Evangelical Reading Research Articles

Homespun Gospel: The Triumph of Sentimentality in Contemporary American EvangelicalismTodd M.Brenneman. New York: Oxford University Press, 2014.

Homespun Gospel: The Triumph of Sentimentality in Contemporary American Evangelicalism Todd M. Brenneman. New York: Oxford University Press, 2014.Though journalistic books, which point out the more alarming pronouncements of the Religious Right or the wackier side of evangelical pop culture, tend to capture public attention, the past few decades have seen the emergence of a body of thoughtful, serious work that maps the historical and sociological nuances of American evangelicalism and its imbrications with broader American society and polity. While the framework for much of this scholarship tends to see evangelicalism through the framework of beliefs, institutions, and practices, much of the best recent work in this area focuses on its tastes and its characteristic ways of making sense of things, especially its ways of articulating how the Christian individual should understand her or him self in relation to family, society, and history (all understood in both their natural and supernatural aspects). Todd Brenne man's Homespun Gospel reinforces the argument that approaching evangelical culture through the lens of its aesthetics and cultural products, its preferred tropes and discourses and the responses they reliably invoke, is an essential supplement to the attempt to understand it through its doctrines, institutions, and public controversies.Brenneman argues that though evangelical political leaders and polemicists attract the most attention, evangelicals themselves actually spend more time with ostensibly apolitical writers and pastors such as Max Lucado, Joel Osteen, and Rick Warren. These inspirational writers rarely argue or debate but instead wrap their readers in the simple truth that God desperately loves them and wants the best for them while framing this idea in nostalgically-tinged images of home, family, and the innocence of children. The persuasive power of inspirational rhetoric, Brenneman argues, comes not through its ability to weigh the relative merits or evidentiary claims or competing perspectives but through its invocation of these emotion-laden nostalgic tropes to bypass the head and get straight to the heart, where truth can be felt and not merely known. Brenneman argues that Lucado, Warren, Osteen, and their ilk promote a kind of therapeutic evangelicalism organized around God's desire to heal and help his faithful in their lives, an approach that is not only scrip tur ally questionable but that tends to preclude (with its overweening emphasis on the individual) the attention to social justice that animated earlier versions of American evangelicalism.Brenne man's discussions of sentimentality in evangelical inspirational writing complements other recent work in the field. Its emphasis on the primacy of an aesthetic model of evangelical decision making meshes well with, for example, Lynn Neal's excellent parsing of the aesthetics (and subjective functions) of evangelical reading in her Romancing God (2006). His observations about the pervasiveness of tropic models that undergird this kind of discourse aligns with George Lakoff's classic arguments in Moral Politics (1997), and it reinforces arguments explored in the two best literary critical works on evangelical fiction, works that explore the way that evangelical popular hermeneutics are informed by particular histories of pedagogy and discursive practice: Amy Frykholm's Rapture Culture (2007) and Greg Jackson's even richer historical work, The Word and its Witness (2008). …

