming Negroes to your worship service on a nonsegregated basis.

I commend the Catholic leaders of this state for integrating Spring Hill College several years ago.

But despite these notable exceptions, I must honestly reiterate that I have been disappointed with the church. I do not say this as one of those negative critics who can always find something wrong with the church. I say this as a minister of the gospel, who loves the church; who was nurtured in its bosom; who has been sustained by its spiritual blessings and who will remain true to it as long as the cord of life shall lengthen.

When I was suddenly catapulted into the leadership of the bus protest in Montgomery, Alabama, a few years ago, I felt we would be supported by the white church. I felt that the white ministers, priests and rabbis of the South would be among our strongest allies.

Instead, some have been outright opponents, refusing to understand the freedom movement and misrepresenting its leaders; all too many others have been more cautious than courageous and have remained silent behind the anesthetizing security of stained glass windows.

[Coming to Birmingham with hope, only to be disappointed]

In spite of my shattered dreams, I came to Birmingham with the hope that the white religious leadership of this community would see the justice of our cause and, with deep moral concern, would serve as the channel through which our just grievances could reach the power structure. I had hoped that each of you would understand. But again I have been disappointed.

I have heard numerous southern religious leaders admonish their worshipers to comply with a desegregation decision because it is the law, but I have longed to hear white ministers declare: “Follow this decree because integration is morally right and because the Negro is your brother.”

In the midst of blatant injustices inflicted upon the Negro, I have watched white churchmen stand on the sideline and mouth pious irrelevancies and sanctimonious trivialities.

In the midst of a mighty struggle to rid our nation of racial and economic injustice, I have heard many ministers say: “Those are social issues, with which the gospel has no real concern.”

And I have watched many churches commit themselves to a completely other worldly religion which makes a strange, un-Biblical distinction between body and soul, between the sacred and the secular.

I have traveled the length and breadth of Alabama, Mississippi and all the other southern states. On sweltering summer days and crisp autumn mornings I have looked at the South’s beautiful churches with their lofty spires pointing heavenward. I have beheld the impressive outlines of her massive religious education buildings. Over and over I have found myself asking: “What kind of people worship here? Who is their God? Where were their voices when the lips of Governor Barnett dripped with words of interposition and nullification? Where were they when Governor Wallace gave a clarion call for defiance and hatred? Where were their voices of support when bruised and weary Negro men and women decided to rise from the dark dungeons of complacency to the bright hills of creative protest?”

[Tears of love over the body of Christ]

Yes, these questions are still in my mind. In deep disappointment I have wept over the laxity of the church. But be assured that my tears have been tears of love. There can be no deep disappointment where there is not deep love. Yes, I love the church. How could I do otherwise? I am in the rather unique position of being the son, the grandson and the great grandson of preachers. Yes, I see the church as the body of Christ. But, oh! How we have blemished and scarred that body through social neglect and through fear of being nonconformists.

[Remembering a time when the church was powerful]

There was a time when the church was very powerful—in the time when the early Christians rejoiced at being deemed worthy to suffer for what they believed. In those days the church was not merely a thermometer that recorded the ideas and principles of popular opinion; it was a thermostat that transformed the mores of society. Whenever the early Christians entered a town, the people in power became disturbed and immediately sought to convict the Christians for being “disturbers of the peace” and “outside agitators.”‘ But the Christians pressed on, in the conviction that they were “a colony of heaven,” called to obey God rather than man. Small in number, they were big in commitment. They were too God-intoxicated to be “astronomically intimidated.” By their effort and example they brought an end to such ancient evils as infanticide and gladiatorial contests. Things are different now. So often the contemporary church is a weak, ineffectual voice with an uncertain sound. So often it is an archdefender of the status quo. Far from being disturbed by the presence of the church, the power structure of the average community is consoled by the church’s silent–and often even vocal–sanction of things as they are.

But the judgment of God is upon the church as never before. If today’s church does not recapture the sacrificial spirit of the early church, it will lose its authenticity, forfeit the loyalty of millions, and be dismissed as an irrelevant social club with no meaning for the twentieth century. Every day I meet young people whose disappointment with the church has turned into outright disgust.

Perhaps I have once again been too optimistic. Is organized religion too inextricably bound to the status quo to save our nation and the world? Perhaps I must turn my faith to the inner spiritual church, the church within the church, as the true ekklesia and the hope of the world.

[Gratitude for those in the church who have helped]

But again I am thankful to God that some noble souls from the ranks of organized religion have broken loose from the paralyzing chains of conformity and joined us as active partners in the struggle for freedom. They have left their secure congregations and walked the streets of Albany, Georgia, with us. They have gone down the highways of the South on tortuous rides for freedom. Yes, they have gone to jail with us. Some have been dismissed from their churches, have lost the support of their bishops and fellow ministers. But they have acted in the faith that right defeated is stronger than evil triumphant. Their witness has been the spiritual salt that has preserved the true meaning of the gospel in these troubled times. They have carved a tunnel of hope through the dark mountain of disappointment. I hope the church as a whole will meet the challenge of this decisive hour.

[No despair for the future]

But even if the church does not come to the aid of justice, I have no despair about the future. I have no fear about the outcome of our struggle in Birmingham, even if our motives are at present misunderstood. We will reach the goal of freedom in Birmingham and all over the nation, because the goal of America is freedom. Abused and scorned though we may be, our destiny is tied up with America’s destiny.

Before the pilgrims landed at Plymouth, we were here.

Before the pen of Jefferson etched the majestic words of the Declaration of Independence across the pages of history, we were here.

For more than two centuries our forebears labored in this country without wages; they made cotton king; they built the homes of their masters while suffering gross injustice and shameful humiliation—and yet out of a bottomless vitality they continued to thrive and develop. If the inexpressible cruelties of slavery could not stop us, the opposition we now face will surely fail. We will win our freedom because the sacred heritage of our nation and the eternal will of God are embodied in our echoing demands.

[Concern about the clergy commending the actions of the Birmingham police]

Before closing I feel impelled to mention one other point in your statement that has troubled me profoundly. You warmly commended the Birmingham police force for keeping “order” and “preventing violence.”

I doubt that you would have so warmly commended the police force if you had seen its dogs sinking their teeth into unarmed, nonviolent Negroes.

I doubt that you would so quickly commend the policemen if you were to observe their ugly and inhumane treatment of Negroes here in the city jail;

if you were to watch them push and curse old Negro women and young Negro girls;

if you were to see them slap and kick old Negro men and young boys;

if you were to observe them, as they did on two occasions, refuse to give us food because we wanted to sing our grace together.

I cannot join you in your praise of the Birmingham police department.

It is true that the police have exercised a degree of discipline in handling the demonstrators. In this sense they have conducted themselves rather “nonviolently” in public. But for what purpose? To preserve the evil system of segregation.

Over the past few years I have consistently preached that nonviolence demands that the means we use must be as pure as the ends we seek. I have tried to make clear that it is wrong to use immoral means to attain moral ends. But now I must affirm that it is just as wrong, or perhaps even more so, to use moral means to preserve immoral ends. Perhaps Mr. Connor and his policemen have been rather nonviolent in public, as was Chief Pritchett in Albany, Georgia, but they have used the moral means of nonviolence to maintain the immoral end of racial injustice. As T. S. Eliot has said: “The last temptation is the greatest treason: To do the right deed for the wrong reason.”

[Where is the commendation for the peaceful protester?]

I wish you had commended the Negro sit inners and demonstrators of Birmingham for their sublime courage, their willingness to suffer and their amazing discipline in the midst of great provocation.

One day the South will recognize its real heroes.

They will be the James Merediths, with the noble sense of purpose that enables them to face jeering and hostile mobs, and with the agonizing loneliness that characterizes the life of the pioneer.

They will be old, oppressed, battered Negro women, symbolized in a seventy two year old woman in Montgomery, Alabama [Mother Pollard], who rose up with a sense of dignity and with her people decided not to ride segregated buses, and who responded with ungrammatical profundity to one who inquired about her weariness: “My feets is tired, but my soul is at rest.”

They will be the young high school and college students, the young ministers of the gospel and a host of their elders, courageously and nonviolently sitting in at lunch counters and willingly going to jail for conscience’ sake.

One day the South will know that when these disinherited children of God sat down at lunch counters, they were in reality standing up for what is best in the American dream and for the most sacred values in our Judaeo Christian heritage, thereby bringing our nation back to those great wells of democracy which were dug deep by the founding fathers in their formulation of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence.

[Reflections on this letter and how it will be received]

Never before have I written so long a letter. I’m afraid it is much too long to take your precious time. I can assure you that it would have been much shorter if I had been writing from a comfortable desk, but what else can one do when he is alone in a narrow jail cell, other than write long letters, think long thoughts and pray long prayers?

If I have said anything in this letter that overstates the truth and indicates an unreasonable impatience, I beg you to forgive me.

If I have said anything that understates the truth and indicates my having a patience that allows me to settle for anything less than brotherhood, I beg God to forgive me.

[Hopes for the future]

I hope this letter finds you strong in the faith. I also hope that circumstances will soon make it possible for me to meet each of you, not as an integrationist or a civil-rights leader but as a fellow clergyman and a Christian brother. Let us all hope that the dark clouds of racial prejudice will soon pass away and the deep fog of misunderstanding will be lifted from our fear drenched communities, and in some not too distant tomorrow the radiant stars of love and brotherhood will shine over our great nation with all their scintillating beauty.

Yours for the cause of Peace and Brotherhood,

Martin Luther King, Jr.

This revolting development is symbolic of a much larger wave of persecution against religions (not just Christianity) that are deemed threats to state power. In northwest China, authorities have detained around a million Uighur Muslims in “re-education camps.”

Most persecuted Christians around the globe will never be known to Western Christians, but Pastor Wang Yi happens to be an unusually prominent unregistered church leader, whose work garnered a visit to the Bush [43] White House in 2006. Perhaps most importantly, Wang Yi and the Early Rain Covenant Church were featured in Ian Johnson’s brilliant The Souls of China, arguably the most important book written on the modern growth of religion (again, not just Christianity) there.

What did Wang Yi do to attract the attention of Chinese authorities? Simply being the leader of an unregistered house church is likely not enough to land someone in jail (at least not yet). But Wang Yi and his church allegedly distributed publications and DVDs without government approval, and ran an unapproved school and seminary through the church. Moreover, as Mozur and Johnson write, “Wang had become known for taking high-profile positions on politically sensitive issues, including forced abortions and the massacre that crushed the Tiananmen Square democracy movement in 1989.” He also publicly criticized Xi Jinping, China’s increasingly authoritarian ruler.

Our churches will not know the name of every persecuted pastor in China, but we certainly should pray for Pastor Wang Yi, his church, and all those like him who are suffering today in China, the Middle East, Sub-Saharan Africa, and elsewhere. In doing so, we obey the command of Hebrews 13:3, “Remember those who are in prison, as though in prison with them, and those who are mistreated, since you also are in the body.” By praying for Wang Yi, we also take a small step toward broadening our too-narrow American vision by remembering our beloved brothers and sisters in the global church.

