Thomas S. Kidd, The History of a Movement in Crisis

Abstract

American Religion 2, no. 1 (Fall 2020), pp. 201–204 Copyright © 2020, The Trustees of Indiana University • doi: 10.2979/amerreli.2.1.22 Book Review Thomas S. Kidd, Who Is an Evangelical? The History of a Movement in Crisis (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2019) Kristin Kobes Du Mez Calvin University, Grand Rapids, USA As the title reveals, Thomas Kidd’s Who is an Evangelical? The History of a Movement in Crisis addresses two primary purposes: first, supplying a proper definition of evangelical, and second, explaining what has led to evangelicalism’s present “crisis.” As to “Who is an evangelical?”, Kidd wastes no time in disabusing readers of popular notions that evangelical means Republican, that evangelicals are white, or that evangelicals should be defined by their political allegiances. Such definitions are “historically peculiar,” he contends; originally, evangelicalism “was basically a spiritual movement”—at its heart “a movement about biblical doctrine , the salvation of sinners, and the work of revival” (26, 66). More specifically, Kidd defines evangelicals as “born-again Protestants who cherish the Bible as the Word of God and who emphasize a personal relationship with Jesus Christ through the Holy Spirit.” For Kidd, then, true evangelicals are known by their theological beliefs and by practices such as church attendance or perhaps subscribing to an evangelical magazine. Using these measures, “Hispanic, African American, and other evangelical people of color are just as evangelical as white evangelicals are” (4). Accordingly, Kidd’s history of evangelicalism includes Phillis Wheatley alongside American Religion 2:1 202 slaveholders Jonathan Edwards and George Whitefield, segregationists alongside civil rights activists, and diverse believers the world over, including the post-1965 immigrants who are currently changing the face of evangelicalism in the United States. Kidd’s kaleidoscopic overview of evangelical history extends beyond racial and ethnic diversity. Evangelicals have always disagreed with each other “about a host of theological, cultural, and political issues.” Kidd finds them “at their best” when they used their power “to defend the weak and oppressed,” and finds them generally more problematic when they seek “to impose evangelical practices, ideas, or standards of conscience on the public” (34). Still, he concedes that the line often blurs between the better sort of evangelical advocacy and that which he finds lamentable. And Kidd finds much that is lamentable. Here it is worth noting that Kidd is transparent about the fact that he is no disinterested observer. A distinguished professor of history at Baylor University, writer for The Gospel Coalition, and newly appointed visiting professor at the SBC’s Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, Kidd self-identifies as a white evangelical who is active in his conservative Baptist church in Waco, Texas. Kidd’s religious identity helps explain his perception of the current “crisis,” the book’s second purpose. A #NeverTrump evangelical (who served a stint on Marco Rubio’s religious liberty advisory board), Kidd chides evangelicals for too often following “well-meaning (or crassly opportunistic) politicians” into misguided quests for political power (53). Here, although Kidd defines evangelicalism as a diverse, global phenomenon, the crisis appears to be an American phenomenon. And here, the blame lies with evangelicals themselves, especially certain “Republican insider evangelicals” who lead hapless (or at least deceived) followers into temptation. But Kidd also blames pollsters and the media for perpetuating the erroneous notion that evangelicalism can be reduced to white Republicans who consider themselves religious. In this way, the definitional question at the heart of the book also contributes to the current crisis. Still another layer of crisis has to do with the racial divide within “the evangelical movement”: the failure of Black and white evangelicals to agree on politics . Kidd doesn’t hesitate to call out white evangelical “passivity” and “silence” in the face of lynching, Jim Crow, and the fight for civil rights, a reticence he attributes in part to a wariness of “social gospel” efforts that would distract from “the church’s core business.” (He refrains, however, from pointing out that white evangelicals exhibited no such qualms in their anticommunist activism or their promotion of an array of conservative social causes.) When Kidd acknowledges white evangelicals’ overwhelming support for Trump in 2016, he also notes that Black Protestants...