The Evangelical Press, Harriet Beecher Stowe, and the Human Medium

The Evangelical Press, Harriet Beecher Stowe, and the Human Medium Jerome Tharaud (bio) Between 1835 and the Publication of the Final installment of Uncle Tom’s Cabin in the National Era in April 1852, Harriet Beecher Stowe published some three dozen pieces in the New-York Evangelist (1830–1902), an influential evangelical weekly newspaper known for its abolitionist views.1 This body of articles—a generic smorgasbord that includes temperance tales, religious parables and allegories, sentimental fiction, spiritual biography, literary criticism, Biblical fiction, poetry, and antislavery sketches—represents a substantial portion of Stowe’s publications in periodicals and gift-books during this period, and by far the largest number of her articles published in any single publication.2 Stowe’s work for Godey’s Lady’s Book and the National Era are well known to literary historians (Hedrick 133, 135–37; Smith), but her work for the Evangelist has received no sustained critical attention.3 Recent scholarship by Candy Gunther Brown, Gregory S. Jackson, and David Paul Nord (among others) has explored the considerable influence of religious print culture, and Protestant evangelical print culture in particular, on nineteenth-century American culture and literature. This scholarship provides an opportunity to examine Stowe’s work for the Evangelist more closely. What does it mean that the most popular novelist of the nineteenth century received her literary apprenticeship in one of the period’s most influential evangelical weeklies? And how does it put pressure on literary histories that narrate the development of the literary or the aesthetic precisely in terms of the decline or secularization of the religious?4 In the present essay my aim is not to claim Stowe as an evangelical—a Christian who affirms the four doctrinal positions outlined in [End Page 25] David W. Bebbington’s classic definition of evangelicalism: “conversionism,” “crucicentrism,” “activism,” and “biblicentrism” (3). As scholars have noted, Stowe’s shifting religious beliefs and self-identification make it difficult to label her clearly (Brown, Word 18). Nor do I attempt to determine the role of Stowe’s theology in her decision to publish in the Evangelist. A number of factors undoubtedly influenced her decision, including the fact that the paper paid well (Hedrick 139). Rather than interpreting Stowe’s personal beliefs and motivations, I focus on her Evangelist pieces themselves and how they engage a set of thematic concerns, formal strategies, and assumptions about the role of art in society prevalent in the evangelical press. After a brief glance at Stowe’s early use of writing as a religious instrument and an overview of her work for the Evangelist, the essay sketches the paper’s emergence in the 1830s and the events that positioned it as an important and controversial evangelical publication when Stowe published her first article there in May 1835. The dozens of articles Stowe published in the Evangelist over the next two decades represent a literary apprenticeship in which she taught herself to write entertaining yet salient social commentary that would appeal to the paper’s evangelical audience, and then to place that writing strategically in venues where it would circulate widely and engage a broad range of readers. It is no exaggeration to say that without the Evangelist there likely would have been no Uncle Tom’s Cabin, for it was there that Stowe honed her “vocation to preach on paper” (qtd. in Hedrick 64). I use the concept of “mediation” (Mitchell and Hansen xx–xxii) to focus on three distinct ways in which print functioned in what Michael Warner has called the “evangelical public sphere.” The first involves print’s ability to collapse physical distance by connecting a spatially dispersed evangelical reading public to each other and to the objects of their social concern, resulting in a form of “imagined community” that is distinct from the secular national imaginary defined by Benedict Anderson (6–7); the second involves print’s capacity to serve as an instrument of moral truth, untrammeled by formal complexity or “merely” aesthetic concerns; and the third involves claims that a divine power participates in the creation and of a text and lends it a special social agency. Stowe’s Evangelist pieces engage each of these forms of mediation...

A Determined and Subjective Love: Agreeing with Luther's Evangelical Reading of Hosea 2

AbstractA close reading of Hosea 2 seems to reveal some inconsistencies in a feminist approach to this particular text. This essay challenges a particular feministic reading of Hosea 2 with an analysis that contends for the hearing of Yahweh's voice as he addresses Israel with a determined and subjective love. The relationship between Hosea and Gomer is used by Yahweh as a sign-act and in no way should the psychology of Hosea and Gomer take centre stage in the reading of this text. When the text speaks, it reveals that Yahweh's love is enduring, proactive and emotional. It also sets the tone for how we may continue to understand the tension between command and promise which may give cause to reshape the responsibility of today's theologians and church leaders. Eventually this text rests on the promise of Yahweh, by way of command, that there will in fact be a great day of blessing to come for his people (Hos 1:11; 3:5).

The Bible Made Impossible: Why Biblicism Is Not a Truly Evangelical Reading of Scripture by Christian Smith

The Bible Made Impossible: Why Biblicism Is Not a Truly Evangelical Reading of Scripture by Christian Smith

The Bible Made Impossible: Why Biblicism Is Not a Truly Evangelical Reading of Scripture – By Christian Smith

The Bible Made Impossible: Why Biblicism Is Not a Truly Evangelical Reading of Scripture – By Christian Smith

“Pen and Ink Communion”: Evangelical Reading and Writing in Antebellum America

In their shared, mutually supportive reading and writing practices, antebellum evangelicals like the Smith family prepared themselves for national conversion and global millennium. Institutionalizing the spiritual and intellectual rewards of their “pen and ink communion” in churches, schools, moral reform societies, and family relationships, they helped advance a powerful evangelicalism that continues to shape our world today.

On Spiritual Theology: A Primer

The intent of this article is to introduce an evangelical reading audience to the historical discipline of “spiritual theology.” After offering a history of the development of “spiritual theology” the article concerns itself with the proper nature of spiritual theology by way of its three sources: Scripture, systematic theology, and church history. Greater attention is given to church history since it is here that evangelicals have proven historically to be least proficient. The article concludes by stating that evangelical scholars need to develop an appropriate “hermeneutic of spiritual theology.”

