God and Country in the Iowa Caucuses

Randall Stephens

So the close vote in the Iowa Caucus was unprecedented. See Darren Grem's early morning summary here. (He was probably up before I was here in Oslo!)

I found a couple of the candidates' quotes interesting for the purposes of this blog. What does it mean when GOP frontrunners speak of taking back America and comment on America's godly heritage? Would that rhetoric have meaning if Mitt Romney or, perhaps in an alternate universe, Rick Santorum were president? Put another way . . . would these comments have practical applications?

Mitt Romney on Tues, Jan 3:

I think President Obama wants to make us a European style welfare state, where instead of being a merit society, we're an entitlement society, where government's role is to take from some and give to others. What I know is if they do that, they'll substitute envy for ambition, and they'll poison the very spirit of America and keep us from being one nation under God.*

Rick Santorum on Tues, Jan 3:

God has given us this great country to allow his people to be free. I offer a public thanks to God. . . . You have taken the first step toward taking back this country.*

An Interview with Owen Stanwood on The Empire Reformed: English America in the Age of the Glorious Revolution

Randall Stephens

Owen Stanwood is an assistant professor of history at Boston College and a scholar of early America and the British Atlantic world. He has published in the Journal of British Studies, the Proceedings of the American Antiquarian Society, the Virginia Magazine of History and Biography, French Colonial History. His wonderfully readable first book, The Empire Reformed: English America in the Age of the Glorious Revolution (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2011) looks at "how fears of Catholicism galvanized and transformed Anglo-American political culture during the last decades of the seventeenth century."*

In the interview below I ask Stanwood about his research and writing on antipopery, the intersection of politics and religion in the 17th and 18th centuries, the workings of empire, and the state of the field.

Randall Stephens: You write about the significance of English antipopery in the 17th century. What impact did antipopery have on the political and social order of the age?

Owen Stanwood: Early modern antipopery was above all a language, a form of discourse. Protestants considered "popery" to be a binary opposition to their own, true religion, and thus used conversations about the nature of popery to define the contours and boundaries of their own faith. In the English context, this had both theological and political effects. In the church, different kinds of English Protestants, whether high church Episcopalians or Puritans, critiqued the other side by pointing out their similarities to Catholicism. These same debates often carried over into politics, since many people believed that the theology of popery usually coincided with tyranny and absolutism. So on a number of occasions, most notably the English Revolutions of the 1640s and 1680s, people justified overthrowing their kings by claiming that the monarchs intended to overthrow the true Protestant church. These charges, of course, were usually false, but they had great rhetorical power.

Stephens: Fears of Indian and Catholic plots in the late 17th century, you observe, fueled colonial anxieties. Did New England colonists see those as combined forces?

Stanwood: For most of the 17th century, they did not. Even as late as King Philip's War in the 1670s, most New Englanders saw Indians and Catholics as distinct threats. From the 1670s through the 1690s, an important transition took place. American colonists gradually began to conflate these dangers; they started to believe that Indians were not independent actors, but simply shock troops used by French papists to carry out their bloody schemes. This was important for a number of reasons. For one thing, it represented a molding of the European anti-Catholic tradition to fit conditions in America. And it ended up changing the way colonists perceived Indians. If they had earlier been targets for conversion, and possible allies against Catholic enemies, now they appeared to many English as unconvertible enemies debauched by Catholic superstition. In my mind, this led to new, even more poisoned relations between whites and Indians in the 18th century—and provided a key context for the political transformation that lies at the heart of my book.

Stephens: Could you say something about how militant Protestantism shaped the founding of the American colonies?

Stanwood: Militant Protestantism affected the colonies from the very beginning. First off, English overseas endeavors had a Protestant purpose from the early days of colonization, in that the English, along with the Dutch and French Protestants, wanted to provide a Calvinist counterweight to the Spanish and Portuguese, who dominated the New World. In time the English state stepped back from these religious motivations, but during the seventeenth century the American colonies became favorite refuges for any number of English and European radicals. The Puritans and Quakers are the most well known of these groups, but by the 1680s the colonies from New England to the Caribbean abounded with all kinds of Protestant rebels, from Scottish Covenanters to English Baptists to French Huguenots. Many of these people fled what they considered Antichristian tyranny in Europe, and made it their imperative to keep America Protestant. This is important to remember when we try to understand how imperial politics developed.

Stephens: You write that the “story of the making of empire must necessarily be both intensely local and transatlantic in scope.” How did the aims of London officials and the goals of New World colonists come into conflict? From your reading of the sources, how did empire “work” in the late 17th century?

Stanwood: During the 1670s and 80s officials and colonists feuded for a number of reasons. Essentially, the crown wanted to create a more streamlined, centralized empire to replace the hodgepodge of local arrangements that characterized the 17th-century empire. This reform stepped on a lot of toes, as many of those who had the most power in the colonies found themselves out of favor. It only became a popular movement, however, when ordinary people began to see imperial reform as something that threatened them. Many people started to see imperial reform as part of a massive Catholic plot—mainly because the main proponent of these reforms, King James II, was Catholic, and because people associated centralized power with the pope and Catholic rulers like France's Louis XIV. As people became more frightened and distrustful of their leaders, the empire hardly worked at all; in fact, it was laughably dysfunctional. What all of this suggests is the importance of political rhetoric in running an empire. During the 1680s, rulers were not speaking the same language as the people, and this doomed the first plans for imperial reform.

Stephens: Would you say something about how political unrest in London reverberated across the Atlantic?

Stanwood: The political unrest that most concerns me is the "Glorious Revolution" of 1688-89, when James II lost his kingdom to a popular rebellion led by the king's daughter Mary and her Dutch husband William of Orange. The effects of this revolution in the colonies were manifold. Many of James II's colonial governors were hard at work reforming the empire, and once colonists heard that the king had fled England for France, they believed that their leaders intended to betray them to the enemy. A series of outrageous rumors circulated from Barbados to Boston, telling of a coordinated design by the French, Indians, Irish servants, and James II's cronies to replace the English system with "popery and tyranny." False though they were, these rumors led to popular rebellions in three colonies, and also provided a language—that of paranoid antipopery—that future imperial leaders could use to keep the empire together.

Stephens: How do you think historians’ understanding of the religio-political milieu of early America has changed in the last 30 years?

