American Evangelicalism: George Marsden and the State of American Religious History ed. by Darren Dochuk et al.

Abstract

Reviewed by: American Evangelicalism: George Marsden and the State of American Religious History ed. by Darren Dochuk et al. Joel Carpenter American Evangelicalism: George Marsden and the State of American Religious History. Edited by Darren Dochuk, Thomas S. Kidd, and Kurt W. Peterson. (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press. 2014. Pp. xvi, 518. $66.00. ISBN 978-0-268-03842-7; e-ISBN 978-0-268-08988-7.) George Marsden, the topic and inspiration of this book of essays, is one of the most accomplished and influential historians in America. Over a teaching career that spanned forty-three years, Marsden’s work has reshaped American religious history. Marsden first made waves when he published Fundamentalism in American Culture (Oxford, 1980). This study came just in time to help observers puzzle out the religious commitments and cultural outlook that mobilized the Religious Right. Marsden’s next work, Reforming Fundamentalism (Grand Rapids, 1987), was a history of Fuller Theological Seminary, which became one of the most influential evangelical institutions. It is an elegant, witty, and finely nuanced account of how fundamentalists and other evangelical Protestants were shaping and being shaped by postwar American culture. For many historians these accomplishments would be enough to provide a solid reputation and career. Marsden’s intellectual curiosity was winding up, however, not down. His abiding interest in American higher education, the intellectual life it harbored, and what religion had to do with them yielded a trio of books, most notably The Soul of the American University (Oxford, 1994). Marsden’s longtime quest to understand Jonathan Edwards and his times finally bore fruit in Jonathan [End Page 639] Edwards: A Life (New Haven, 2003), a multiple prize-winner in the profession and beyond. Even in retirement Marsden continues to ruminate over aspects of American life and thought, notably The Twilight of the American Enlightenment: The 1950s and the Crisis of Liberal Belief (New York, 2014), and a forthcoming study of the American impact of C. S. Lewis’s classic, Mere Christianity (New York, 1952). Not the least of Marsden’s accomplishments has been his mentoring of doctoral students, first at Duke University and then at Notre Dame. Three of his protégés—Darren Dochuk of Notre Dame, Thomas Kidd of Baylor, and Kurt Peterson of Loyola University—organized this book. It might look like a Festschrift, they admit, but they aim to do more than memorialize their professor and show off their skills. So they structured the book to address a “wider discussion about … the history of evangelicalism and American religion, the challenges and opportunities facing the next wave of religious historians, and the unchanging virtues of good historical writing” (p. 9). Each section represents one of Marsden’s major works and provides readers with three features: a guide to the topic’s historical literature and arguments, a reckoning with Marsden’s accomplishments, and some “new directions” that build on or contest Marsden’s approach. This book needs to be on the reading list of anyone who has an interest in this field. It is tailor-made for a seminar in the history of American evangelicalism. It includes some of the best historiographic chapters that one can find in American religious history, notably Douglass Sweeney on religion in colonial America, Margaret Bendroth on “The Evangelical Mind and the Historians” since the nineteenth century, and Barry Hankins on historians’ debates over fundamentalism and evangelicalism. Likewise, the “new directions” essays are a remarkable display of talent and interpretive verve. They include Jay Case’s arresting account of an “African American Great Awakening” following the Civil War, Kristin Kobes DuMez’s case study of how world Christianity should be “reorienting” American religious history, Timothy Gloege on the liberal theologians in fundamentalist Reuben Torrey’s mental closet, John Turner on the impact of evangelical campus ministries, Kathryn Long on the impact of evangelical missionaries on 1950s popular culture, and David Swartz on the rise and dissipation of the Evangelical Left in the 1970s. If the quality of scholarship on display in this book is any indication of George Marsden’s influence, it has been powerful indeed. Joel Carpenter Nagel Institute, Calvin College Grand Rapids, MI Copyright © 2016 The Catholic...