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If you get beyond the headlines and read the actual editorial, it becomes clear that CT felt obligated to speak out about Trump because it had spoken out about Bill Clinton on virtually identical grounds 20 years ago. Back then, they said, “Unsavory dealings and immoral acts by the president and those close to him have rendered this administration morally unable to lead.” Now, “unfortunately, the words that we applied to Mr. Clinton 20 years ago apply almost perfectly to our current president.”

Personally, I don’t think it is obvious that an outlet like CT, which is not primarily a political magazine, should have spoken out on either Clinton or Trump’s impeachment. But having spoken out on one, it seems more credible to speak out on the other now.

Where does CT fit on the evangelical spectrum, and does its editorial represent any kind of significant breach in the white evangelical firewall for Trump? One of the main points in my recent book Who Is an Evangelical? (Yale Press) is that Trump’s “evangelicals,” though they are a real and formidable cohort, hardly reflect the whole evangelical community at large, even among white Americans. Because CT has recently positioned itself as a centrist, intellectualist type of evangelical magazine, however, I cannot imagine that its subscriber base is teeming with MAGA devotees of Trump. Its editorial will undoubtedly run off some such devotees, but it may garner a few new anti-Trump subscribers too.

On the evangelical magazine spectrum, CT is not as likely to be anti-Trump as Jim Wallis’s liberal evangelical Sojourners, but CT’s editorial is only a surprise in its boldness, not the basic sentiment. Even WORLD magazine, which is generally more conservative and politically oriented than CT, was critical of Trump in 2016. Relevant, with its reported circulation of 70,000 copies (as compared to CT’s 120,500 and WORLD‘s 100,000), now seems to be the most prominent print mouthpiece for evangelical pro-Trumpism.

I can understand why CT made the statement that it did, and it may remind the news media that not all evangelicals are the same politically. However moderate CT has become politically, there is little question that its origins and current constituency are thoroughly evangelical—they are not EINOs (evangelicals in name only). But all Christian outlets, churches, and leaders need to count the cost of entering the partisan fray. Certain Republican evangelical insiders, of course, have thrown all caution to the wind and inextricably linked their faith to a political party and to Trump himself. I’m sympathetic to CT’s reasons for reacting against the excesses of those Republican insiders, but they have to be careful too, lest they become just another type of Christian partisan outlet.

“On any given day, Franklin quotations pop up in hundreds of Twitter feeds. Some are actual quotations, and some are not. “A penny saved is a penny earned,” is a modern variation on Franklin’s original, “A Penny sav’d is Twopence clear.” . . . Neither did Franklin say, “Beer is proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy.” Rather, in a letter discussing how Jesus’ miracle of turning water into wine was performed on a daily basis in the French countryside, he wrote, “Behold the water that falls from heaven upon our vineyards. There, it enters the roots of the vines to be changed into wine; constant proof that God loves us and loves to see us happy.” Replacing wine with beer is evidence of the modern desire to see Franklin as “one of the guys,” but the meaning of the original and the altered modern quotation are more or less similar. Still, if you purchased one of the many T-shirts for sale with the erroneous Franklin quotation on it, you might want to ask for a refund.”

From Nathan R. Kozuskanich, Benjamin Franklin: American Founder, Atlantic Citizen, Routledge, 2014.

See also my article “Misquoting Patrick Henry: The Internet and Bogus Sayings of the Founders” and my book Benjamin Franklin: The Religious Life of a Founding Father.

Their overall winner was Kathryn Long’s God in the Rainforest: A Tale of Martyrdom and Redemption in Amazonian Ecuador (Oxford University Press).

One of the judges—Andrew Atherstone, tutor in history and doctrine at Wycliffe Hall, University of Oxford—wrote:

The romantic legend of Jim Elliot and his missionary friends, speared to death in 1956 by Waorani warriors, is firmly fixed in evangelical folklore. The subsequent Christian conversion of the Waorani is often recounted triumphantly as proof of God’s redemption of indigenous peoples, stimulating many missionary vocations and helping to raise funds for a new wave of Bible translators. At the other extreme, secular critics accuse the Ecuadorian missionaries of ethnocide, as “the new conquistadors” of Latin America. Long cuts through these rhetorical tropes, subjecting them to searing analysis. She provides a detailed reconstruction of Waorani religious culture from the 1950s to the present, examining the complexities and failures that have been airbrushed from the idealized narratives.

Their Award of Merit—essentially the runner-up—was a tie between Darren Dochuk’s Anointed with Oil: How Christianity and Crude Made Modern America (Basic Books) and Grant Wacker’s One Soul at a Time: The Story of Billy Graham (Eerdmans).

On the Dochuk book, one of the judges—historian Stephen Tomkins—writes:

Anointed with Oil provides fascinating insight into how religion became embedded in the modern U.S. economy and how fossil-fuel capitalism became embedded in U.S. faith and values. It is a detailed and panoramic survey of the relationship between different approaches to Christianity and different approaches to industry and commerce. It contains colorful and potent characters and is lively despite its length. Dochuk’s style is always clear and fluent. He digs deep and gives the reader a strong sense of the power that oil and its unsustainable benefits have over the American soul.

On the Wacker volume, one of the judges—Karin Stetina, professor of theology at Biola University—writes:

Wacker’s biography presents a well-researched window into Billy Graham as a man who had a powerful public career as an evangelist. It contains short, readable chapters that unveil the real Graham, flaws and all, and the incredible impact he had on millions of people. Wacker does an excellent job showing how Graham was able to skillfully understand the trends of his era and speak to individuals in a powerful, life-changing way. While Graham constantly adapted the fine nuances of his approach to the ever-changing culture and his specific audiences, Wacker effectively points out his heart never changed. He consistently sought to give every person the opportunity to embrace the Good News of the gospel.

Related to these winners:

• Lucy Austen reviewed Kathryn Long’s God in the Rainforest for TGC.
• Thomas Kidd interviewed Darren Dochuck about his book on this blog.
• I interviewed Grant Wacker about Graham’s Madison Square Garden evangelistic campaign.

I was recently reading a chapter from Keith Beutler‘s forthcoming University of Virginia Press book on Americans’ memory of the Founders in the early republic, and he was noting evangelicals’ attraction to relics associated with the major Founders, especially George Washington. He discussed evangelicals’ regular pilgrimages to George Whitefield’s tomb in Newburyport, Massachusetts, which I also discuss at length in my biography of Whitefield. I write:

Beutler’s work also prompted me to do some digging (not literal) about Edwards’s grave in Princeton. Edwards definitely has had many visitors, too, and according to a Scottish Presbyterian guest in 1880, some pilgrims had taken pieces of his tombstone.

I have found a historic photo (though not a public domain version) of Edwards’s grave from the 1890s, and it does look a little ragged around the edges. The image at the top of this post is from 1903, and Edwards’s grave appears to be the one with the chipped edges in the center. More recent images show the newer tombstone for Edwards with clean edges.

I warmly recommend visiting both Newburyport and Princeton, but I suspect that both Whitefield and Edwards would caution us against any reverential feelings about being in proximity to their corpses. Or taking any relics. But if being in spots associated with great moments in evangelical history leads to more gratitude to the Lord, that is undoubtedly permissible—even welcome.

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Beth Barton Schweiger, A Literate South: Reading before Emancipation (Yale). This obviously is as much a history of learning and culture as it is of religion, but much of antebellum South learned through religious sources. From the publisher: “Drawing on the writings of four young women who lived in the Blue Ridge Mountains, Schweiger shows how free and enslaved people learned to read, and that they wrote and spoke poems, songs, stories, and religious doctrines that were circulated by speech and in print. The assumption that slavery and reading are incompatible—which has its origins in the eighteenth century—has obscured the rich literate tradition at the heart of Southern and American culture.” We recently had Schweiger to Baylor for a lecture, and it was exceedingly well received.

Andrew Delbanco, The War Before the War: Fugitive Slaves and the Struggle for America’s Soul from the Revolution to the Civil War (Penguin). I recently listened to this on Audible, on Alan Jacobs’s recommendation, and it is outstanding. One of the best history books I have read in the past couple years.

Kate Bowler, The Preacher’s Wife: The Precarious Power of Evangelical Women Celebrities (Princeton). Coming from the author of the best book on the prosperity gospel, this book promises to examine some of the tensions inherent in the public roles of female Bible teachers. A timely topic! Bowler spoke on her research for this book a couple years ago at Baylor, and it was fascinating.  

Mark David Hall, Did America Have a Christian Founding?: Separating Modern Myth from Historical Truth (Thomas Nelson). Hall is an outstanding historian of religion and the Founding, and here he is wading into the ever-controversial topic of whether (and in what sense) America was founded as a Christian nation. See Justin Taylor’s recent post on the book.

Note that I also have a new book out: America’s Religious History: Faith, Politics, and the Shaping of a Nation (Zondervan). If you are looking for an up-to-date overview of American religious history, or if you teach any sort of class on American religion, I hope you will check it out!

[The book links provided here are part of the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to Amazon.com.]

If someone were to ask me whether America had a “Christian founding”—the question that headlines this book—I would have to know how they defined that term before I could offer an answer.

Hall write that there are five options of what we could mean by a “Christian founding”:

[Option 1: The Founders Were Self-Identified Christians]

One possibility is simply that the founders identified themselves as Christians, which they clearly did.

In 1776, every colonist, with the exception of about two thousand Jews, identified himself or herself as a Christian. Approximately 98 percent of them were Protestants, and the remaining 2 percent were Roman Catholics.

But these facts alone are not particularly useful.

These men and women

• may have been bad Christians,
• may have been Christians significantly influenced by non-Christian ideas, or
• may even have been Christians self-consciously attempting to create a secular political order.

As we shall see, there are good reasons to reject these possibilities, but even so, it is necessary to dig deeper.

[Option 2: The Founders Were All Sincere Christians]

A second possibility is that the founders were all sincere Christians.

This would be a more interesting finding, yet sincerity is difficult for scholars, or anyone else, to judge. In most cases, the historical record gives us little with which to work.

Even if we can determine, say, that a particular founder was a member, a regular attender, and even an officer in a church, it does not necessarily mean that he was a sincere Christian. Perhaps he did these things simply because society expected it of him.

[Option 3: The Founders Were Orthodox Christians]

Third, we might mean that the founders were orthodox Christians.

In some cases—for example, with Samuel Adams, Patrick Henry, John Jay, Roger Sherman, and John Witherspoon—there is abundant evidence that they embraced and articulated orthodox Christian ideas.

But the lack of records makes it difficult to speak with confidence on this issue with respect to some founders.

Nevertheless, because of the many misleading statements on the subject, I demonstrate that there is no evidence to support the popular claim that many or most of the founders rejected orthodox Christianity or were deists.

[Option 4: The Founders Only Acted Like Christians]

A fourth possibility is that the founders acted like Christians in their private or public lives.

Some historians have argued that the founding cannot be called Christian because some founders did not

• join churches,
• take communion, or
• remain faithful to their spouses.