Stanwood: There have been two very important transformations, both of which have influenced my research. First, historians of early American religion, like early Americanists generally, have moved away from a national narrative and turned toward a transatlantic one. They now understand that phenomena like Puritanism or early evangelicalism cannot be understood as purely American, but as global movements. In a linked development, historians of religion have turned much more toward popular or "lived" religion, an understanding of how the beliefs of ordinary folks had an impact on history. My book builds on both of these traditions, in that I show how the religious beliefs of ordinary people—in this case, regarding the evils of Catholicism—led to important political changes that altered the face of global politics.

The Origins of the Mormon Moment; or, How to Generate Your Own Such Moment

Christopher Jones

As a follow-up to Paul's post last week on "the Mormon moment in scholarship," and in an attempt to answer the questions posed by Elesha and Curtis in the comments of that post, I'll simply point readers to a post today ("2011: The Year of the Mormon") over at the Mormon blog By Common Consent. Embedded within that post, which surveys a number of individuals, events, and trends in pop culture, politics, sports, and scholarship that kept Mormonism in the spotlight all year long, is what appears to me to be a basic (if slightly complicated) formula for those interested in generating a similar moment for their respective religious movement/scholarly-subject of study/etc. With a giant tip-of-the-hat to the fine folks at BCC, then, here is my formula:

1. Aim for an election year (preferably a presidential election), and ensure that at least two of the candidates are of the specific faith community. If they represent divergent approaches to said faith, and maintain a personal and/or political rivalry dating back several generations, even better.

2. Politicians alone, of course, cannot create such a moment. They need to be buttressed by likeable star athletes that inspire hip-hop songs and videos, rock/pop music sensations that publicly proclaim their faith without coming across too condescending or annoying and incorporate elements of the religion's founding theophany in their music videos, and television programs portraying the more controversial elements of the faith tradition. For scholars of religion, it is particularly important that these figures not only be members of the religion, but also that their respective talents can be explained by alluding to, for example, Thomas Aquinas's theory of scripture. Landing these public figures on the cover of several prominent national publications doesn't hurt, either. Oh yeah, and if the guys behind South Park create the Broadway hit of the year about the religious community, that's just icing on the cake.

3. While loads of publicity may generate a "moment" for the religion, they do not automatically lead to a corresponding "moment" for scholarship on the subject. The key there, of course, is to keep researching and writing. The sheer amount of scholarship focused on Mormons and Mormonism over the past year (or that forthcoming in 2012) really isn't all that unique---historians, sociologists, and others have been generating volumes and volumes of scholarship on the subject for decades now. The key here, as I see it, is that the younger generation of scholars---folks like Pat Mason, Matt Bowman, John Turner, and Spencer Fluhman---are building on the work of their predecessors but also more directly engaging trends in larger fields (American religious history, religious experience, religion and politics, etc.) and demonstrating what the Mormon experience uniquely reveals about those larger subjects, trends, etc. It also helps if the institutional church in question decides to take an active role in that scholarship by expanding and publishing archival collections.

Looking forward to 2012, Paul may be right in wondering if "another mainline moment in being born." But just to be sure, someone may want to put in a call to the South Park guys.

The Mormon Moment in Scholarship

Paul Harvey

Everyone is discussing the "Mormon moment" thanks to Romney and national politics, and Max Mueller's piece for Religion Dispatches discusses why non-expert pontificators feel free to pontificate on Mormonism's "weirdness" where they would do no such thing about other religious traditions. Don't miss his article.

But it may actually be more the Mormon moment in the scholarly world than anywhere else. Our own John Turner's biography of Brigham Young will be out in a little over a year or so (and scroll down for John's recent post on Joseph Smith's Journals), with Harvard University Press, and the big biography of Parley Pratt by Terryl Givens and Matthew Grow will be reviewed here at the blog in just a little while. And don't forget Patrick Mason's The Mormon Menace, reviewed here at the blog a while back. The world awaits J. Spencer Fluhman's forthcoming study of nineteenth-century anti-Mormon rhetoric, coming out next fall with the University of North Carolina Press; the parts I've seen represent scholarship at its best.

The efflorescence of scholarship in the field is pretty astonishing, keeping up with it impossible. For a little assistance in the latter, I recommend Ben Park's "2011 in Retrospect: A Look at Important Books and Articles in Mormon History," over at Juvenile Instructor. Here are Ben's personal award winners for the year, but go over to his post for a much fuller and more extensive discussion of the variety of recent scholarship in the field.

My picks for a handful of MHA’s awards are as follows. (Drumroll please…)

• Best Book: Sam Brown, In Heaven as it Is on Earth
• Best Biography: Terryl Givens and Matthew Grow, Parley P. Pratt
• Best First Book: Patrick Mason, The Mormon Menace
• Best Article: Stapley and Wright, “Female Ritual Healing in Mormonism” (Stapley also gets recognition for “Adoption Sealing Ritual,” which is equally deserving of the award)
• Awards of Excellence (2 Articles): Patrick Mason, “God and the People”; Chris Jones, “The Power and Form of Godliness”
• Silver Award for Women’s History: Catherine Brekus, “Mormon Women and the Problem of Historical Agency”

In the Founding Fathers We Trust?

Kevin Schultz

"In God We Trust" first appeared on U.S. coins during the Civil War in 1864. Nearly a hundred years later, in 1956, an act of Congress made it the national motto. It began appearing on paper currency the following year, in 1957. So it's ascendancy is directly related to two wars, one hot, one cold, but both desperate. Perhaps "There are no atheists in foxholes" didn't have the right ring to it?

"E pluribus unum," on the other hand, was never the official motto, but it did appear on the official seal of the United States, and has since 1782. Interestingly, it's inclusion on the official seal emerged from a recommendation by a committee of Founding Fathers, who had gathered in 1776 no less to craft the symbols of the new nation.

So if we're going by strict constructionism, then, "E pluribus unum" wins the national motto game hands down. But of course our legal body is a flexible thing, changing with the times. So we've got "In God We Trust."

But "E pluribus unum" makes more sense in another historical way too. Most of the Founding Fathers were Christians of some sort or another, and most believed that a religion of future rewards and punishments was a vital part of 18th-century statecraft, but they almost to a man believed that there were more types of religion in the United States than could be described and upheld by a national body. After all, when Ben Franklin asked for a moment of prayer to help ease a particularly thorny debate in the Constitutional Convention, only three or four Founding Fathers thought it was a good idea. Instead, we got the First Amendment.

Perhaps last week's congressional vote to reaffirm the national motto as "In God We Trust" is just another reminder that those trying to prove America's distinct Christian heritage and mission are more interested in winning for souls for Jesus than in understanding the past. Or maybe the War on Christmas really is a real thing. Indeed, there are no atheists in the North Pole.

