After Cloven Tongues of Fire: Protestant Liberalism in Modern American History. By David A. Hollinger. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2013. xiv + 230 pp. $29.95 cloth.

Abstract

(ProQuest: ... denotes non-US-ASCII text omitted.)After Cloven Tongues of Fire: Protestant Liberalism in Modern American History . By David A. Hollinger . Princeton, N.J. : Princeton University Press , 2013. xiv + 230 pp. $29.95 cloth.Book Reviews and NotesIn After Cloven Tongues of Fire David Hollinger makes an important argument about particular protestant groupings, their accommodations, and their making of an American modernity. The gist of Hollinger's story, told in a series of previously published essays, is about recent fate of liberal protestantism in America, what Hollinger labels Protestantism. Wary of instantiating an unsubtle narrative of liberal vs. conservative piety, Hollinger seeks to achieve more analytic purchase on complexities of protestant history. In contrast to what Hollinger sees as an obscurantist (one of his favorite words) position of Christian survivalists; i.e., evangelicals, ecumenical protestantism refers to those groups and individuals open to sympathetic exploration of wider worlds (21). In contrast to former, latter were integral to reducing Anglo-Protestant prejudice in twentieth century and fomenting its embrace of the varieties of humankind. And this is victory whose mechanics Hollinger explores in trajectories of protestants who were politically engaged, scientifically rigorous, and committed to a vision of progressive humanism. And is a victory, Hollinger argues, that comes at a loss, specifically, a loss of organizational hegemony (46) and political capital.But there is a silver lining. As Hollinger writes, Our narrative of modern American religious history will be deficient so long as we suppose that ecumenical Protestantism declined because had less to offer United States than did its evangelical revival. Much of what ecumenical Protestantism offered now lies churches, and hence we have been slow to see it (48-49).For despite emptying of vast sanctuaries built by Methodists and Presbyterians and Congregationalists in center of almost all American cities and towns, spirit of ecumenicism still circulates. The mark of ecumenical protestantism is both present and absent in Hollinger's rendering of post-Protestant domains. Hollinger employs what he calls a dispersionist approach to illuminate protestant influence beyond churches (160). And for most part, this influence has been positive and democratically constructive. There is a sense here (at least for this reader) of a Hegelian process of Protestantism emptying itself out in world, recognizing itself, and its true calling, in so-called secular world of politics, activism, and science. This version of protestantism is not merely liberal or ecumenical. It is progressive by definition.The formal nature of collected essay complements dispersionist approach as Hollinger circles intellectual complex of ecumenical protestantism in long twentieth century. He takes its measure different angles, close and counter-intuitive readings of figures like Reinhold Niebuhr and William James to current debates about religion in higher education to ecumenical protestant presence in mid-century foreign policy circles.Hollinger pits his dispersionist approach against prominent communalists like Mark Noll, George Marsden, D.G. Hart, Richard Bushman, Grant Wacker, and Harry Stout, all of whom study institutions and ideologies of professing Protestants with special attention to adhesives that make for preservation of Protestant communities (161). Hollinger sees himself as non-apologetic in making a case for a style of protestantism into which he was born but has since left and become a thoughtful critic post-protestant space of beyond. Having grown up within an ecumenical and intensely Protestant atmosphere, Hollinger writes from a secular perspective, adding that he is no longer Protestant. …