Moreover, they say, in their public capacity the founders did not act in a Christian manner because they

• did things such as fight an unjust war against England and
• did not immediately abolish slavery.

In some cases, these critiques do not take into account historical context, such as the difficulty of joining Calvinist churches in eighteenth-century America, which complicates claims regarding low church membership.

In other cases, these critiques neglect the traditional Christian teaching that even saints sin.

If the standard of being a Christian is moral perfection, no one has ever been a Christian.

[5. Option 5: The Founders Were Influenced by Christian Ideas]

A final possibility for the meaning of a “Christian founding” is that the founders were influenced by Christian ideas.

I believe this is the most reasonable way to approach the question, Did America have a Christian founding?

In doing so, it is important to note that nominal Christians might be influenced by Christian ideas, just as it is possible for an orthodox Christian to be influenced by non-Christian ideas.

Book after book has been written about whether the founders were most influenced by Lockean liberalism, classical republicanism, the Scottish Enlightenment, and so on. I contend that an excellent case can be made that Christianity had a profound influence on the founding generation.

Given Mark David Hall’s definition of what he means by “Christian founding,” Hall’s answer to the title of his book is a “resounding yes.” He does not mean that American was to be established as a theocracy with creedal affirmation or constitutional requirement to worship Christ. He does not claim that all of the founders were orthodox Christians (though he thinks historians have exaggerated the number of deists among the founders, especially in terms of denying orthodoxy and affirming deism). Nor does Hall claim that Christianity is the only influence for the founders. Instead, his argument is twofold: (1) orthodox Christianity had a very significant influence on America’s Founders and (2) this influence is often overlooked by scholars and students of the American Founding.

There will be things to quibble with in the book (compare, for example, this older post by Thomas Kidd on the challenge of defining 18th-century deism, whereas Hall works with a fairly specific definition), but this is a very thoughtful book that deserves careful study and attention.

When reviewing a book, be as charitable as possible. This is a “Golden Rule” issue. Once you’ve experienced the years of struggle behind producing a book, you should be cautious about casually dismissing the value of another author’s work. Even when I have major problems with a book, I try to praise it as much as I can, and include a few lines that a press could likely use to promote the book. This is what I would want from other reviewers—why not extend the same courtesy?

It is certainly in-bounds to disagree with an author’s interpretation or ideological assumptions, of course. But do this in a polite way, as a means of discussion rather than denunciation. Pointing out factual errors is harsh but fair, especially when the errors in question are major, repeated, and/or relevant to the book’s key claims. I do not, however, believe that reviewers should point out small factual or typographical errors. The worst is when reviewers characterize disputed points, or matters of opinion, as errors of fact.

Avoid the temptation to use differences of interpretation as an opportunity to impugn the author’s motives, or to tout your moral superiority. Unfortunately, portraying interpretive difference as moral failing has become more pronounced in recent years, especially since the electoral convulsions of 2016. Many in academia are looking for someone—anyone—to blame for Trump!

Probably the most common error that reviewers make is failing to distinguish their preferences from actual weaknesses in a book. “I would have approached this differently” is not the same thing as “this book is no good.”

Remember as you are writing a book review, it is entirely likely that, if you do not already know the author, you may meet him or her at a conference. (I can recall times when I have met reviewers on elevators of conference hotels right after they wrote negative reviews of one of my books. Awkward!) If you end up meeting them, or having to work with them, will you be able to look them in the eye?

I am convinced that book reviews are among the least “objective” writing exercises—a great deal depends on the reviewer’s mood, temperament, level of jealously, and special pet peeves. Certain books, such as ones filled with major factual errors, will receive almost universally negative reviews no matter who reviews them. Certain extraordinary books will receive mostly positive reviews, no matter who assesses them. But we’ve all seen cases of books which receive high praise in most reviews, which also receive scorching criticisms by one or two outliers. I can think of one of the most significant books in American religious history in the past 20 years, for example, which won multiple prizes, which one reviewer accused of being plagiarized (an accusation with absolutely no basis).

Remember, when you receive some bad book reviews—and you will—it does not necessarily mean that your book is objectively bad. Too many other factors are at work. I advise skimming some reviews of your work, taking what’s valuable, and letting the rest slide. Try not to hold grudges. I know some established authors who don’t read reviews of their work at all. This approach may be a little extreme, but it is probably better than obsessing over every little criticism.

Write book reviews to stimulate and shape conversations in your field, to commend the strengths you can find in any but the worst books, and to (cautiously and graciously) identify unanswered questions or interpretive difficulties in them. A scorched-earth or petulant review damages the reputation of the reviewer as much or more as it damages the reviewed book. If you can’t go into a review with a generous attitude, it would probably be best not to write it.

A version of this review originally appeared at The Anxious Bench.

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The word “evangelical” was often a synonym for “gospel,” which made sense because euangelion in Greek means “good news.” But the term “evangelical” did both pick up in popularity, and in focus of meaning, around the time of the Great Awakening in the 1740s. Consider the Google Ngram chart for the words evangelical, evangelicals, and evangelicalism:

A few caveats about Ngram charts are in order. They give interesting information about the frequency of search terms, but they are definitely not precise. Critics often note that the Ngram sources searched by Google become increasingly dominated over time by scientific journals, for instance, where one would not expect to find a term like evangelical show up much.

Nevertheless, we see that “evangelicals” and “evangelicalism” are terms mostly appearing in the second half of the 20th century. There was a steady increase in familiarity with the term “evangelical” through about 1755, then it dropped and leveled off for about four decades. Then in the era of the Second Great Awakening it went through another spike, before declining by percentage steadily until about 1940, when it began a slow rise again. I suspect that the difference between the term’s prevalence in 1850 and in 2000 would not be as sharp if you could account for the percentage of STEM-related publications between the two dates.

The Ngram sources are in English, and are not just from American publications, but we can assume an increasing domination of American publishers in the chart. To get a feel for the use of “evangelical” over this time period, let’s consider anecdotally how “evangelical” is being used in or around three years—1750, 1850, and 1950. (Another caveat: the term “evangelical” often meant “Protestant” or “Lutheran” in a German-background context, but that strain of its use is not my focus here.)

In 1750, the great revivals of George Whitefield were largely in the past, although he still drew large crowds, and one could find regional instances of revival in between the First and Second Great Awakenings. I have spoken elsewhere of a “long” First Great Awakening to account for the continuity of revival. The output of the presses in America and Britain remained fairly small in those days, and the combined hits on “evangelical” in American and British digital collections in 1750 is less than 100 total. Many of the uses go back to the generic use of evangelical as “gospel” or “biblical.” But you can also see more specific uses of the term in ways that suggest the emergence of a distinct “evangelical” movement.

For instance, a group of evangelical dissenters in a Framingham, Massachusetts, church in 1750 protested against their liberal pastor’s preaching, saying that he avoided those doctrines “which show the difference between that faith, that repentance, and that obedience which is merely legal[istic], superficial, and servile, and that which is evangelical.”

Similarly, the Baptist John Gill, a Calvinist supporter of Whitefield’s preaching, gave a funeral sermon for a minister colleague in 1750, praising the deceased pastor for giving sermons that were “spiritual, savory, and evangelical, having a tendency to awaken the minds of sinners.”

By 1850, the options for the use of “evangelical” had increased tremendously, including societies and periodicals with the word “evangelical” in them. References to “evangelical” that year now ran into the thousands, but the word still usually functioned as an adjective. David Benedict’s classic history of Baptists did speak of “evangelical Christians,” however. And the London-based Wesleyan-Methodist Magazine spoke of the “evangelical method of salvation” and the “evangelical doctrine of faith.”

By 1950, the use of the word had changed dramatically, especially because of the founding of the National Association of Evangelicals (NAE) in 1942. “Evangelical” was coming to denote conversionist Protestants who were not fundamentalists. Although the origins of the term “neo-evangelical” are debated, many believe that Harold John Ockenga coined the term in an address at the new Fuller Seminary in 1947. Fuller itself had been founded to represent the new evangelicalism. Then in 1949, Billy Graham rose to prominence, and by 1950 he had become the undisputed standard-bearer for what people saw as evangelical faith.

Carl Henry, who along with Graham and Ockenga was one of the key players in the articulation of the new evangelicalism, gave the impression that using “evangelical” as a noun in the 1940s was almost a neologism. In George Marsden’s book Reforming Fundamentalism, Henry told Marsden that in the 1930s conservative Protestants all largely accepted the label “fundamentalist,” and that “the term ‘evangelical’ became a significant option when the NAE was organized.” Indeed, Henry claimed that nobody really wanted to self-identify as evangelicals until the founding of the NAE, because the term seemed passe. (Thus Ockenga’s “neo-evangelicals,” which at least made the term sound fresh.)

In summary, the term “evangelical” itself was widely known on the eve of the Great Awakening, but it tended to be synonymous with “biblical” or “gospel.” During the Great Awakening it began also to describe the supporters of the revivals and of Whitefield. By 1850, it had probably become the most widely used term to describe conversionist, revivalist Protestants in Britain and America, but it was still often used as an adjective, though sometimes it would appear as a noun too.

There were two key turning points in the modern use of the term “evangelical.” One was the founding of the NAE, which followed a decline in the term’s use and also definitively moved toward its usage as a noun, rather than an adjective.

The other turning point for the word came in 1976. That year, Jimmy Carter, a self-described evangelical, won the presidency, and Newsweek declared 1976 the “year of the evangelical.”

Of more enduring importance, Gallup for the first time began asking survey respondents in 1976 if they were “evangelical” or “born again” and pairing that response with political behavior. Of course, the rise of the Moral Majority in 1979 was a decisive moment in the politicization of the word “evangelical,” too, but once “evangelical” became a standard category in polling, the public perception began to shift inexorably toward a political understanding of what it meant to be an evangelical. By the 2010s, most casual American observers had come to assume that evangelical meant “white religious Republican.”

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He had the opportunity to interview a survivor of the initial battles of Lexington and Concord, 91-year-old Captain Levi Preston of Danvers.

The young scholar wanted to know the cause behind his involvement with the war.

David Hackett Fischer records their exchange:

“Captain Preston,” he asked, “what made you go to the Concord fight?”

“What did I go for?” the old man replied, subtly rephrasing the historian’s question to drain away its determinism.

The interviewer tried again, “. . . Were you oppressed by the Stamp Act?”

“I never saw any stamps,” Preston answered, “and I always understood that none were sold.”

“Well, what about the tea tax?”

“Tea tax? I never drank a drop of the stuff. The boys threw it all overboard.”

“I suppose you had been reading Harrington, Sidney, and Locke about the eternal principle of liberty?”

“I never heard of these men. The only books we had were the Bible, the Catechism, Watts’s Psalms, and hymns and the almanacs.”

“Well, then, what was the matter?”

“Young man, what we meant in going for those Redcoats was this: we always had been free, and we meant to be free always. They didn’t mean we should.”

[For more details, see, “Why Captain Levi Preston Fought: An Interview with One of the Survivors of the Revolution by Hon. Mellen Chamberlain of Chelsea,” Danvers Historical Collections 8 (1920): 68–70.]