Evangelicals in the Electorate: Public Lecture and Forum

by Paul Harvey

Here's an opportunity for those of you especially in the Boston area to hear my co-blogmeister and other prominent scholars in action, next Thursday:

Evangelicals in the Electorate: A Public Lecture and Forum
Thursday, November 10, 6:30 - 8:00 P.M., Suffolk University

Although some dismiss Evangelical Christians as zealots with uncommon social politics and little regard for science, this powerful voting bloc is a force to be reckoned with in our democracy, and likely misunderstood. Dr. John C. Green, Senior Research Advisor at the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life, presents empirical data on what evangelicals actually believe based on surveys of clergy and parishioners. Authors of The Anointed, Dr. Karl Giberson and Dr. Randall Stephens, provide an analysis of intellectual authority within this group and examine themes ranging from Creationism to messaging. Ford Hall Forum Board member and former religion reporter for the Boston Herald Eric Convey converses with these sociological researchers to predict how Evangelical Christians’ true values will translate into civic action.

Drs. Randall Stephens and Karl Giberson will be selling and signing copies of their book, “The Anointed: Evangelical Truth in a Secular Age” at the end of the event.

Thursday, November 10, 6:30 p.m. to 8:00 p.m. C. Walsh Theatre, Suffolk University

No More Hope for America

by John G. Turner

Last week's NYT op-ed by Karl Giberson and our own Randall Stephens has generated plenty of attention.

Such controversy continues today at National Review Online, where Dennis Prager concludes:

If these professors typify the views of Eastern Nazarene, which is officially listed as a Christian university, it is reason for despair. Once left-wing values enter the evangelical bloodstream, there is almost no hope for America.

I suppose the "almost" means that there is still a slim, glimmer of hope left. Thanks goodness.

Dominionists on the Loose

by John G. Turner

Many news websites are running a wonderful piece by the Associated Press's Rachel Zoll about a segment of American evangelicalism / Pentecostalism. It features the commentary of our own Randall Stephens and also incorporates analysis from Anthea Butler and C. Peter Wagner. Among the article's observations:

These preachers believe demons have taken hold of specific geographic areas, including the nation's capital. They also promote a philosophy of public engagement known as the "seven mountains," which urges Christians to gain influence in business, government, family, church, education, media and the arts as a way to spread righteousness and bring about God's kingdom on earth. The language seems close to dominionism, the belief that Christians have a God-given mandate to run the world.

This is the sort of thing that apparently keeps journalists and some secular Americans up at night. Nothing like fear of the theocrats. One could frighten many residents of Boston or New York this Halloween by dressing up as Michelle Bachman. Heck, they'd probably run away from Joel Osteen, seeing some sort of sinister plot in Osteen's "Every Day a Friday" slogan. Actually, that terrifies me as well to a certain extent. I haven't read Osteen's book, but I have sometimes found value in other days of the week, not to mention the weekend. Osteen is most likely targeting fans of casual office wear with his latest offering.

Zoll, with the help of Stephens and Butler, mostly dismisses the recent furor over dominionism:

Randall Stephens, a professor at Eastern Nazarene College in Quincy, Mass., who researches Pentecostals and politics, called warnings of a conservative Christian plot an overreaction. "I think this is a rabbit hole people fall down and it has a whiff of conspiracy," Stephens said.

I agree. While there are some theocrats out there, I doubt Bachman or Rick Perry is one. When in Boston in August, I noticed that the Globe, rather desperate in its efforts to feed the fears of its readers, carefully noted that Bachman had hugged an Obama birther at a campaign event. Likewise, Rick Perry has shared the stage with some crazy religious nuts. That doesn't make him one. But if he can't rip Mitt Romney to shreds on the issue of health care, he probably doesn't stand much chance of imposing a theocracy on the United States anyway.

It's always good reading when journalists discover whiffs of dominionism on the campaign trail every few years, but this is very old news. Bill Bright and many other evangelicals talked about "capturing" or "retaking" government, the entertainment industry, and higher education back in the 1970s. These spheres of American life were not yet mountains. Such evangelicals were alarmists, but most were not theocrats. If anything, I think most evangelicals are much less self-confident about the potential for their political influence today than three decades.

The 2012 GOP race has been good for our blog thus far. If only Herman Cain had decided to go with a 6-6-6 tax reform plan.

Robert Jeffress and the History of Anti-Mormonism

Paul Harvey

Earlier this year John Turner reviewed for our blog Patrick Mason's new book The Mormon Menace: Violence and Anti-Mormonism in the Postbellum South, a book foreshadowed in an outstanding article in the Journal of Southern History.

Good time to be reminded of this again while Mitt Romney endures the latest round of this particular ugliness. Over at Religion Dispatches, Joanna Brooks interviews Mason, and the two discuss the various stages of anti-Mormonism in American history -- from violent vigilantism in the mid-19th century, to the adoption of the "cult" terminology in the 1960s and 1970s (a word that my students still use to describe anything in religion that strikes them as vaguely weird or outside their experience), and more recently to "organized anti-Mormonism," reflected in the comments of the pastor of the First Baptist Church of Dallas. A little excerpt:

That helps me understand the edge I hear in the contemporary caricaturing of Mormonism as a “cult.” It’s not just theological differentiation. There’s an edge to the accusation. It’s a residue of the anti-Mormon violence of the nineteenth century.

Yes. Once Mormons drop polygamy in the late nineteenth century, anti-Mormon violence stops. Violent anti-Mormonism disappears, whereas African-American lynching does not. But latent ideas of Mormons as polygamists continue to dominate the Southern imagination.

Usage of the word “cult” as a descriptor for Mormonism picks up steam in the 1960s as a reaction to new religious movements like the Moonies, Jonestown, Scientology, and so forth. It also indexes a feeling of eroding religious authority on the part of mainline and evangelical Protestants who have had a custodial relationship to culture in the American South. Beginning in the 1960s, with greater secularism, there comes a sense that this Protestant custodial relationship is under threat. “Cult” becomes a catch-all phrase to catch new and unrecognizable religious movements.

Mason also discusses the role that anti-Mormonism also plays for church authorities (to label dissenting views or mild criticisms as "anti-Mormon"), and praises Mitt Romney's handling of the latest controversy.