To Secure the Blessings

The Constitution’s Preamble states, in part: “We the people of the United States, in order to… secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.” While the word “blessings” in this context might mean simply benefits, it might have a more specifically ethical and dispositional meaning, such as benefits for which we should be grateful. Those who favor an evangelical reading of the Constitution might further specify the ethical and dispositional meaning, so that “blessings” recalls God’s promise to Abraham and Israel and the relationship that this promise initiates. On this evangelical reading, the Preamble’s aspiration to blessings fits within a familiar Biblical warrant for American exceptionalism.An ampler Biblical account of blessings (and curses), however, questions this warrant. The ampler account is ironizing; it tends to reveal incongruities throughout our picture of ourselves as blessed and as blessing others. Relocating or transposing the Preamble’s Blessings Clause into this Biblical frame has a salutary ironizing effect, enabling us to see the whole project of securing the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity in a more critical light. Without irony, what is otherwise virtuous – our disposition to gratitude – is tainted by the vice of complaceny. Without gratitude, the virtue in irony declines into a self-congratulatory sarcasm.Suppose we read the Preamble’s Blessings Clause in light of Biblical stories about how Jacob secured blessings to himself and his posterity. In this reading, the framers of the law (“fathers”) suppose that they “secure the blessings” to and for the generations to come, but the children actually “secure the blessings” from the “fathers” (by deceit if necessary). “To secure the blessings” it is necessary to overthrow the law (albeit for the sake of realizing it). Ultimately, the blessings are not “secure,” but instead open or at risk in a way that gives depth of significance to life and law. Life graced with blessings is not “secure,” and the prosperity or abundance in “blessings” offers no immunity against the human circumstances of pain, loss, grief, anxiety, and guilt. The ground and source of the blessings upon “ourselves and our posterity” require that “we the people” mediate blessings to all humankind; but we exchange blessings for curses if do not act with humility and in awareness of our limitations and mixed motives.

Lady Lucy Barry and Evangelical Reading on the First Franklin Expedition

This article examines the relationship between Lady Lucy Barry and John Franklin. Barry has been dismissed by other writers as a fanatic who had only a passing influence on the explorer’s religious beliefs. Though their friendship ended after Franklin’s marriage to Eleanor Porden in August 1823, Barry’s Evangelical faith, as expressed through the books she presented to the members of the first Franklin expedition, had already shaped both Franklin’s own understanding of his Arctic experiences and the literary representation of them in his Narrative of a Journey to the Shores of the Polar Sea in the Years 1819, 20, 21, and 22 . In the narrative, both Franklin and his companion John Richardson affirmed the great value of religious books and practices in helping them to endure the sufferings of the journey. As a result, the public came to revere Arctic explorers as Christian heroes. Without Lady Lucy Barry and her books, Arctic exploration might never have come to hold such an important place in 19th-century British culture.

The dignity of the human person: Towards an evangelical reading of the theology of personhood of Vatican II

Present-day magisterial Roman Catholicism offers an interesting perspective on personhood. Recent interest in personhood has been fostered by Vatican II (1962-1965), especially the ‘Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World’ (Gaudium et spes) and the ‘Declaration on Religious Freedom’ (Dignitatis humanae). The anthropological thrust of Vatican II is particularly referred to the dignity of the human person, her mystery, and vocation. In all these aspects of personhood, the Church plays a fundamental role. In fact, the (Roman) Church is seen as safeguarding the dignity of the person , shedding light on the mystery of the person, and is the place where the person can fully accomplish his vocation. While the focus seems to be on the person, the Church is always in the background.

Thomas Aquinas and Karl Barth: Sacred Doctrine and the Natural Knowledge of God by Eugene F. Rogers, Jr.