This anecdote, of course, doesn’t mean that journalists and historians should stop asking complex questions about the past or tracing the long tail of influences leading up to an action. Memories are fallible; they can be simplistic, and good investigations of the past go beyond what any one individual thinks and to observe trends, patterns, and wider swaths of thought.

But it’s still a fascinating example of someone having a narrative, based on reading, and how different it looks if they were able to interview the actual participants.

Historical causation is notoriously complex. Yet sometimes we forget that a historical actor’s motivation can be surprisingly simple. As those interested in correctly interpreting the past, we should never stop our investigation with the self-perception or motivation of those involved in the events. But we should often start there.

All of this reminds me of a quote from the conservative political and cultural commentator Jonah Goldberg:

The car and the birth-control pill have—for good and ill—done more to overturn settled institutions and customs than Nietzsche or Marx ever could.

But pills and automobiles are hard to argue with, so like drunks searching for their car keys under the street lamp because that’s where the light is good, intellectuals focus on the stuff they can argue with.

Few people have leveraged their lives for the goodwill of humanity or the cause of the gospel to the extent that the British abolitionist William Wilberforce did for almost 50 years. Through his long tenure in Parliament, his support of various missions and ministries, and his lifelong campaign for abolition and eventually emancipation, Wilberforce, to an admirable degree, did justice, loved kindness, and walked humbly with his God. Studying his life forces us to consider issues of our own day, including race, empire, missions, and how Christians intersect with the public sphere.

The place to begin any list of Wilberforce biographies is with the five-volume tome compiled by two of his own sons, shortly after their father’s death. Every biography since has relied heavily on this massive work, filled with copious extracts from Wilberforce’s diaries and correspondence. For the general reader, however, The Life of William Wilberforce (1838) is exceedingly tedious to slog through (not to mention expensive). It has little to no narrative arc, and only gluttons for punishment would read it for fun when there are other options on the table. Fortunately, for all of our sakes, there are.

Two older biographies needing mention include John Campbell Colquhoun’s William Wilberforce: His Friends and His Times (1866) and Reginald Coupland’s Wilberforce: A Narrative (1923). Both are out of print, though scanned reproductions can be found on Amazon (or downloaded for free at archive.org). Colquhoun’s work, though not scholarly, is helpful as it gives a reader a short sketch of a handful of those who ran in Wilberforce’s far-ranging circle. Coupland’s, while extremely well written and engaging, doesn’t delve deeply into the primary source material.

After Coupland, it would be some 50 years before any biography of note would appear on the scene. Robin Furneaux’s William Wilberforce arrived in 1974, and three years later, John Pollock would follow up that impressive act with one of his own, entitled simply Wilberforce (1977). Both are remarkable in their own ways. While Furneaux has a great sense of historical and political context, Pollock did extensive new archival research and wrote from the vantage point of an evangelical Anglican clergyman. Furneaux is fantastic, but less sympathetic to Wilberforce’s Christian convictions—just read their chapters about Wilberforce’s conversion side by side. Pollock’s analysis is insightful, nuanced, and familiar, while Furneaux’s leaves a Christian reader looking for something more.

Kevin Belmonte’s William Wilberforce: A Hero for Humanity (2002), while shorter and less researched, follows in Pollock’s sympathetic vein, and builds on it, rightfully giving John Newton, the former slave ship captain and author of “Amazing Grace,” a larger role in the narrative. (This lack, my primary complaint with Pollock, isn’t really his fault. He was not allowed access to the John Newton-William Wilberforce Correspondence, which at the time of writing, was in possession of the family.) To be sure, Belmonte’s is a great entry point for those interested in Wilberforce.

The Roots of Endurance: Invincible Perseverance in the Lives of John Newton, Charles Simeon, and William Wilberforce (2002), from John Piper’s The Swans Are Not Silent series, is a compilation of three biographical messages, creatively packaged together in one slim volume, as Newton, Simeon, and Wilberforce were all collaborators and friends. Piper characteristically concedes, “If academic historians say, ‘Farewell,’ I don’t blame them. I only hope that what I write is true and helps people endure to the end” (11, footnote). To this purpose, his book is a valuable read.

Finally, several good biographies came out around 2007 as bicentenary commemorations of the passing of Britain’s Abolition Bill. Eric Metaxas’s Amazing Grace, is, as my PhD adviser describes it, “a rattling good read,” but rather simplistic (and, thankfully, not nearly as controversial as his Bonhoeffer: Pastor, Martyr, Prophet, Spy). In the same year, the future foreign secretary and Conservative Party leader William Hague (who already had written a biography of Wilberforce’s good friend, Prime Minister William Pitt), brought his expertise to the politician in the massive William Wilberforce: The Life of the Great Anti-Slave Trade Campaigner. Perhaps the best of 2007 is Stephen Tomkins’s William Wilberforce: A Biography, who followed it up with The Clapham Sect: How Wilberforce’s Circle Transformed Britain (2010). Tompkins’s writing is well-researched, admiring, and yet honest.

Wilberforce biographies tend to divide in rather neat categories, written either with academic heft, or for popular appeal, written by those who share his Christian convictions, or those who admire his abolition work, regardless of faith. For those who want one book “to rule them all”—a biography that combines engaging storytelling with historical finesse, theological sensitivity with social and political acumen—for the Christian who has read George Marsden’s masterful Jonathan Edwards: A Life, and is looking for the Wilberforce equivalent, the closest comparison at present would be John Pollock’s Wilberforce.

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[TK] When we think of Jonathan Edwards, most of us probably think first of him as a Reformed theologian or evangelical preacher. Why did you decide to assess him as a mentor?

[RB] There are so many ways of understanding Edwards, aren’t there? So many different kinds of ministry he undertook. It is easy to approach him as a preacher given that we have so many of his sermons, but this might leave a wrong impression. He counseled people, organized church services, rode on horseback to other towns to convene meetings, worked with publishers, and of course mentored future leaders. And his mentoring was done so well. I want campus workers, pastors, and academics to see Edwards as more than a theological mouthpiece in order to see that ministry is more than explaining ideas. Ministry is at least that, but much more!

You quote Edwards describing his pedagogical practice in these words: “singly, particularly, and closely.” What did he mean by that?

One of the surprising phases of Edwards’s ministry was his decision to work as a missionary in Stockbridge after his dismissal from Northampton. He ran a small church as well as a school for Native American children. And he expected his teachers to instruct their pupils “singly, particularly, and closely.” Every kid in the school would have their own traumas, or linguistic challenges, or family dynamics to negotiate, so Edwards wanted these educational needs to be taken into account in their geography or math lessons. It would take more time and effort on the part of the teacher to imagine the world and individual experience of their students, but it would be worth it in the end. Our background doesn’t define our capacity for learning. If God values and cares for an apparently worthless sparrow, then of course older Christians should prize the unique capacities of younger ones whom they teach. To mentor someone is to nurture them “singly, particularly, and closely” as well.

You describe the 18th century as a “golden age” for mentoring practices. What was distinctive about Edwards’s era for mentoring relationships?

The 18th century is an exciting era to explore. I never thought I’d enjoy researching this period of history as much as I have. Its philosophical background can be summarized under the Enlightenment banner, when thinkers and writers began to cast off traditional sources of authority and examine the world without the baggage of the past. For many, that baggage included Christian theology and the institutional church. Not all Enlightenment thinkers were anti-God, but many did want to examine the world without fear of being accused of blasphemy or heresy if their conclusions went against received theological wisdom. Christian nations in the 17th century hadn’t exactly covered themselves with glory when it came to religious tolerance!

This intellectual revolution, ultimately climaxing in a series of political revolutions, allowed for new ways of thinking about authority. More and more, human life and relationships were defined not vertically but horizontally. People began to appreciate that society could be dynamic not just static, in contrast to most of human history when it was not tyranny but anarchy that people most feared. Theories of education were being revised, and human agency (for example our capacity to make economic decisions in a growing capitalist culture) was redefined. Kinship patterns in villages and small towns were disrupted with people moving to cities. Leisure time was increasing with new entertainments like novels or letter-writing or coffee houses to enjoy. This was a cultural world where the intentional empowering of other individuals through practices like mentoring came naturally. That’s why I describe mentoring in my book as the exchange between authority and agency. Institutions might have been out of fashion in Edwards’s day, but learning from a respected individual committed to your welfare was highly attractive personally and culturally.

On balance, how successful do you think Edwards was as a mentor? What was his main legacy in mentoring?

Edwards didn’t suffer fools gladly, so his mentoring was most effective with those whom he most admired. Perhaps it is not surprising that as a teacher he enjoyed the company of those who asked good questions and showed a readiness to learn and to lead. He was successful in as far as he took up certain features of his Enlightenment world and adapted them to his mentoring program, while drawing from deep theological wells to anchor this ministry. However, if we take raw numbers, his mentoring would seem ineffectual. I estimate there were only around 12 or 15 mentees in whom he invested over the longer term. The same names crop up in his correspondence time and time again.

But when we trace the multiplying ministries of that small group of men, training mentees to train others through mentoring, the story is remarkable. After just a few generations hundreds of clergy in New England could trace their ministerial pedigree back to Edwards himself, and they occupied the pulpit of the vast majority of New England churches. They didn’t always do as Edwards himself had done—some became more legalistic or defensive of their own status. But Edwards had taught them to think for themselves, and this was what they were doing. And during the American Revolution, and in the early Republic, without clear playbooks for ministry, thinking for themselves turned out to be an important quality. Beautifully, many of these clergy were abolitionists who agitated for political and social reform in the 19th century. Though Edwards owned slaves, thankfully his spiritual descendants (including his son Jonathan Jr.) went their own way on this matter too!

What lessons do you see for the church today in Edwards’s model of mentoring?

Churches and seminaries will do well to make sure that mentoring is a part of their pastoral agenda. Edwards’s theology and practice are a great stimulus to our thinking. Ministry in the West is more complicated than even a generation ago, so mentoring helps us to identify the particular ways we can encourage and train future leaders and support them in the trials of life and in ministry formation. Because of clergy sex-abuse scandals the church has squandered its social capital, and conservative views on sexual ethics have made us appear on the “wrong side of history,” but mentoring is a way of looking to the future without expecting large institutional buy-in from potential leaders from the outset. And we need to remember that the faith is as much caught as taught, so seeking out models of Christian maturity and watching their lives is a powerful strategy for growth. Edwards knew that one day we would see Jesus face to face, so why not get ready for that day by looking at others ahead of us in the race and imitate their conformity to Jesus. Mentoring is a tried and true ministry strategy, and Edwards’s world in the end is not all that different from our own. He was perhaps the first modern mentor!

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Annette Gordon-Reed and Peter Onuf, ‘Most Blessed of the Patriarchs’: Thomas Jefferson and the Empire of the Imagination. This is the updated biography of Jefferson that I would recommend first. More of a cultural biography than a political blow-by-blow, Gordon-Reed and Onuf consider perhaps the central dilemma in Jefferson’s intellectual vision: How could Jefferson be both a radical Unitarian democrat, and a man who looked longingly back to ancient patriarchal societies, even dreaming of living at Monticello like the “most blessed of the [biblical] patriarchs”?