Including "Religious Others" in the Christian Nation "Debate"

by Edward J. Blum

Amid the culture wars of the 1990s, Isaac Kramnick and R. Laurence Moore published a slim volume. It had a provocative title and a silly subtitle: The Godless Constitution: The Case against Religious Correctness. Thankfully, the subtitle was later changed to A Moral Defense of

the Secular State (although, of course, the “a” before “moral” could cause some confusion). Kramnick and Moore argued that the founders of the United States purposefully created a secular nation and that waves of evangelicals throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries added religious appendages to the secular framework. This left many Americans confused, frustrated, and bitter. Thank goodness Kramnick and Moore could show us the right (and by right, I mean left) way. Reviewing the first edition, UNC’s John E. Semonche concluded that The Godless Constitution was “not an unworthy entry into a debate that has never verged on the profound.”

Wow. If that doesn’t make you chuckle, then you haven’t read enough reviews that essentially end, “makes a significant contribution to many significant fields.”

“Profound” is such a tricky word. Semonche certainly wasn’t referring to Madison’s and Jefferson’s discussions of church-state relations – so profoundly analyzed in David Sehat’s The Myth of American Religious Freedom. Perhaps Semonche was thinking of Jerry Falwell and Francis Schaeffer, but their acolytes certainly took their works to be profound.

Thanks to John Fea, historians now have a profound tool to use in the debate. I have been teaching Was America Founded as a Christian Nation? in my historiography class, and we’re having a blast. Fea shares at least one commonality with Kramnick and Moore. All write from a shared frustration with the simplistic histories of the nation presented by the religious right. Unlike Kramnick and Moore, however, who wish to defend a secular state, Fea wants to teach about history. He wants students and interested readers to think in terms of change over time, context, causality, contingency, and complexity. And as a teaching device, this book is without doubt profound. There is so much to commend in Was America Founded as a Christian Nation?, especially Fea’s examination of the history of the idea that the United States was a Christian nation.

When I hold The Godless Constitution and Was America Founded as a Christian Nation? side-by-side, I’m left with a few questions. First, where are the women? If “American religious history is women’s history” (or is it women’s history is religious history … I can never remember; thank goodness for google), as Ann Braude so famously put it, how are we still able to write histories like this without women playing prominent roles? Second, do the voices of African Americans or Native Americans or immigrant Americans trouble the discussion? Years ago, I published an essay on African American uses of “Christian nation” rhetoric and others have done similar work, such as Joanna Brooks in American Lazarus or Eddie Glaude in Exodus! Have we abandoned “religious outsiders” in this debate?

Third, and finally, is there any difference in historical and theological opinion among conservative evangelicals and anti-liberal evangelicals? Jason Bivins published an amazing book several years ago on “anti-liberalism” (meaning animosity for the large state and liberal norms, but not necessarily pro-Republican Christians) where he showed how home schoolers and the Berrigan brothers shared a political sensibility of frustration. If we consider the contemporary political terrain as complex and variegated (even among conservatives who are so easily made into caricatures rather than understood on their own terms), then what are the differences of opinion among the anti-liberals and anti-secularists?

My point from these questions would be this: to understand historically the Christian nation debate, we need to expand the parameters of inclusion and more richly think about the political fabric of the nation. Without doing so, we’re left thinking antebellum Whigs dominated American politics (they didn’t!), that Martin Luther King, Jr., was the only one to use Christian nationalism for moral politics (he wasn’t), and that contemporary conservatives are convinced antichrist is among us (many don’t and many think those who do are nuts).

I’m off to the East Coast with a satchel full of new books … so I’ll be back with some reviews from 35,000 feet. You can expect several “unworthy” entries.

Why the AntiChrist Matters in Politics

by J. Michael Utzinger

Matthew Sutton's reflections on the antichrist and American politics can be found in today's New York Times under the title "Why the Antichrist matters in Politics." There is some great food for thought here including how dispensational premillennialism (Sutton wisely didn't use this term in an op-ed) feeds anti-government sentiment. He also suggests that a power vacuum among politically oriented evangelicals have allowed libertarians and Tea Party activists (like Bachmann, Perry, and Paul) to exploit evangelical energies without the type of religious leadership (previously seen in individuals like Billy Graham and Jerry Falwell) who tempered the tendency toward apocalyptic excess. Perhaps a throw-away line, but I appreciated the analogy with Marxism to explain apparent tensions within the evangelical between expectation and action. After all, to those of us who study apocalypticism historically, it is easy to see Marxism as a secularized form of Christian apocalypticism (albeit a this-worldly type). The whole piece can be found here.

Update from Paul: Matt is going appear this evening on MSNBC's "The Last Word" with Lawrence O'Donnell, via satellite. Check your local listings!

Update from Kelly: Here's the clip!

Back to the Future: Christianity and the American Founding

I'm looking forward a bit later this semester to using John Fea's Was America Founded as a Christian Nation in my "Theory and Methods of History" class. Aside from the precise subject matter, Fea has much to teach about thinking historically, on any subject. Below is my review of the book published several months ago at Christian Century, which is freely available online so I'll repost here, particularly for those of you who would be interested in using the book next semester or some other time in the future.

Paul Harvey

Was America founded as a Christian nation? No, is John Fea's answer to the question posed in his title. But the answer is yes if we consider how Americans (especially from 1789 to 1865) understood themselves as a Christian nation. And then again, maybe it's just a bad question, Fea concludes, because it arises not from a rich understanding of the past but from present-day polemics. Only when we remove it from that context can we begin to make sense of it.

As chair of the history department at Messiah College, a professing Christian, author of an outstanding book on an 18th-century figure of the "rural Enlightenment" (Philip Vickers Fithian), a frequent public speaker and a tireless blogger at The Way of Improvement Leads Home, Fea is rapidly making a name for himself as a public intellectual who brings the virtues of scholarly humility, patience and objectivity to highly controversial questions of religion and the founding era of American history. This book is a model of scholarly restraint, of patiently working one's way through the sources and of historicizing the questions and terms with which one works.

America was not "founded as a Christian nation," Fea suggests, because its founding documents were those of a fledgling nation-state and not intended as religious statements. The Declaration of Independence was a document of foreign policy aimed at persuading other nations of our independence, and the Constitution was a secular document of governance aimed at shoring up a national government that had proven far too weak during the era of the Articles of Confederation.

Moreover, present-day proponents of the Christian nation thesis (notably self-styled scholars such as David Barton and writers such as Peter Marshall, author of The Light and the Glory) depend heavily on documents that are taken out of context. Fea points out that while some founding fathers (such as John Jay) held recognizably evangelical Christian beliefs, most of the major founders held a range of beliefs that positioned them as either lukewarm high-church Christians who mainly talked about Providence or rational theists such as Thomas Jefferson, who actively rejected and even ridiculed central Christian doctrines such as the resurrection of Christ.