320 BOOK REVIEWS Spirit as charity in his mission to men was later rejected by Thomas Aquinas and other thirteenth-century Scholastics); their absence, however, is completely understandable given the length of the book even without this extension . Furthermore, however, many arguments are made from silencenotoriously the weakest form of argument. Thus, sexual equality in marriage is extrapolated from Lombard's silence (2:656), and Colish claims that Lombard holds that the penitent is the minister of the sacrament of penance (2:760), which Lombard never states in so many words. Peter Lombard in the Sentences does not hold that the minister of the sacrament of anointing is a bishop, as Colish contends (labeling this "idiosyncratic," 2:613), although he does mention that the oil must be consecrated by a bishop (which was certainly the practice in Lombard's time, as in the Latin Church until recently). Further, when Lombard lists the seven grades of holy orders, he does not present cantor or prophet (vatis) among them, but adds them afterwards as something of an appendix. Colish writes that Lombard was "unique" in listing the cantor as an office or dignity (2:625), despite the fact that Lombard's sources (Isidore's Etymologiae and Hugh of Saint Victor's De sacramentis) both do so, along with Gregory the Great. In spite of some confusion in its presentation, however, this work's strong points outweigh its weaknesses. The broad strokes and the breadth of the consideration make it particularly useful as a way of approaching the Sentences for the first time; the presentation of the historical context and the state of each theological question synthesizes quite a lot of material that is scattered over many books and articles; and were this the book's only contribution it would still be of great value. The work as a whole, while flawed in scattered details and occasionally giving in to the (relatively understandable) tendency to rewrite Lombard, or at least appeal from Lombard to "Lombard better informed" (so that his opinions may always agree with the author's own), is certainly magisterial in its own right and must earn for its author the title of sententiaria. W BECKET SOULE, 0.P. Blackfriars Cambridge, England Thomas Aquinas and Karl Barth: Sacred Doctrine and the Natural Knowledge of God. By EUGENE F. ROGERS, JR. Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 1995. Pp. xvii + 248. $34.95 (cloth). ISBN 0-268-01889-8. This remarkable book makes a complex and detailed case for a bold yet modest thesis: there is convergence between Aquinas and Barth on natural knowledge of God. The thesis is bold because it will strike many students of BOOK REVIEWS 321 Aquinas and Barth as counter-intuitive. This is the very reason Rogers's case must be complex and detailed. And yet, despite this complexity, Rogers's thesis is ultimately quite modest and persuasive-even for those like myself who will quibble with details. Rogers has "three audiences and two agendas" (c. 1). He addresses an evangelical reading of Thomas to Catholics, an Anselmian (as I will call it, although Rogers does not) reading of Barth to Protestants, and a theological reading of Thomas (one that aims "to consider nothing God-forsaken") to neopragmatists in religious studies departments. Rogers only addresses the first two audiences directly, leaving open a variety of interesting questions about how the convergence for which Rogers argues would function in the modern university. Thus, Rogers's two agendas are "first to interpret Thomas, and also to compare him to Barth" (5)-the first agenda taking up two-thirds ofthe book. Thus, part 1 offers a reading of Summa Theologiae I, q. 1, aa. 1-10 under the hypothesis that "the more Aristotelian [sacred doctrine] is, the more scriptural it is, and the more Aristotelian it is, the more christoform it is" (9, 17). Part 2 tests this hypothesis by studying the full context of Aquinas's commentary on Romans 1:20. Part 3 takes up Thomist and Barthian objections, gives (Rogers's account of) Thomas's replies, and concludes with "The Common Thomas of Barth and Vatican I." Let me reconsider Rogers's argument in three phases...

Beyond Catharine Beecher: Female Education in the Antebellum Period

Previous articleNext article No AccessRevisions/ReportsBeyond Catharine Beecher: Female Education in the Antebellum PeriodMaris A. Vinovskis, and Richard M. BernardMaris A. Vinovskis Search for more articles by this author , and Richard M. Bernard Search for more articles by this author PDFPDF PLUS Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditEmail SectionsMoreDetailsFiguresReferencesCited by Signs Volume 3, Number 4Summer, 1978 Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1086/493543 Views: 58Total views on this site Citations: 12Citations are reported from Crossref Copyright 1978 The University of ChicagoPDF download Crossref reports the following articles citing this article:Biljana Oklopcic Regional Faulkner: Faulkner and the South, (May 2014): 13–55.https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-662-43703-2_2Mary Kelley “Pen and Ink Communion”: Evangelical Reading and Writing in Antebellum America, The New England Quarterly 84, no.44 (Dec 2011): 555–587.https://doi.org/10.1162/TNEQ_a_00130Gerald F. Moran, Maris A. Vinovskis Literacy, Common Schools, and High Schools in Colonial and Antebellum America, (Jan 2008): 17–46.https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230610460_2S. J. Kleinberg Family and Migration in the Era of Domesticity, (Jan 1999): 34–57.https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-27698-1_3Mary Kelley “Vindicating the Equality of Female Intellect”: Women and Authority in the Early Republic, Prospects 17 (Jul 2009): 1–27.https://doi.org/10.1017/S0361233300004646David Tyack, Elisabeth Hansot Silence and Policy Talk, Educational Researcher 17, no.33 (Jul 2016): 33–41.https://doi.org/10.3102/0013189X017003033Maris A. Vinovskis Family and Schooling in Colonial and Nineteenth-Century America, Journal of Family History 12, no.1-31-3 (Mar 1987): 19–37.https://doi.org/10.1177/036319908701200102 Myra H. Strober , and Audri Gordon Lanford The Feminization of Public School Teaching: Cross-Sectional Analysis, 1850-1880, Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society 11, no.22 (Oct 2015): 212–235.https://doi.org/10.1086/494217Jane Rendall Educating Hearts and Minds, (Jan 1985): 108–149.https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-17733-2_5Carl F. Kaestle Chapter 1: The History of Literacy and the History of Readers, Review of Research in Education 12, no.11 (Jun 2016): 11–53.https://doi.org/10.3102/0091732X012001011 Bibliography, (Jan 1981): 233–245.https://doi.org/10.1016/B978-0-12-722040-6.50021-4MYRA H. STROBER, LAURA BEST THE FEMALE/MALE SALARY DIFFERENTIAL IN PUBLIC SCHOOLS: SOME LESSONS FROM SAN FRANCISCO, 1879, Economic Inquiry 17, no.22 (Apr 1979): 218–236.https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1465-7295.1979.tb00309.x