Daniel L. Dreisbach, Thomas Jefferson and the Wall of Separation between Church and State. Dreisbach’s meticulous work—which once involved bringing in an FBI handwriting analyst!—has revolutionized our understanding of one of Jefferson’s most-cited and most often misunderstood metaphors, the wall of separation between church and state.

Gordon S. Wood, Friends Divided: John Adams and Thomas Jefferson. Wood, one of America’s most distinguished historians, brings a wealth of expertise and storytelling verve to the contentious and fascinating relationship between Jefferson and Adams.

William Howard Adams, The Paris Years of Thomas Jefferson. A visually evocative book filled with beautiful illustrations, this is as much a portrait of Paris in the 1780s as it is of Jefferson.

Annette Gordon-Reed, The Hemingses of Monticello: An American Family. Gordon-Reed, the key historian in establishing a case that Jefferson fathered children by his slave Sally Hemings, goes well beyond detailing that argument in her gripping, Pulitzer Prize-winning book. Here she recreates the lives of generations of the Hemings family, one of the core cohorts of slaves at Jefferson’s Monticello.

The distinguished historian John Thornton wrote that because of recent archival discoveries, we have a pretty good idea of who these Africans were.

Unlike most of the slaves who came to the Americas, these Angolans may have had some familiarity with Catholic Christianity.

It is important for Christians (and all Americans) to know the story of these slaves (they were almost certainly slaves, not indentured servants). The vast majority of people who crossed the Atlantic from the 1500s to the Civil War were African slaves, not Europeans. Slavery was right at the center of the founding of the European colonies in America.

These “20 and odd Negroes” began a terrible story of exploitation and racial strife. We are still grappling with the fallout from slavery as a nation, and in our churches today. We should remember, and we should lament.

• Mary V. Thompson, “The Only Unavoidable Subject of Regret”: George Washington, Slavery, and the Enslaved Community at Mount Vernon. Thompson is the author of perhaps the best book on Washington’s religion, and here she follows up with a treatment of Washington and slavery. From the University of Virginia Press: “George Washington’s life has been scrutinized by historians over the past three centuries, but the day-to-day lives of Mount Vernon’s enslaved workers, who left few written records but made up 90 percent of the estate’s population, have been largely left out of the story. In ‘The Only Unavoidable Subject of Regret,’ Mary Thompson offers the first comprehensive account of those who served in bondage at Mount Vernon. Drawing on years of research in a wide range of sources, Thompson brings to life the lives of Washington’s slaves while illuminating the radical change in his views on slavery and race wrought by the American Revolution.”

• Sara Georgini, Household Gods: The Religious Lives of the Adams Family. From Oxford University Press: “Drawing from their rich archive, Sara Georgini, series editor for The Papers of John Adams, demonstrates how pivotal Christianity—as the different generations understood it—was in shaping the family’s decisions, great and small. Spanning three centuries of faith from Puritan New England to the Jazz Age, Household Gods tells a new story of American religion, as the Adams family lived it.”

• Richard M. Gamble, A Fiery Gospel: The Battle Hymn of the Republic and the Road to Righteous War. Gamble is a longtime friend of mine, a terrific historian, and professor at Hillsdale College. From Cornell Press: “Since its composition in Washington’s Willard Hotel in 1861, Julia Ward Howe’s ‘Battle Hymn of the Republic’ has been used to make America and its wars sacred. Few Americans reflect on its violent and redemptive imagery, drawn freely from prophetic passages of the Old and New Testaments, and fewer still think about the implications of that apocalyptic language for how Americans interpret who they are and what they owe the world. In A Fiery Gospel, Richard M. Gamble describes how this camp-meeting tune, paired with Howe’s evocative lyrics, became one of the most effective instruments of religious nationalism.”

• Kathryn T. Long, God in the Rainforest: A Tale of Martyrdom and Redemption in Amazonian Ecuador. See the TGC review of this fresh look at the evangelical mission to the Waorani Indians of Ecuador, which culminated in the deaths of Jim Eliot and his four missionary colleagues in 1956.

• See also my recent interview with Darren Dochuk on his remarkable new book, Anointed with Oil: How Christianity and Crude Made Modern America.

[TK] You describe Anointed with Oil as a “religious biography of a natural resource.” What gave you the idea to examine the connections between Christianity and the oil business in America?

[DD] This was part professional and part personal. While writing my first book—From Bible Belt to Sunbelt—I kept coming across influential oil executives who supported the religious and political institutions I was examining. Whether it concerned California governor Ronald Reagan’s “Kitchen Cabinet” of advisers, or Christian colleges such as Pepperdine and Biola, oilmen seemed almost omnipresent in the rise of California’s (and the Sunbelt’s) conservative movement. So I thought I might “follow the money” further and see how petroleum powerbrokers shaped the course of American religion and politics.

My roots in the Alberta oil patch factored in, too. I grew up there during a tough down cycle in oil (the 1980s), and I remember the perennial anxieties this caused in local politics (and in my church). Those memories became more pronounced as I researched the book. In a way, they also encouraged me to look past a follow-the-money narrative to other dimensions of faith and oil’s reciprocity. I started focusing more on the distinctiveness of oil-patch religious life itself and pondering how the disruptive economic cycles and dangers of the business helped shape belief in the pulpits and pews of these regions (be it Oklahoma and Texas or Alberta, the “Texas” of Canada). I also started wrestling more with oil’s outsized importance to the United States and its post-Civil War economic expansion on a global scale, and how the nation came to see its control of oil in sanctified terms—as a sign of the nation’s exceptionalism.

You note that there were sharply divergent religious attitudes in the oil industry, especially the clash between the “civil religion of crude” and “wildcat Christianity.” What divided those camps?

My use of the categories “wildcat Christianity” and “civil religion of crude” point to a central tension: the generations-long competition between two different sectors of U.S. petroleum and, correspondingly, of U.S. Protestantism. This clash reflected two dueling “spirits of capitalism.”

I identify the civil religion of crude with the major (fully integrated, multinational) oil companies of the east—Standard Oil and its offshoots—and with their controlling clan, the Rockefellers. Illustrative of Max Weber’s vision of a Protestant bureaucratic outlook, the Rockefellers sought to impose order on their chaotic corporate realm (and early oil was chaotic) and to reform society and transform the globe with a postmillennialist, ecumenical, social gospel—a gospel that saw oil money as a means to uplift humanity and essentially baptize people in their liberal, internationalist worldview.

I identify the ethic of wildcat Christianity with the independent oilmen who on account of the Rockefellers’ monopoly in Pennsylvania were forced to relocate west. Enraged by the Rockefellers’ control of their industry and that family’s liberal Protestantism, the wildcatters determined to protect their individual rights to drill exploratory wells (a process called “wildcatting”) and enjoy oil’s profits on their own terms. They shored up their core principles, which were intensely evangelical: They defended the autonomy of believers and the church, as well as orthodox theological convictions espoused in the 1915 publication The Fundamentals (a project independent oilman Lyman Stewart funded to offset Rockefeller-sponsored liberalism). They emphasized the primacy of soul-winning evangelism over social restructuring, in anticipation of Christ’s impending return. Because of the surprising shift of oil production to California and Texas at the turn of the 20th century, these independents—many of whom, like Stewart, were extremely devout—were able to build their own empires, and fight the Rockefellers for control of their industry, and ultimately of the American church.

Many of the leading figures in your book were evangelical Christians. To what extent has there been a special affinity for the oil business among evangelicals?

Evangelicals certainly operate at the heart of my story. Many oil executives were outspoken evangelicals who saw their business and service to the church as one vocation. Meanwhile, countless geologists, drillers, and roughnecks worked the oil fields with strong adherence to the Bible and a conviction that Christian principles informed their labors. So yes, I’d claim that there has always been a special affinity for the oil business among evangelicals.

There are additional factors to consider, however. One of them is coincidence. Be it western Pennsylvania or eastern Texas, Alberta, or Oklahoma: historically oil has been found in regions with extant affinities for evangelical Protestantism. Oil’s arrival intensified and reshaped preexisting evangelical sensibilities in these places. Typically among the first on the scene of a new oil discovery were locals who connected (theologically, institutionally) the petroleum business to their religious prerogatives.

Theological emphases have also tied evangelicalism to oil. My book shows how oil exploration elicited a highly emotive and spiritual response. The science of petroleum geology took time to develop; as late as the 1930s, oil hunters often relied on their senses and prayer to locate their treasure. Lyman Stewart hunted oil with his nose. Unlike the pursuit of other minerals, oil nurtured a wonderment with the world that tapped into evangelical sensibilities. Moreover, while oil’s location was mysterious, its arrival was spectacular, and a trigger for religious euphoria (including gratitude to God). And oil’s dark side—frequent fires and death, accompanying immorality—was equally potent in stirring up campaigns for revival and reform. So was oil’s impending depletion. Oilfields’ production capacities are fleeting, and oil-patch residents always knew that the end of their prosperous era would come—suddenly and decisively.

So in oil country, certain varieties of evangelicalism—from gospels of health and wealth to notions of the end times—have found fertile soil.

You show that oilmen made a huge institutional imprint on the Christian landscape (mainline, evangelical, and Catholic) through financial support for organizations such as the National Council of Churches, the Pew Charitable Trusts, and the Billy Graham crusades, and for schools such as Biola, Baylor, and Notre Dame. To what extent do you think that faith also shaped the practices, or the malpractices, of the industry itself?

Faith shaped the practices and in certain situations malpractices of the industry in a number of ways. Oil historians may be surprised to hear it, but in some instances oil’s corporate structures evolved directly out of the theological commitments of its leaders. Consider two examples.

The first is Aramco, the Saudi entity that is now the most profitable corporation in the world. Through its first decades of development under the management of Standard California (Chevron), Aramco constructed an apparatus of religious oversight and exchange. Due to the sensitivities of doing work in a Muslim country, Aramco established an entire department charged with educating workers in Islam, promoting ecumenical encounter on drill sites and faith-based notions of international brotherhood in the boardroom, and overseeing an unofficial, underground network of Protestant and Catholic “moral groups” (home churches). Faith, in this context, had a direct bearing on the organizational structure of the oil company.

Then there’s the Great Canadian Oil Sands (GCOS), a corporation started in the 1950s to extract and process the Athabasca oil sands in northern Alberta. Alberta’s premier, Ernest Manning, was a devout Christian who in addition to running the province preached on radio and in pulpits around the continent. Wanting to develop the oil sands, he looked for investors and found one in J. Howard Pew, head of Sun Oil Company. Because of their shared evangelical commitments, the two formed a partnership that by the 1960s resulted in the opening of the first GCOS plant. Here too faith led to concrete corporate outcomes.