Then again, yes, America was founded as a Christian nation, Fea argues. For example, nearly every individual state (but not Virginia) enacted a state constitution that made it "very clear that they were Christian societies, placing Protestant qualifications on office holding and allowing government to tax citizens for the purpose of promoting the Christian religion." Moreover, Ameri­cans of the founding era, even including those far outside the bounds of Christian orthodoxy, trusted that "religion was necessary in order to sustain an ordered and virtuous republic."

During the Second Great Awakening in the 19th century, when evangelicalism rose to become a dominant form of religious expression, many Americans assumed a Protestant base to American culture. In the words of historian David Sehat, they created an informal but powerful "moral establishment" that in some ways wielded more power than any national legal establishment of religion would have. The religion clauses of the First Amendment ("Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof") ruled out any legal establishment at the national level. But Americans exercised the free-exercise clause freely, inventing a bewildering array of new denominations, missionary societies, publication boards and religions throughout the 19th century, making America a Christian nation in demography if not in law.

Thomas Jefferson had dreamed of a rationalist republic; what he got instead was a Methodist millennium. In many ways, the idea of America as a Christian nation, as put forward by its current proponents, was an invention not of the founding era but of the 19th century. In other words, the phrase Christian nation as used in Fea's title itself has a history, one that underwent significant changes and transformations between the era of Franklin and the era of Falwell.

But most important, Fea suggests, the question "Was America founded as a Christian nation?" is badly posed. The question is ahistorical because it presupposes a stable set of terms (such as nation, founding and Chris­tian) that in fact are historically contingent and must be understood within the context of their own time and place. Fea's most important original intention is to give readers a lesson in historical thinking—a lesson on the strangeness and distantness of the past in relation to our own preconceptions and concerns.

For example, the famous Treaty of Tripoli in 1797 assured the Muslim states of the Barbary Coast that "the Government of the United States of America is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion"; no religious differences between the United States and Tripoli would come between a necessary and important trade agreement protecting American ships from piracy. The treaty stated a historical truth about the Constitution. Americans, however, viewed the contest between the United States and the Barbary nations as a holy war, avidly read captivity narratives describing Christians being forced to convert to Islam and characterized Muslims as "children of Ishmael" who threatened Christian civilization. In short, in spite of the secularism of the founding documents, many Americans from the Revolution to the Civil War did understand themselves to be citizens of a Christian nation.

Of course, those same Americans disagreed vehemently on what constituted a Christian nation, hence the denominational splits, religious vituperation and the bloody Armageddon of the Civil War. And since then Amer­icans have continued their disagreements.

Fea tells this story with consummate skill and evenhandedness. However, his evenhandedness sometimes seems to suggest points of controversy where there aren't any (not unlike the Obama "birther controversy"). In the present day, even advocates of the "godless Constitution" viewpoint (such as historians Isaac Kramnick and R. Laurence Moore) fully understand the deep religious base of American history. They suggest not an exclusion of religion from the public square but simply an avoidance of any special privileges for it. The Christian nationalists, by contrast, have some legitimate points (fully credited by Fea), but they also actively and unapologetically use and distort history in precisely the ways that Fea warns against in his introductory chapter, titled "How to Think His­torically."

The Christian nation debate is not really an intellectual contest between legitimate contending viewpoints; it is instead a manufactured controversy akin to the global warming debate. On one side are purveyors of a rich and complex view of the past (including most historians who have written about the founding era). On the other side is a group of ideological cranks who have created an alternate intellectual universe based on a historical fundamentalism. In their drive to create a usable past, they show little respect for how the past is a "foreign country."

Don't Trust the Experts!!!

Randall Stephens

Focus on the Family--in an ongoing quest to define the organization over and against everyone and everything else--has put together a film, TrueU: The Toughest Test in College. (Thanks to RiAH contributor Hilde Løvdal for sending me the link!) The

rhetorical style of this trailer matches other culture war forays. ("Your professors our out to get you! Watch out!") The logic goes something like this: discredit expertise and secular knowledge by pointing to supposed bias and then hitch current ideas to a discredited consensus from yesteryear.

Perhaps this clip is an example of turning postmodernism to one's advantage. "Your truth is no better than my truth." It reminds me of Stanley Fish's article, "The Ignorance of Our Warrior Intellectuals," from nearly 10 years ago in Harper's. Here's Fish:

What must be protected, then, is the general, the possibility of making pronouncements from a perspective at once detached from and superior to the sectarian perspectives of particular national interests, ethnic concerns, and religious obligations; and the threat to the general is posed by postmodernism and strong religiosity alike, postmodernism because its critique of master narratives deprives us of a mechanism for determining which of two or more fiercely held beliefs is true (which is not to deny the category of true belief, just the possibility of identifying it uncontroversially), strong religiosity because it insists on its own norms and refuses correction from the outside.

Harvard University Press will soon be rolling out the book that Karl Giberson and I have written. We've titled it The Anointed: Evangelical Truth in a Secular Age. Throughout we look at the work and careers of evangelical experts who have served as powerful authorities on a whole range of subjects: human origins science, millennial theology, psychology, child care, and American history.

We couldn't have known when we started the book that many of these issues, and experts, would make national headlines with the 2012 election's approach. Their influence on the candidates is obvious. Michele Bachmann confidently assumes that America was founded as a born-again, Christian republic. Rick Perry lauds the teaching of both creationism and evolution in schools, relying on experts in the former to make his case. Bachmann's husband draws on professionally discredited reparative therapy for homosexuals, like it's 1959. And there is more . . .

One of the questions Giberson and I wrestled with in the book had to do with the nature of evangelical anti-intellectualism. Was this something that was specific to the faith? (Mark Noll's Scandal of the Evangelical Mind came in handy here.) Could it be traced to other areas of American life? (Richard Hofstadter and others who wrote about broad patterns of knowledge denial helped us here.)

I've been mulling over one question in particular as the 2012 campaign heats up. Will red-meat, anti-science or providential history ideas play well beyond Peoria? (No offense Peoria!) Will candidates think about those GOP voters beyond the hardcore base? Something tells me that if they want a national constituency they better leave David Barton and his giant, novelty cowboy hat in Texas.

Fear This!

by Matt Sutton



I have recently come across two excellent articles that may be of interest to readers of the blog. While I usually prefer some good Reconstructionist conspiracies mixed with anti-dominionist fear-mongering, both of these pieces (by Ross Douthat and Lisa Miller) are thoughtful and smart. I am sure our friends over at Religion Dispatches will view Miller and Douthat as dupes of Rousas John Rushdoony, but I am much more afraid of the Ralph Reeds and Karl Roves of the GOP than I am of dead Reformed preachers. Of course when Bachmann pushes a proposal through Congress reinstituting Levitical law, the US Supreme Court upholds such legislation as Constitutional, and we start stoning people in the streets, we will all know that I was wrong. But that is about as likely as Harvey fielding a good fantasy football team.

