Wayward Christian Soldiers: Freeing the Gospel from Political Captivity (review)

Abstract

Reviewed by: Wayward Christian Soldiers: Freeing the Gospel from Political Captivity James G. Gilmore Wayward Christian Soldiers: Freeing the Gospel from Political Captivity. By Charles Marsh. New York: Oxford University Press, 2008; pp. x + 246. $14.95 paper. For scholars studying the relationship between American Christianity and political life, the months leading up to the Iraq War provide some fascinating material. Leading American evangelical Christian figures openly proclaimed from the pulpit that the military invasion of Iraq was a clear moral imperative and that it was the duty of American Christians to support their nation's leadership and their decision to go to war, even as mainline Christian denominations, the Roman Catholic Church, and non American Christians of all traditions were virtually unanimous in unequivocal condemnation. Lines between religiosity, nationalism, and militarism were blurred by an evangelical movement that seemed to conflate America's cause with Christianity's cause. Charles Marsh's contention in Wayward Christian Soldiers is that the lead-up to the war in Iraq represents a flashpoint in the political history of American evangelicalism and should serve as a wake-up call to an American evangelical movement that has become too enmeshed with American nationalism. Drawing on the work of theologians throughout the history of Christianity, his personal experiences growing up the son of a Baptist minister in the South in the 1960s, and Christian scripture itself, he makes the case that contemporary American evangelicalism has lost sight of the social meaning of the Christian message and has thus sacrificed a global, historical, and traditional approach for a nationalist, worldly, and theologically loose one. In short, Wayward Christian Soldiers is written by an evangelical to an evangelical audience, and it represents theological criticism, not rhetorical criticism. Nevertheless, as such it presents opportunities for public affairs scholars, particularly those interested in religion and politics, to engage criticism from a different angle. Marsh urges evangelicals to "enter a season of quietness" in which they reevaluate their politics and theological viewpoints (18). American evangelicals' loudness, Marsh writes, has drowned out the true messages of Christianity. Marsh urges American evangelicals to listen to the global church and its concerns about how American policies are affecting the Christian message—to pass what he calls (after John Kerry's debate line in 2004) the "international test" (165). He urges American evangelicals to return to the [End Page 659] history and tradition of Christian theology and see the religious weaknesses of the nationalist tendencies of the religious right. As a reader with a background in theology and evangelical culture, I found this message refreshing, timely, and well argued. Rhetoricians, however—particularly rhetoricians without a religious background—may find the book difficult to approach. Wayward Christian Soldiers critically engages American evangelical discourse, but does so from the perspective of the theologian rather than the rhetorician. This in itself does not weaken the book's argument, which I found well reasoned and deep in its use of the Christian theological tradition, but it does mean that the book will function differently for the public affairs scholar than it will for the book's primary audience of evangelicals. For example, Marsh assumes that his audience, as evangelical Christians, will agree with him on certain foundational points: the authority of Scripture, the normativity of the Christian theological tradition, and the importance of a personal salvation experience. Nonevangelical readers may be taken aback by these assumptions, particularly his insistence upon the importance of spreading the Christian gospel, but I would argue that these assumptions are necessary for him to establish common ground with his primary audience so that he may present his argument as a critique from within rather than from without. Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the theological leader of the church movement that opposed the nationalism and racism of the state churches in Nazi Germany, looms large in Wayward Christian Soldiers as a counterpoint to the American evangelicals. Marsh constructs Bonhoeffer as an example of what he thinks Christianity should be—resistant to easy ideologies of nationalism, continually engaging Christian theology and listening to God, willing to martyr himself rather than support a corrupt Nazi regime—and then presents the American evangelicals as unwilling to live up to his example...