Faith led to some instances of malpractice as well. Speculative impatience plagued the business, and some of this affected the church. In Lyman Stewart’s day, there was no shortage of oil companies that counted on investment from church folks. Stewart built his company with funds from those with whom he worshiped. Stewart made good on his promises, but countless other speculators and startup companies failed, leaving entire congregations broke. And throughout oil’s history there’s been a get-rich-quick tendency, as well as a concern only for short-term economic gain, not long-term human, communal, and environmental consequences. On occasion those tendencies have stemmed from the urgencies of Christian oilmen, churches, and church folk to obtain black gold quickly in order to fund ministries and missionaries, and to spread the gospel.

Christians have played a major role in other American industries, maybe most obviously the retail sector (Chick-Fil-A, Hobby Lobby, Walmart). Have Christians played an unusually prominent role in the oil industry, or is yours a replicable history because devout Christians are present in a lot of top businesses?

I’d suggest that Christians have played an unusually prominent role in the oil industry. Certainly it is fair to see my book as one chapter in a larger story of how faithful Christians have profoundly shaped American industries across the board. Yet I think the oil industry has been particularly receptive to Christians and Christian values. Oil has always been seen as a business in which the combination of entrepreneurialism and certainty of belief can produce quick and spectacular outcomes. My book charts this dynamic across generations, and the efforts of evangelical entrepreneurs—including evangelists such as Charles Fuller—to form oil companies in order to garner funds rapidly for service to the church. Put another way, unlike other economic sectors where a good degree of overhead and patience are required, petroleum has always nurtured and celebrated the myth that with a little luck and a lot of prayer, anyone can make it big. On more than one occasion that has proved to be true, lending it legitimacy.

The sheer scale of the petroleum industry has helped generate special interest among Christians as well, particularly when we look to the world stage. Beginning in the 19th century, the oil industry was always a global venture, with American geologists and oilmen taking the lead in exploration and production abroad. Countless numbers of them seamlessly linked their faith and professional labor; to open new territories up to oil was, in their minds, a step toward the spiritual uplift of humanity. Be it in the Middle East or South America, missionaries always played key roles in this process (as guides and liaisons, for instance), further embedding Christians at the heart of the oil business. Finally, there is a prophetic element involved. For many evangelical oilmen, the work they conducted (and are continuing to conduct) in the Middle East—Israel in particular—has been an outgrowth of their end-times beliefs and commitment to the Holy Land. As far as I can tell, no other corporate sector generates that form or intensity of Christian conviction.

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His “sudden conversion” took place in 1532 or 1533, and not long afterward, in 1534, he wrote a Latin preface to Pierre Robert Olivétan’s French translation of the New Testament.

(Olivétan, a Waldensian by faith, was a cousin of Calvin’s and also grew up in Noyon. He was the first to translate the Bible intro French directly from the Hebrew and Greek.)

Calvin’s work below is a beautiful testimony to the gospel that captured his heart and mind.

Without the gospel

everything is useless and vain;

without the gospel

we are not Christians;

without the gospel

all riches is poverty,

all wisdom folly before God;

strength is weakness, and

all the justice of man is under the condemnation of God.

But by the knowledge of the gospel we are made

children of God,

brothers of Jesus Christ,

fellow townsmen with the saints,

citizens of the kingdom of Heaven,

heirs of God with Jesus Christ,

by whom

the poor are made rich,

the weak strong,

the fools wise,

the sinner justified,

the desolate comforted,

the doubting sure, and

slaves free.

It is the power of God for the salvation of all those who believe.

It follows that every good thing we could think or desire is to be found in this same Jesus Christ alone.

For, he was

sold, to buy us back;

captive, to deliver us;

condemned, to absolve us;

he was

made a curse for our blessing,

sin offering for our righteousness;

marred that we may be made fair;

he died for our life; so that by him

fury is made gentle,

wrath appeased,

darkness turned into light,

fear reassured,

despisal despised,

debt canceled,

labor lightened,

sadness made merry,

misfortune made fortunate,

difficulty easy,

disorder ordered,

division united,

ignominy ennobled,

rebellion subjected,

intimidation intimidated,

ambush uncovered,

assaults assailed,

force forced back,

combat combated,

war warred against,

vengeance avenged,

torment tormented,

damnation damned,

the abyss sunk into the abyss,

hell transfixed,

death dead,

mortality made immortal.

In short,

mercy has swallowed up all misery, and

goodness all misfortune.

For all these things which were to be the weapons of the Devil in his battle against us, and the sting of death to pierce us, are turned for us into exercises which we can turn to our profit.

If we are able to boast with the apostle, saying, O hell, where is thy victory? O death, where is thy sting? it is because by the Spirit of Christ promised to the elect, we live no longer, but Christ lives in us; and we are by the same Spirit seated among those who are in heaven, so that for us the world is no more, even while our conversation is in it; but we are content in all things, whether country, place, condition, clothing, meat, and all such things.

And we are

comforted in tribulation,

joyful in sorrow,

glorying under vituperation,

abounding in poverty,

warmed in our nakedness,

patient amongst evils,

living in death.

This is what we should in short seek in the whole of Scripture: truly to know Jesus Christ, and the infinite riches that are comprised in him and are offered to us by him from God the Father.

The claim is, on a literal basis, easy to refute. In fact, there were no seminaries in America, in a modern sense of a graduate school of theology, until 1807, when Andover-Newton Theological School was founded. (ANTS was originally a traditionalist Calvinist school founded in opposition to Harvard’s theological liberalism. In 2016, having long since become theologically liberal, the ANTS campus was closed, and the school was folded into Yale Divinity School.) Princeton Theological Seminary, arguably the most influential American seminary of the 19th century, was founded as a separate institution from Princeton’s undergraduate college in 1812.

If you wanted “graduate” theological education in the 1700s in America, you could stay on for extra study with someone like Princeton’s John Witherspoon, which is what James Madison did (he may have been considering the pastorate at the time). But Witherspoon is really the only signer who had a recognizable seminary education, since he did graduate study in theology at the University of Edinburgh in Scotland prior to coming to America.

The idea of Founders going to a “Bible college” is a more slippery concept, but it is also easy to refute on a simple factual basis. “Bible colleges” began to appear in the late 19th century, as part of the early fundamentalist-modernist controversy. Nyack College (originally called the Missionary Training Institute) was arguably the first such college, founded by A. B. Simpson in 1882 in New York City, before relocating to the New York village of Nyack in 1897. The most recognizable Bible college in America was probably Chicago’s Moody Bible Institute, founded in 1887.

So in the modern sense of the term, no Founding Father went to a Bible college, either. It is hard to know whether Christian America polemicists are intentionally misleading their readers about these claims, or whether they simply don’t understand or care that they’re being anachronistic. These types of overinflated assertions obscure the profound, if quieter, role that Christianity and Christian education did actually play among the Founders.

Some of the leading Founders, such as Franklin and Washington, did not go to college, but virtually all of them had a level of Bible literacy that far surpasses that of the average American today. As I show in my recent Yale Press biography of Ben Franklin, the self-described “Deist” Franklin grew up in a Boston Puritan family, and from a young age knew the whole text of Scripture quite intimately and could quote it at will. Even a skeptic like Thomas Jefferson was virtually obsessed with the Bible, which accounts for his two compilations of the Gospels, which we call the “Jefferson Bible.” Jefferson avidly read the Bible and even the Septuagint in Greek, but his multiple-language editions of the Gospels removed most of the miracles, including the resurrection.

New York founder John Jay not only became chief justice of the Supreme Court, but also a president of the American Bible Society. Those founders who did go to college received a classical and Christian education, as most of the original colonial colleges (Harvard, Yale, William and Mary, Princeton, and so on) were designed in part to train pastors (which accounts for some of the confusion about colonial-era “seminaries”). To cite just one example of the purposes of the colonial colleges, early students at Yale were to “consider the main end” of their schooling “to know God in Jesus Christ and answerably to lead a godly sober life.”

Advocates of a Christian influence in America’s founding have plenty of evidence to work with, but too often that evidence has been stretched beyond reasonable historical limits. Claims like those about the founders going to seminary (except for Witherspoon) unfortunately hand the advantage to secularist ideologues, who routinely mock the Christian America writers as “Liars for Jesus.”

UPDATE: Here’s Christian America writer David Barton repeating the claims about Founders attending seminary or Bible college on Ben Shapiro’s program.

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I was reminded of this fact while reading Chris Arnade’s remarkable new book, Dignity: Seeking Respect in Back Row America. I highly recommend this book, especially to pastors. In it, Arnade meets and interviews dozens of people in the most impoverished and drug-ridden parts of America. Arnade is admittedly not a believer, and he has his own demons of addiction. But he stumbles into a highly Augustinian analysis of life in “back row America,” of people who are broken by sin, but who maintain the dignity of the imago Dei. Flickers of life, hope, and community spring up in the most marginalized and neglected corners of American society. It is the most sympathetic treatment of poor, broken Americans that I can recall ever reading.

In one of the chapters, Arnade examines the role that faith plays in these communities. He finds that churches—usually small and under-resourced—are everywhere in back row America. He senses that these churches thrive because they are honest and welcoming. They give a voice to the voiceless. They give community in places where just about the only other source of community is the local McDonald’s.

At the same time I was reading Dignity, I read Tim Carney’s excellent Alienated America. Carney covers much the same territory as Arnade, but from more of a sociological vantage point. The books seemingly contradict one another on the role of faith among the American poor. For Carney, the collapse of American communities (places that were the core of Donald Trump’s primary success in 2016) has everything to do with the collapse of churches. Carney also points out the fact, well-established in scholarly literature, that poor and uneducated Americans are much less likely than the affluent and educated to go to church. Attending church is often part of the matrix of social success, stable families, and steady income that marks upper-middle-class America.

How do we reconcile these two accounts, one of the impoverished being religious, and the other of a post-Christian, secular impoverished class? The answer has to do with widespread confusion regarding spirituality and religion in America.

In spite of media fascination with atheism and the rise of the “nones,” there is little evidence to suggest that many more Americans have become atheists or fundamentally irreligious in recent decades. The number of atheists has held steady at about 3 percent to 4 percent of Americans since World War II. Sometimes you will see journalists equate the “nones” with “atheists,” but doing so is wildly inaccurate.

It is more accurate to say that growing numbers of Americans, whatever their personal beliefs about God, have stopped attending church. Some infrequent attenders have become never-attenders, and there is less social stigma, even in the Bible Belt, associated with not attending church. Poor people are over-represented among the people whose parents might have attended church, but they don’t.

Arnade’s account of back row America is almost entirely anecdotal. As powerful as it is, we don’t get to see any national statistics in his story, as we do in Carney. Matching the two up, we see that spiritual beliefs remain almost ubiquitous among the poorest Americans, but those beliefs often are typically not matched with regular church attendance. For those who do regularly attend church, it often leads to better community, family support, and (where relevant) victory over addiction. Believers would also suggest that church attendance correlates with the work of God in one’s life, which has good results in both the temporal and eternal senses.

There is also evidence to suggest (in work done by my Baylor colleague Gordon Melton) that demographers routinely under-report the congregations that cater to poor Americans and people of color. This is because they are likely to meet in storefronts or houses, to be independent churches, and to be part of immigrant denominations or other associations that are not on church statisticians’ radar screens. Thus, it is likely that Arnade’s churches are not showing up in standard surveys of American church life, either. Maybe the poor in America are not quite as unchurched as Carney’s statistics might suggest.