Big Billy and the South

by Matt Sutton



"Oh, Billy, Billy, Billy. This is a biggie! Don't let me down, Billy!"--Caddyshack



Just in time for the slackers who are scrambling to place their fall book orders at the very last possible minute, Steven P. Miller's Billy Graham and the Rise of the Republican South will be out in paperback any day now. The book has received extremely positive (and well-deserved) reviews:



"Billy Graham and the Rise of the Republican South, a study of the evangelist's relationship to the cause of civil rights on the one hand and the cause of conservatism on the other, does justice to the tensions and complexities involved—for Graham, for the South and for the country."—Ross Douthat, New York Times



"With this book, Steven P. Miller emerges as a significant new voice in the history of evangelical Christianity. . . . The book opens new territory for modern American religious and political history, and for this reason it should be considered essential reading."—Donald T. Critchlow, Reviews in American History



"Wonderfully readable, engrossing . . . . A captivating history and a profound work of scholarship. Miller ably shows how evangelicalism aided the new conservatism long before the Christian Right exploded onto the scene."—Randall J. Stephens, Journal of American History



"Beautifully written, well argued and carefully researched . . . . Thanks to Miller's engaging and provocative book, Billy Graham and modern conservatism will never look the same."—Social History



[The unnamed reviewer on the Penn website writing for Social History is me. I long for the day that I will be as famous as Randall and therefore worth identifying!]



This is a great book for classes on the modern US, religion, and/or conservatism. Buy it! (And assign it along with Paul's Through the Storm).

Declension, National Salvation, and Other Discontents

Kelly Baker



At the end of June, the Huffington Post’s Tim Suttle queried “Why are evangelicals losing influence?” This claim of decline emerged from a Pew Research Center survey of evangelical leaders globally, in which 82% claimed that evangelicals were losing influence over culture. The blame, of course, landed firmly on the “rising tide of secularism.” Suttle disagrees with the causation, and instead he notes, “If evangelical influence is nose-diving we have no one to blame but ourselves.” The jeremiad of declension remains alive, well, and likely weary, and it seems fly in the face of presence of evangelicals in American culture. Is evangelicalism on the decline? Or it this a method to chastise evangelicals into action as well as reflection?



Declension and its sister narrative secularization ebb and flow in public discourse and historiography with assertions in both that this moment ("no, not that one!") is certainly a moment of decline. The crucial time when religion might not be present in public life but rather avoidable, contained, and private. Declension narratives seem to hinge on the abject hope that certain religious voices will lose presence and popularity (the question of which voices becomes very, very important). Religion is in decline, isn't it? What is meant exactly by religion generally seems to be an association with mainline Christianity. As one might imagine, I am not terribly interested in mapping out this statistically (though the statistics are alluring). Yet the fervor that emerges anytime new survey data suggests decline is a different story. Just this morning, a group of my summer students presented the recent findings of Barna Group study of religious change to discuss the religious character of the American nation. The study reports that 40% of all adults in the U.S. fit the moniker "born again", which is not a self-identification by survey respondents, but rather Barna's label. Does this data suggest decline?



While reading Suttle's article on declining evangelicals, I couldn't help but wonder how political figures like Rick Perry and Michelle Bachmann trouble this self-reported decline. Perry, after all, hosted "The Response" this weekend, and Rolling Stone imaged Bachmann as a Christian crusader (Janine already covered this here). The New Yorker's Ryan Lizza profiled Bachmann's religious roots. Religion Dispatches' Sarah Posner puts Perry and Bachmann head to head in a discussion of who would win the conservative Christian vote. She writes:



Bachmann, in other words, is a product of the religious right's deliberate efforts to "raise up" soldiers to exercise a "dominion mandate;" she is, organically, one of them. Perry's effort Saturday, on the other hand, was a staged attempt to convince them that he is committed to their worldview. It's not clear that he has internalized it like Bachmann has, which may make him more Zelig-like and attractive to non-religious voters in states like New Hampshire, or might make him look like a pandering interloper to everyone.



It is at least possible that Bachmann or Perry could win the Republican nomination for President, and Posner clearly places both in the trajectory of the religious right. So, how might we label both Perry and Bachmann? Are they evangelical? Conservative Christians? Fundamentalists? Born-again? Religious right? Bachmann embraces born again identity and notes that God directed her decision to marry, go to law school, and enter into politics. Perry's The Response invoked Jesus and prayer as solutions to national problems from abortion to the threats of secularism. All of those terms have been applied to them. What do we take this labeling to mean?



Clearly, both identify as Protestant Christian. Perry is a Methodist, who attends a Southern Baptist Church, and Bachmann is an Evangelical Lutheran who now attends a non-denominational church. Their affiliations could be considered mainline, though their current church attendance might tell a different story. Perhaps, they prove to be case studies for the lateral shifting of Protestants from denomination to denomination. Their language and poise "feel" evangelical to me, though Perry's relationship with the American Family Association and Bachmann's signature of the FAMiLY LEADER pledge shift them more into the territory of fundamentalism. The labels start to pile on and obscure more than they help.



To approach this in a different way, I wonder about the popularity of Bachmann and Perry. Why do these candidates appeal? Is it their religious affiliations, their invocations of the divine, or their moralism? Do they "speak Christian"? How/why does the appeal to Christianity mark them as legitimate political candidates? This combination of Protestant Christianity, conservative values, and national salvation is a potent one. Bachmann and Perry speak in a language of clear moral valence, and they offer a Christian solution to national problems. America's salvation becomes a matter of prayer, divine guidance, strong Christian values, and political prowess. God, they claim, is on their side. Declension of national sort serves them well. A nation in peril needs a savior, and Bachmann and Perry both offer themselves up on its altar. Is evangelicalism losing influence? The answer is likely no. The real question is if voters want a candidate with God on his or her side, and what that showcases about decline, declension, and attachments to cultural Christianity and American patriotism.

