Amazing Grace: Evangelicalism in Australia, Britain, Canada, and the United States Edited by George A. Rawlyk and Mark A. Noll.

Abstract

BOOK REVIEWS 405 listed above to acquire this book for the libraries oftheir academic institutions. This is the sort of work which professors and students will consult for years. As such it will remain a long-lasting testimonial to the life and work of one of the foremost scholars of our age. Andrew D. Ciferni, O.Praem. Washington Theological Union Amazing Grace: Evangelicalism in Australia, Britain, Canada, and the United States. Edited by George A. Rawlyk and Mark A. Noll. (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Baker Books. 1993. Pp. 429. «1999 paperback.) Amazing Grace is a remarkable collection of articles, a veritable cafeteria of offerings, about Protestant evangelicalism in major areas of the Englishspeaking world. This theological movement or tendency which these articles help to describe is important for numerous reasons, not the least of which is the fact that it is widely recognized as the most powerful force within contemporary American Protestantism. With its beliefs in the importance of a personal religious experience (conversion), the authority of the Bible in matters of faith and practice, a concern for sharing the faith with others, and the centrality of Christ's redeeming work on the cross as crucial to personal religious salvation, this movement is a widespread religion of choice which cuts across cultural, denominational, geographical, and chronological boundaries . Rooted in part in the religious experiences ofJohn Wesley, George Whitefield , and Jonathan Edwards in the eighteenth century, evangelicalism became in the nineteenth century the dominating religion in both the United States and Canada—but not in Great Britain or Australia. By the beginning of the twentieth century, however, evangelicals were losing their strength noticeably due to several factors: a change in the nature of society from rural and small towns to urban centers, the influence ofDarwinism, the rise ofhigher criticism in biblical studies, the increased attention given to religions of the world, the insights ofnew psychologies, and the impact in general ofProtestant liberalism with its concern about a Social Gospel. In responding to these new forces, some evangelicals went to fundamentalist extremes. Others went in more positive and less militant directions while still opposingfundamentalism's antiintellectualism , its tendency to splinter and divide, and its lack of social responsibility . These "other" resurging, conservative evangelicals expressed themselves partially after World War II through the National Association c.f Evangelicals; a prominent periodical, Christianity Today; die founding of a new educational institution, Fuller Theological Seminary; the importunate ministry of the crusading evangelist, Billy Graham; the growth of Charismatic 406 BOOK REVIEWS and Pentecostal movements; and the rise ofa new scholarship ofwhichAmazing Grace is a single illustration. Amazing Grace is the title of a hymn written by a former English slave trader, John Newton (1727-1807), who experienced a dramatic conversion and later became an evangelical Anglican cleric. The book is comprised of fourteen chapters, all written by prominent or promising church historians. Ten of these chapters were presented in earlier versions as academic papers at a conference, "Evangelicals in Transatlantic Perspective," held at Wheaton College, Illinois, in April of 1992 and sponsored by Wheaton's Institute for the Study ofAmerican Evangelicals. The purpose of this volume is the attempt "to describe both the evangelical impulse and some ofthe institutions, regions, turmoils, social actions, political instincts, and religious goals of the multinational movement that arose from (the) eighteenth century evangelical experience ." The four major divisions into which these essays fall are entitled: "The Origins ofEvangelicals"; "The United States and Britain: Modern History"; "Australian Vistas"; and "Evangelicalism in Modern Canada." Among the various articles there is something for everyone's interest. The individual topics range from biographical treatments withtheological overtones ofJohn Newton and F. B. Meyer; to Italian Pentecostals in Australia; to Canadian contributions on fundamentalism; to English minorities in eighteenth-century Ireland; and to the holiness movement among Maritime Baptists. In the midst of all such variety and detail do not miss David W. Bebbington's superb, broad-sweeping article, "Evangelicalism in Modern Britain and America," wherein he discusses similarities and contrasts in the same movement in the two differing countries, concluding with the words: "The two countries distilled similar versions of evangelicalism, but the American brand was certainly the headier brew" (meaning that it was more...