The New Measures: A Theological History of Democratic Practice. By Ted A. Smith. (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2007. xvi, 340 pp. $85.00, ISBN 978-0-521-87131-0.)

Abstract

This beautifully written book brims with moral wit and wisdom on the “new measures” for revival in America (made famous by the evangelist Charles G. Finney), which the author analyzes as “a small but important set” of democratic cultural practices that have shaped the nation's history profoundly (p. 8). Ted A. Smith attends to six of those new measures in particular: “organizing worship so that it achieves measurable results in this world” (chapter 1); “using novelty to compete in an economy of attention” (chapter 2); “demanding that people make free decisions” (chapter 3); “proclaiming the formal equality of all people” (chapter 4); “representing private selves in public spaces, and so speaking with the authority of celebrity” (chapter 5); and “telling stories to illustrate points” (chapter 6). Each of these chapters moves from “a close reading” of one of the measures “to a critical, theological engagement with some preoccupation of contemporary social criticism: instrumental reason, novelty, freedom, equality, sincerity, and secularization” (p. 8). Smith employs this method because he believes his measures “offer an extraordinarily rich site for thinking through democracy in America” (p. 7). Although the “language of democracy” also “emerged in the speeches people gave to win court cases, entertain crowds, [and] persuade voters,” Smith contends that “no form of public speaking saw more sustained or heated deliberation than did preaching. The issues of democratization became especially clear in the controversies around the new measures” (ibid.).