Shall the Historians Win, Part II: More Fundamentalist Roundup

Paul Harvey



For those of you who happen to be in the Pacific Northwest or planning on attending the Pacific Coast Branch meeting of the AHA in Seattle coming up this Fri-Sat., come on by and visit this panel on Friday afternoon, 3:30 - 5, in the Seattle Renaissance hotel (before you go to our panel, make sure to go visit the Seattle Public Library first, a really wonderfully cool architectural landmark in downtown SEA a few blocks from the hotel):

Rethinking American Religion during the Interwar Period

Chair and Comment: Paul Harvey, University of Colorado at Colorado Springs

Papers:

“What does Fundamentalism Have to Do with Class?: The New York Labor Temple, 1920-

1926” -- Janine Giordano Drake, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign

“The Great Depression and the Elasticity of Fundamentalism”

Christopher Schlect, Washington State University

“Evangelical Methodists and Postwar Conservatism”

W. Andrew Tooley, Wheaton College



The papers collectively represent excellent empirical work in the complications regarding the term "fundamentalism" during its originary years earlier in the twentieth century, and Janine's work suggests much about the ways in which working-class socialist Christianity got "read out" of acceptability around the end of World War I. Christopher's paper shows how various Presbyterian ministers nationwide who were identified as "fundamentalists" in fact disagreed substantially on any number of issues.

While these papers considerably complicate the meaning and definitions given to "fundamentalism," one person that no one would dispute fits the label, however the label is defined, is John R. Rice, longtime editor of the important periodical The Sword of the Lord.



Rice's grandson, Andrew Himes, moved from the fundamentalism of his family background to another form of fundamentalism, Maoist leftism, in the 1970s. He has emerged from that wrenching experience to author a book at once poignant and informative, juxtaposing anecdotes from his own life together with a hefty "long history" of fundamentalism, culminating in extensive sections on his grandfather John R. Rice.

As it happens, after you enjoy the excellent papers mentioned above at the PCB-AHA panel, you have the opportunity to meet Andrew Himes and hear him read from his work The Sword of the Lord: The Roots of Fundamentalism in an American Family (with a foreword by Parker J. Palmer). Himes will be reading from his work at a great independent bookseller, Elliott Bay Books in Seattle, on Friday evening at 7:00 p.m. Here's a description from the author's own site:

My new book was released on May 15, and ever since then I have been eagerly awaiting my gig at Elliot Bay Bookstore. Ever since I moved to Seattle in 1985 I've been a fan of Elliot Bay -- perhaps the best independent bookstore in the world. Elliot Bay has a passionate, articulate, engaged staff, a wide selection of great books, and a fantastic cafe with some of the best coffe, pastries, sandwiches and soups in Seattle. Elliot Bay also has a well-stocked calendar of author readings in the basement, and I have been to many over the years -- reading performances and talks by some of the funniest, smartest, best story tellers and writers I've heard or read. So it makes me really happy to be invited to speak/read/perform, at Elliot Bay Bookstore on Friday, August 12th at 7:00 PM. If you are in Seattle, I dearly hope you come to this event to support Elliot Bay and have a great time giving me a hard time with challenging questions. Then you can hang out with me in the cafe and talk 'til all hours!



More about the book next!

Shall the Historians Win? Fundamentalist Roundup

Paul Harvey

As a quick followup to the Houston Prayer rally, make sure and read this firsthand reportage/account from Sarah Posner, as well as this analysis piece from Paul Horwitz, a law professor, in the New York Times, which concludes as follows:

Some people think we would be better off without religion in public life. In the long run, however, we would lose much more than we gain. Our debates may be more contentious if we allow religion in, but they will also be more committed and honest. Just as the Constitution allows Mr. Perry to stake his political future on “The Response,” it allows the rest of us to answer back.

Perry is set to enter the race soon, and doubtless will be competing for some of the same market share in a certain sector of the Republican primary market with Michele Bachmann, discussed by Posner at length here ("surely," she writes, "he wants to suck all of the air out of Michele Bachmann's air-conditioned tent"). Sarah's piece also links to, amends, and mildly critiques this week's New Yorker analysis of Michele Bachmann's ascent, religiosity and worldview. The author, Ryan Lizza, writes:

Liberty is the concept—or at least the word—most resonant with the Republican Party’s Tea Party faction, which Bachmann’s Presidential aspirations depend upon. It is a peculiarity of the current political moment that a politician with a history of pushing sectarian religious beliefs in government has become a hero to a libertarian movement. But Bachmann’s merger of these two strands of ideology is not unique. In fact, the Pew Research Center, in its recent quadrennial study of the American electorate, noted that “the most visible shift in the political landscape” since 2005 “is the emergence of a single bloc of across-the-board conservatives. The long-standing divide between economic, pro-business conservatives and social conservatives has blurred.”

The article also examines material from Bachmann's past campaigns, and concludes (among other things) that her supposed "gaffe" about slavery was in fact entirely consistent with the neo-Confederate literature that she had listed on her "reading list" recommended for others.



Bachmann also has some connections with our local evangelical doyen David Noebel, of Summit Ministries, maybe the most important evangelical leader that no one has ever heard of. Sarah Posner examines that history here and here, and also Bachmann's training at Oral Roberts University here.

Discussion continues in the next post with more on an interesting new book on the history of fundamentalism in one very important family in its history.

Prayer Rally Roundup: If You're Ever in Houston, You Better Do the Right

Paul Harvey

Civil religious prayers, fast days, proclamations of thanksgiving and/or humbling, and organized mass praying events have a long history in America from the Puritans to the present. So does the long history of politicians trying to capitalize on group piety -- sometimes much to their own detriment, as John Adams speculated about his own participation in one such effort. He might tell the participants:

If you're ever in Houston, well you better do the right,

You better not gamble, you better not fight

The latest -- and surely one of the most egregiously sectarian and transparently partisan -- is Rick Perry's Prayer Rally, called The Response, scheduled tomorrow for Houston. The Miami Herald gives some background on Perry and the rally here, and one of its main sponsors, a rapture-ready prayer warrior group called the "International House of Prayer," here. Our local friend James Dobson, an "honorary chairman" for the event, advertises it as follows: "We believe that America is in crisis -- not just politically, financially, or morally, but because our nation has not honored God in its sucesses or humbly called on Him in its struggles." Compared to the statements of many of the other sponsors, that is positively pluralistic, or at least stays within the usual vein of rhetoric surrounding historic fast days, jeremiad sermons, and the like.

Mark Silk examines the ways in which this particular event transgresses the usual norms of civil religious events. The Response's website announces: "As a nation we must come together and call upon Jesus to guide us through unprecedented struggles, and thank Him for the blessings of freedom we so richly enjoy." So much for Protestant-Catholic-Jew!.

Beyond that, I say "egregious" above because of its sponsorship, in part, by the American Family Association, a Tupelo, Mississippi-based group with a long and disturbing history of connections with white supremacists, theocrats, and various other disreputable characters from the fringe far right, as well as a pattern of abusive relations directed towards some of its employees.