In any case, there seems no doubt that being “spiritual” but not religious does not serve the poor well. It doesn’t do much good, especially in a temporal sense, to just believe in God and to sometimes read your Bible, while neglecting church and its spiritual and community resources. As sociologist W. Bradford Wilcox and his colleagues reported in the wonderfully titled “No Money, No Honey, No Church,” “religious attendance among moderately educated whites has declined relative to attendance among college-educated whites. Economic characteristics, current and past family characteristics, and attitudes toward premarital sex each explain part of this decline.”

What believers long for is to see people who have experienced the saving power of Christ, who reflect that experience by deep commitment to the church. How do we reach that goal, especially among people in our city who have become disaffected from church? Arnade and Carney have little to say on this subject, but Arnade in particular suggests at least some reasons why the churchgoing poor do attend church. They have a personal connection to the church, they see it as welcoming and accessible, and they often participate in the life of the church. They’re not just observers.

Most churches in America are in close proximity to “back row” neighborhoods. My church may not be typical, but we’re in a situation where people come from all over the county to attend, but our zip code includes some of the poorest neighborhoods in Waco. Reaching the post-Christian poor in our cities is clearly one of the great challenges of our time. Here are a few thoughts on how to do this:

1. Evangelism and invitations. If it is true that the post-Christian poor are “spiritual but not religious,” then all it may take for some of your neighbors (of any demographic) to attend church is an invitation. If it’s coming from a friend or family member, so much the better. Leaders can profile specific stories of people who got saved and/or came back to church because a church member shared the gospel with them and/or invited them to church.
2. Intersections at areas of need. You do not want to fall into the “seeker-sensitive” mistake of changing the church’s message. Indeed, lots of the disaffected would just want rigorous, biblical honesty from the church, not three tips on keeping your finances in order. But in a post-Christian culture, many people simply are not going to come to a worship service. They might enter the church, however, if it has compelling programming for their kids, ESL classes, or other needed services.
3. Projecting an accessible, “real” environment. If no one up front looks like the people you’re trying to reach, good luck! Find ways to platform testimonies of people who have come out of broken families, drug addiction, and other struggling situations. One simple way to do this is to share (anonymous, when appropriate) prayer requests in your services from people in the congregation dealing with divorce, addiction, and other problems that are rampant in our cities.

Ultimately, we don’t want to reach the folks in Arnade’s book so that the spiritual will become religious, or so the dysfunctional become functional. We want all in our city to experience the transforming power of God’s grace, which will deliver them into the loving community of the church.

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1. Nathan Finn, History: A Student’s Guide, in the Reclaiming the Christian Intellectual Tradition Series, edited by David Dockery (Crossway, 2016), and
2. Robert Tracy McKenzie, A Little Book for New Historians: Why and How to Study History, in IVP’s Little Books series (IVP, 2019).

Robert Tracy McKenzie (PhD, Vanderbilt University) is Arthur F. Holmes chair of faith and learning and professor and chair of the department of history at Wheaton College. He is the author of books including One South or Many?, Lincolnites and Rebels, and The First Thanksgiving: What the Real Story Tells Us About Loving God and Learning from History.

Nathan Finn (PhD, Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary) is provost and dean of the university faculty at North Greenville University. He is the co-author of The Baptist Story: From English Sect to Global Movement and co-editor of A Reader’s Guide to the Major Writings of Jonathan Edwards.

Thomas Kidd writes of Finn’s book:

I do not know of a better introduction to historical studies, or a more cogent assessment of how Christians should think about history.

Mark Noll writes about McKenzie’s volume:

This book makes an outstanding contribution―for students of history, readers of history, history classes in college or high school, and discussions of history in church groups. It explains clearly what historians do, how historical study can promote the right kind of intellectual discipline, and why history means so much for Christian faith. The book is as powerfully effective as it is accessibly succinct.

So I wanted to ask both of them the same six questions to see how they’d respond.

1. What is history?

McKenzie:

I typically use the word in two senses.

First, history is “the remembered past,” a succinct definition that I borrow from the late Christian historian John Lukacs.

The crucial point to understand is that history is not equivalent to the past itself—the near infinite totality that encompasses everything that human beings have ever said, done, or thought. Almost all of the past is irrevocably lost to us. God in his omniscience knows its every detail perfectly and exhaustively, but we humans deal with a tiny subset of the whole, a fraction that has been imperfectly preserved in physical artifacts and oral traditions. The difference between the past and history, so defined, is enormous.

Second, we can speak of history to denote an academic discipline, a specific way of training our minds to analyze historical evidence and build historical interpretations to the end that we maximize our abilities to make sense of the past.

Defined in this way, the goal of historical study is less the mastery of discrete facts about the past than the development of mental habits that equip us to engage the remembered past wisely.

Finn:

To the proverbial man on the street, history is more or less synonymous with the past. I suspect we all use the word that way sometimes.

But as a historian, I argue that history is the discipline of reconstructing and interpreting the past. We weren’t there for the vast majority of the past (we aren’t eternal), and we don’t know all the details (we aren’t omniscient), so the past has to be both reconstructed based on the best sources available, and also interpreted based on the most reasonable assessment of those sources.

2. Why should Christians in particular care about and study history?

McKenzie:

I devote a whole chapter of the Little Book to this question. It’s a question I care deeply about, as I’ve long been distressed by the essential “historylessness” of most Christians in the United states. Most Americans live “stranded in the present,” I should stress, by which I mean that we largely disregard all but our own personal histories. American Christians are hardly unique, then, but we have far less excuse for our present-mindedness than the unbelievers around us.

Here are five reasons (from a much longer list) why Christians, of all people, should have a deep and abiding interest in history:

First, God created us to be historical beings. This side of heaven, an essential attribute of our humanity is that we live in time. We cannot survive without constantly drawing on our memories of the past to make sense of the present and plan for the future. When we learn how to do that more systematically and effectively, when we begin to draw from more than our own narrow experiences, when we work to develop what I would call historical consciousness, we’re not practicing some arcane intellectual pursuit. We’re leaning in to one of the inescapable dimensions of what it means to be human.

Second, recall that history is absolutely foundational to Christianity. The pillars of our faith—creation, fall, incarnation, crucifixion, resurrection—are real-time past occurrences that we believe are fraught with theological significance. Call to mind the verbs in the Apostles’ Creed. Christ was conceived by the Holy Ghost, born of the virgin Mary, crucified under Pontius Pilate, and so on. As historian Margaret Bendroth puts it, the past tense is “essential to our language of faith.” Indeed, the historical dimension of Christianity is so integral to the faith that one of the premier historians of the 20th century, a secular French scholar named Marc Bloch, concluded that “Christianity is a religion of historians.”

Third, as Christians, we are members of a community of faith that binds living and dead, present and past. This is what the Apostles’ Creed refers to as “the communion of saints.” We evangelicals have so imbibed the individualism of American culture that we rarely think of the church as an institution that vastly transcends our own historical moment. We may occasionally imagine the day when every tribe and nation will gather around God’s throne, but we almost never remember that the church in eternity will not only bridge the divides of race and class and ethnicity but also what Chesterton called the “abyss of ages.”

Fourth, our faith informs us that the entire unfolding human story is worthy of attention. God is the author of that story, of course—it unfolds according to his decree—and its characters bear his image. He also ennobled it immeasurably by entering the story, identifying with its characters, and walking the earth as one of them.

Fifth, historical understanding plays a vital role in faithful Christian discipleship. Scripture commands us to not be conformed to the world. But when we cut ourselves off from the past, we can be shaped by our contemporary contexts without even realizing it, since the fads of the moment can look like timeless truths. We also deny ourselves the perspective and insights of those who have gone before us. Studied with humility, history allows us to glean wisdom from our ancestors. It broadens our perspective and expands the range of experiences that we can draw on as we face the future.

Finn:

Christianity is a historical faith in a way that isn’t true of every religion. Christianity is grounded in biblical events that Christians believe were real historical occurrences. The truthfulness of Christianity depends upon the historical validity of the events recorded in the Bible.

Also, Christians believe that God is sovereign over all things—past, present, and future. The more we understand the past (even the mundane past), the better we are able to discern how God has been at work and might be at work today, for his glory and our good.

3. I’d love to hear your brief responses to the following well-known quotes and aphorisms on history:

Henry Ford: “History is bunk.”

McKenzie:

It’s bunk.

Ford was neither the first nor the last fabulously wealthy entrepreneur who thought that business success is a barometer of wisdom. I’ve found that most individuals who truly believe this about history don’t know much history.

Finn:

Who is Henry Ford?

Okay, seriously, when I hear this quote (or other similar sentiments) I’m always worried about the possibility of presentism: an unhealthy overemphasis on the present to the exclusion of the past. Appreciation for the past helps prevent the present (or future) from becoming an idol.

George Santayana: “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”

McKenzie:

Not bunk, just misunderstood.

Santayana was a well-respected philosopher in the early-20th century who wrote more than a dozen heavy tomes but for some reason is widely remembered for a single sentence that we take out of context and twist to mean something that Santayana never intended. In context, Santayana was making an elementary observation about how we learn: We learn incrementally, and if we were to forget everything that we know every night when we go to bed, we would begin each day as new-born babies, essentially starting over again with a blank slate. In that sense, we would be perpetually repeating the past. Who would disagree?

Wrenched from its context, however, somewhere along the way we’ve interpreted Santayana to mean that the human story is essentially cyclical—an endless repetition of cause and effect—so that if we just pay attention to the past, we will know what to do and what not to do in order to accomplish our goals. The quote is a favorite of politicians and pundits who want to sound profound, but I don’t know a single academic historian who believes it. Human behavior is far too complex to be reduced to such mechanistic formulae. We study the past to see the present more clearly. Ideally, this helps us not to predict the future but to meet it more wisely.

Finn:

I have mixed feelings about this one.

It drives me bananas when people repeat it as if it is some foolproof philosophical principle woven into the fabric of the universe.

At the same time, like many aphorisms it resonates with us because it often rings true. As a general rule, the better we understand the past, the better we can navigate the present and anticipate the future.

4. If Christians should believe in the providence of God, what role, if any, should this belief play in the interpretation of history? Does it require a compartmentalizing of our beliefs? Should we operate in different ways according to different venues (public vs. private) and audiences (Christian vs. non-Christian)?

McKenzie:

These are huge questions that are hard to answer succinctly, so I encourage readers interested in this question to read my fuller discussion in the Little Book. I’d also refer them to a little-read gem by C. S. Lewis, his essay “Historicism,” which offers some wonderful metaphors for thinking through these complicated questions.

