Timothy E. W. Gloege.Guaranteed Pure: The Moody Bible Institute, Business, and the Making of Modern Evangelicalism.

Abstract

Definitions of modern evangelicalism are going to need a new suit. Guaranteed Pure: The Moody Bible Institute, Business, and the Making of Modern Evangelicalism follows the institutional history of the Moody Bible Institute (MBI) from its founding by the salesman-preacher Dwight L. Moody in 1889 through its evolution into a robust interdenominational movement with a business-minded faith during the Progressive Era. This is an elegant book about how metaphors of industrial life seeped into the evangelical imagination, from Moody’s early vision of the “Christian worker” in the tumult of strike-weary Chicago to its second life in the matured Moody Bible headquarters as a model of middle-class Christian productivity. In its first generation, Moody envisioned the MBI as a practical training ground for those eager to evangelize the working class. Moody’s unwavering pragmatism chose the language of results over idealism and public good over churchly piety. The Moody Bible became a symbolic bulwark against the “problem of the masses,” the unevangelized working class whose unhappiness with wage-cutting corporate barons threatened Chicago’s fragile peace. Moody’s wealthy allies hoped he would live up to his reputation as a working-class hero and realize his dream of an industrious Christian underclass. Ultimately, Moody’s message would not prove as tempting to the working poor as the revolutionary stirrings of populism or the bald promises of the incipient Pentecostal movement.