The New York Times briefly covers the history of the AFA here, but much more effective and searching is Sarah Posner's detailed expose here, a must read in understanding the deeper background of this event. My favorite: The AFA's radio host Bryan Fischer's analysis of the origins of the Nazi Party among a group of "homosexual thugs." Beyond that bit of historical amusement, however, comes some far more disturbing sentiments:

Fischer admits that he shares with Breivik that disdain for "multiculturalism" and "politically correct elites" who are ruining our culture -- for Breivik, it's a "pure" European or Nordic culture; for Fischer, it's "Judeo-Christian" American culture.

I'm assuming that the event will mostly consist of the usual mixture of patriotism and piety, and likely will be largely unremarkable in that regard. But the openly proselytizing nature of the proceedings, and the notably central presence of so many from the far-right fringe, makes it remarkable in its own way. Perhaps it's also why almost every national politician is keeping his/her distance from it. You know, those inconvenient scheduling conflicts, and all that. Me? I'm unable to attend because I need more time to spend with my family. Isn't that right, Omar? (He just meowed in response).

John Stott vs. Jerry Falwell: Evangelical Diversity and the Conundrum of "Biblicism"

By Brantley Gasaway

The blogosphere is filled with tributes to John Stott, the Anglican minister and international evangelical leader who passed away this past week at the age of 90. There is no need to reinvent the recap of his career on our site: let me recommend this detailed piece at Christianity Today and a brief reflection by Randall Balmer at Religion Dispatches.

But in an op-ed in yesterday's New York Times entitled "Evangelicals Without Blowhards," Nicholas Kristof uses the death of Stott to challenge the popular association of evangelicals with the political conservatism of the Religious Right. Leaders such as Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson--whom Kristof labels "blowhard scolds"--have caused most liberals to pillory the entire evangelical movement as "reactionary, myopic, anti-intellectual and, if anything, immoral." Yet, Kristof argues,

that casual dismissal is profoundly unfair of the movement as a whole. It reflects a kind of reverse intolerance, sometimes a reverse bigotry, directed at tens of millions of people who have actually become increasingly engaged in issues of global poverty and justice.

As evidence, Kristof points to Stott's long-standing commitments to intellectualism and social justice. In addition to authoring over fifty books, Stott consistently encouraged Christians to fight against poverty, racism, the oppression of women, and apathy toward environmental issues. Indeed, at a pivotal moment in the development of global evangelicalism, Stott gave a keynote address at the 1974 International Congress on World Evangelization in Lausanne, Switzerland that insisted Christians must not neglect active work for social justice in their zeal for evangelism. In addition, Stott lent his considerable credibility to the development of evangelical progressivism in America in that period by endorsing the early career of Jim Wallis and becoming a contributing editor to Sojourners.

Kristof lauds Stott for nurturing this "compassionate strain of evangelicalism," and he praises evangelicals who are frequently the ones on the front lines of global battles against "hunger, malaria, prison rape, obstetric fistula, human trafficking or genocide." Because he "stands in awe" of such work, Kristof concludes, "it sickens me to see that faith mocked at New York cocktail parties."

Like most readers of this blog, I suspect, I am rarely--ok, never--invited to New York cocktail parties where such sophisticated conversations occur. But even in my more humble circles, I still encounter the suspicion that most evangelicals are theocratic minions of Falwell and Robertson. Scholars of American religion recognize this view as a caricature, of course. Not only have progressive evangelical leaders such as Wallis been active since the early 1970s, but also studies of "ordinary evangelicals" by Christian Smith and by John C. Green have shown that only 30 to 40 percent support or identify with the Religious Right.

Thus the political engagement of evangelicals--both in the United States and especially worldwide--is not inherently conservative. Evangelical politics are complex, contested, and confusing--confusing perhaps not only to readers of the New York Times but also to evangelicals themselves. Which evangelical leader offers the correct political agenda: John Stott or Jerry Falwell? Jim Wallis or Pat Robertson?

Because evangelicals regard the Bible as their ultimate authority, they would ostensibly answer the question by assessing whether Stott's or Falwell's (or Wallis's or Robertson's) agenda has the best biblical support. The problem is, however, that these and other evangelical leaders all support their conflicting positions with biblical arguments and interpretations--and there is no objective or obvious method for judging better or worse biblical support, for that would be to introduce an authority beyond the Bible itself. Of course Christians have differed in their understanding of scriptures ever since the apostolic age, but this disagreement is especially problematic for modern evangelicals. How much can one rely upon biblical authority--especially when it is one's sole authority--if apparently sincere people cannot agree on what the Bible means? How would an evangelical know that she should emulate Stott rather than Falwell (assuming, of course, that she was unwilling to acquiesce to the New York Time's magisterium)?

Reflecting on the difference between John Stott and Jerry Falwell brought to mind a new book that I wanted to highlight here: Christian Smith's The Bible Made Impossible: Why Biblicism Is Not a Truly Evangelical Reading of the Bible. One of the country's leading sociologists of religion, Smith analyzes the popular evangelical theory about the Bible, which he labels "biblicism," that "emphasizes together its exclusive authority, infallibility, perspicuity, self-sufficiency, internal consistency, self-evident meaning, and universal applicability.” Because of "pervasive interpretive pluralism"--the fact that the "Bible gives rise to a host of many divergent teachings on important matters--Smith concludes that "it becomes beside the point to assert a text to be solely authoritative or inerrant." While evangelical theologians and historians such as Mark Noll have also identified this problem, Smith's work attempts to offer an accessible, focused critique of biblicism for non-specialists. **

Thus the limits of biblicism represent a conundrum for evangelicals, even for leaders like Stott who embrace a much more complex understanding of biblical authority. "Pervasive interpretive pluralism" guarantees evangelical diversity and division. Evangelical leaders will continue to remain at odds over political, social, and theological issues; laity will often remain confused as they hear competing biblical arguments offered for incompatible positions. Ultimately, the radically different forms of "biblical" public engagement promoted by Stott and Falwell should give all of us--even evangelicals--pause when we hear the Bible invoked to support a particular political stance. After only a minimal search, one can likely find an advocate claiming biblical justification for the exact opposite position.

** Brief note for the interested: Smith does offer a constructive alternative to biblicism that deserves a different post. His own concerns about this issue contributed to his recent conversion to Roman Catholicism, which he describes, not coincidentally, in another newly released work: How to Go from Being a Good Evangelical to a Committed Catholic in Ninety-Five Difficult Steps.