That said, let me begin by avowing my unequivocal belief in God’s exhaustive providence over human affairs. I believe that the Lord is working “all things according to the counsel of his will.” But precisely because I believe this, I don’t find God’s providence helpful in explaining specific historical occurrences. As Christian scholar Jonathan Boyd once observed, to the degree that we believe in God’s exhaustive providence, divine providence becomes “a lousy category of analysis.” Applied consistently, it reduces every historical explanation to three words: “God willed it.” As a Christian historian, I believe that, to the degree that I am trying to explain some particular occurrence in the past, my job is to explore secondary causes, that is, the means that God employs in effecting the outcomes he desires. And when I do this, my tentative explanations won’t look much different from those of non-Christian historians, and there is little reason for me to alter my observations between Christian and non-Christian audiences.

My sense, however, is that Christians interested in providential explanations of historical occurrences are rarely satisfied with acknowledging that God willed a particular outcome. The far more interesting, far more important question to them, is “Why?” Did God bring the colonists victory in the American Revolution because he had a special plan for the infant nation as his “new Israel”? Did he cause Union armies to triumph in the Civil War as a way of chastising the Confederate states for the sin of slavery? These are questions that I would hesitate to bring up before a non-Christian audience, because there is absolutely no evidence that I could produce that my audience would find convincing, and that makes the possibility of constructive discussion nil.

But here’s an even more important point: I would never presume to offer dogmatic answers to such questions when addressing a Christian audience, either. Except where God has clearly proclaimed his purposes via special revelation, it is presumptuous for the Christian scholar to declare them on the basis of normal historical research. No historical evidence in and of itself can answer such questions. I think it is acceptable to speculate on what may have been God’s purpose behind a particular historical occurrence, and I might occasionally do that with a Christian audience. But I would absolutely take to heart N. T. Wright’s observation that “the necessary reticence of faith” requires us to employ the word perhaps in such instances. To speak dogmatically about God’s purposes behind a particular historical occurrence not discussed in inspired Scripture is to speak as a prophet, not as a historian.

Finn:

I appreciate you playing nicely for three questions before throwing me to the wolves!

I wrote an entire chapter on this topic in my book History: A Student’s Guide, and most readers tell me it is the chapter that made them think the most. I do believe that providence should affect how we interpret history insofar that, as a Christian, I do believe that God is always at work to bring about his ultimate purposes.

However, because I am not omniscient, I am not capable of discerning all the details of how God is working. In fact, I hesitate to do any more than make some general observations, since we do not have an inspired and authoritative interpretation of post-biblical history like we do with biblical history.

I don’t see this caution as compartmentalizing my beliefs—far from it. In fact, it is my beliefs about providence, God’s incommunicable attributes, and the Scriptures that cause me to be hesitant to attach a “thus doeth the Lord” to specific historical phenomena.

As for operating differently in different venues, I do believe that the audience helps determine how we interpret history. But I do not think this should be done in a deceitful way. In my book, I use the analogy of being bilingual. If you are bilingual, you really do know two different languages, and you know which context requires each of them. As a historian of Christianity, I speak and write for audiences that are secular/academic, confessional/academic, and churchly/popular.

When writing for the former, I stick to interpretations based on sources found in God’s general revelation.

When writing for the latter, I am willing to offer some tentative additional interpretation (and application) based upon my understanding of God’s special revelation in Scripture.

For the middle category, I’m willing to offer a synthesis.

Borrowing language from missiology, I see this as academic contextualization. And as long as my interpretations are complementary rather than contradictory, I see that as serving each of those audiences in a way that makes sense to their particular contexts.

5. What roles do love, discernment, and humility play in the historian’s approach to history?

McKenzie:

It all starts with love. I take to heart Christian historian Beth Schweiger’s reminder that, “In history, the call to love one’s neighbor is extended to the dead.” Behind the historical documents that we analyze were human beings created in God’s image, and we must resist the temptation to use them—to manipulate them to further our preset agendas—and purpose to love them instead, to listen carefully to them and allow them to challenge and even to change us.

But love without discernment can lead us astray. Although it sounds counter-intuitive, we also need to bring a measure of skepticism to our reading of historical evidence. To love someone does not require that we accept uncritically everything that they say. (If you’re a parent, you’ll understand immediately what I mean.) While I have an obligation to love the figures from the past who I encounter in my research, I also have an obligation to provide my readers with the truest interpretation of the past that I can. This requires that I do everything I can to determine the trustworthiness or reliability of the voices from the past that I am listening to. Love constrains me to function as a host showing hospitality to the dead, inviting them into conversation. But my obligation to pursue truth requires that I function more like a juror, doing my best to determine the credibility of each witness.

Humility is equally essential to faithful historical thinking. I think it’s imperative to keep constantly in mind the vast difference between history and the past, between our limited knowledge of all that has transpired before us and God’s exhaustive command of even the minutest details. I’ve come to the conclusion that, whatever the branch of knowledge, when we approach it Christianly, a greater humility should be one of the first fruits. But this humility not only disciplines our hearts; it actually helps us to understand historical figures more accurately. Because we are mindful of how easy it is for us to misunderstand them, we are less likely to jump to quick conclusions, more willing to lavish the time and labor necessary to appreciate the complexity of their values and views.

Finn:

I’m thankful for this question, because I think these virtues are more at the heart of a “Christian” approach to history than overly providentialist efforts that make pronouncements about how God was or was not at work.

First, I think we have to show neighbor-love in particular toward historical subjects. This is important because we might not have much affection for them, but still should show empathy toward them and interpret them in a way they would at least recognize, even if they disagree. For example, I once wrote a journal article on a famous universalist. I don’t have much affection for him, since I think he theology is dangerous, but I tried to be empathetic and write about him in such a respectful way.

Second, I think we need to exercise discernment toward which sources are most illuminating and which are less so. For example, there is a debate among scholars of Jonathan Edwards as to whether we should interpret his thought more by his published or unpublished works. This takes discernment, since all are his works and reflect his thoughts about various topics at various stages. (For the record, I think the published trumps the unpublished, since he tended to flesh out ideas in unpublished venues before distilling them in public sermons or published writings.)

Finally, I think we need to exercise humility in remembering that even our best interpretations are provisional, incomplete, and subject to revision. This is why all history is revisionist history. It may be more or less faithful or unfaithful—but it’s always revisionist. History isn’t fiction, so there is no place for would-be omniscient narrators.

6. What is the most common mistake your students make about history that you are eager to correct? Or asked another way, how do you want your students to think differently about history having studied the subject with you?

McKenzie:

My answer, I hope, is already partially apparent from the above. Far too many of my students arrive from high school thinking of history as the boring memorization of innumerable discrete facts.

I try to obliterate that view from the start. Individual facts taken out of context are worse than meaningless. Sound historical thinking is never about mastery of detail. It is about trying to make sense of the past in the face of enormous limitations of evidence and the unavoidable personal limitations of the historian. It requires our best powers of analysis and imagination, and in the best case, it changes not only what we know, but also how we think and even who we are.

And as a Christian historian, I would go even further: When we approach the study of the past with humility and awe, recognizing the past as a sphere that God has ordained and prompted by biblical dictates and principles, the study of history can even become both an act of obedience and an expression of worship.

Finn:

Two mistakes have been perennial among my students, most of whom have been studying for the ministry and taking courses related to the history of Christianity.

First, some of them believe that “good” history is objective and “bad” history is revisionist.

Historians almost universally agree there is no such thing as objective history, and as I stated above, all historical interpretation is revisionist. I try to redirect their thinking by urging neighbor-love and empathy in historical interpretation, and making a distinction between revisionism that results from new or fresh engagement with sources versus revisionism that is driven by some presentist agenda.

The second mistake is the simplistic assumption that ideas trump actions, and the latter always flows from the former.

Since my students are mostly theological students, they really want to believe that theology (broadly defined) necessarily drives what historical subjects do. After all, as Richard Weaver notes, ideas have consequences.

And yet, we must remember that both sin and ignorance are realities as well, meaning that nobody except Jesus of Nazareth always acts in a way consistent with his beliefs. Theology matters.

But there is often a disconnect between theology and practice—and that has always been the case. And this means sometimes “good” theologians did terrible things, while “bad” theologians were models of outward personal piety. History is complicated, because people are complicated.

Of course, there is broad agreement among Americans that there are certain figures we should not honor (Hitler, Stalin) and fairly broad agreement on some we should (Abraham Lincoln, Harriet Tubman). The trouble comes when elite historical opinion turns against figures who have been revered in the past by many Americans (Christopher Columbus, Thomas Jefferson). Then the purification crusade begins, eliciting a predictable backlash by conservative-leaning folks who want to preserve the honored memory of those we previously revered.

Christians have their own versions of these conflicts. For TGC readers, the most obvious dilemmas come with regard to Christian historical heroes who also were complicit in some historical sin (George Whitefield and slavery, Martin Luther and anti-Semitism, and so on). Can we still revere these figures, who were so obviously used by God, when they also engaged in conspicuous sins?

Christians tend to go to one of two extremes on such questions. One extreme is to say that if a figure engaged in sins that we regard as egregious today, they are no longer of any use to us and should not be revered. The other extreme (again showing up as a backlash) is to say “stop harping” so much on the alleged sins of people in the past, because doing so somehow denigrates or denies what God did through them.

I am aware that mediating positions on difficult subjects are not popular in our social media environment, but I would recommend one anyway. We should be candid and forthright about the failings of people in the past, but we should not flatter ourselves by assuming we would have done better in their situation.

The “stop harping” crowd would seemingly prefer we not be candid and forthright, or perhaps that we can mention it but move on because the sin in question was either not that big of a deal, or the recitation of it devalues the historical event the person was associated with (the Reformation, the Great Awakening, or whatever). But Christians should not treat their historical heroes differently than they would any other figures in the past. We have all seen “special pleading” by interest groups on behalf of their heroes; Christians should not emulate the impulse to excuse or obscure the sins of our preferred champions.

But the “they are no longer of any use” crowd is engaging in a species of what historians call presentism. Presentism is a tendency to assess historical figures based on the norms and habits of today. As Christians, we believe that moral law remains fixed throughout time. Chattel slavery was always immoral, from beginning to end, and it was always wrong for anyone to promote or benefit from any facet of it.

The trouble comes when we imply we are better than the past figure in question because we see that their actions were immoral. We imply that we would have done better than they did, because we are morally enlightened people. This attitude is also a facet of presentism, and it is historically arrogant.

I tell my students in my American history introductory course that they must realize a sobering fact: If they had been born into a white slaveholding family in the South in the Revolutionary period, they would have almost certainly died believing that slavery was morally permissible, if not a positive good. We are no better at thinking outside of our cultural, moral “box” than anyone in the past. We can’t see the culturally permissible sins we surely commit today. But, if the Lord tarries, you can bet that people 200 years from now will gawk at us and wonder, “How could they have thought that [x] was ok?”

So yes, by all means let us be honest about the sins and errors of people in the past, perhaps especially those we admire. But that honesty should not lead us to arrogance or self-satisfaction. It should not become a means of signaling our virtue on social media. Instead, the recognition that our heroes were also sinners should lead to historical humility and vigilance, knowing that any of us can be sucked into sin that our culture overlooks or blesses.

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See also my article “When Our Heroes Don’t Live Up to Their Theology“