Viewpoint Sample
The Pastor's Bookshelf
by Mark Sidwell
Understanding Fundamentalism and Evangelicalism by George M. Marsden. Grand
Rapids: William B. Eerdmans, 1991. 208 pp.
Perhaps because of his own evangelical background, historian George Marsden has shown keener insight than most writers concerning the nature of fundamentalism. His previous outstanding works (notably the book that made his scholarly reputation, Fundamentalism and American Culture, and his more recent Reforming Fundamentalism: Fuller Seminary and the New Evangelicalism) show a solid grasp of the theological, as well as the cultural and historical, issues that underlie the movement. In particular, as both his history of Fuller Seminary and the title of this work suggest, Marsden also understands the differences between modern (post-1950s) fundamentalism and evangelicalism (for which fundamentalists use the slightly dated term "new evangelicalism"). Regardless of whether one agrees with Marsden's views and conclusions, one cannot doubt that he knows his subject.
Understanding Fundamentalism and Evangelicalism is actually a revised compilation of essays and journal articles that Marsden has written. To be honest, the seams show as one reads through the book; a more accurate–though less salable–title might have been Various Essays Concerning Fundamentalism and Evangelicalism. As a whole, the book is slightly patchwork; its individual parts, however, contain challenging and provocative interpretations. It is written in clear and lucid prose, although one must protest the sometimes jarring "gender-neutral language"; "spokesperson" is bad enough, but "peoplehood" is an abomination.
The first chapter, a survey of American evangelicalism from 1870 to 1920, is adapted from Marsden's contribution to Eerdman's Handbook to the History of Christianity in America. As such, it sketches the same themes and topics as Fundamentalism and American Culture, thereby offering a brief summary of Marsden's views. His major thesis, or theme, is that fundamentalism continued to reflect the mainstream standards of society and thought of the nineteenth century long after the mainstream had moved in the twentieth; in other words, society moved but fundamentalism did not. (Two later articles, "The Evangelical Love Affair with Enlightenment Science" and "Why Creation Science?", discuss this same idea as it applies particularly to scientific thought.) Likewise his second chapter, "Evangelicalism since 1930: Unity and Diversity," roughly parallels Reforming Fundamentalism, discussing fundamentalism's "institutionalization" as it abandoned the major denominations and underwent the stressful changes that the new evangelicalism of Billy Graham and others brought to the movement in the 1950s, climaxing with evangelical fragmentation by the 1970s (with a focus on Jerry Falwell) and a survey of differing interpretations concerning the work of Presbyterian fundamentalist J. Gresham Machen.
All of this is not to say that Marsden agrees with all historical interpretations of contemporary fundamentalism. He still considers Jerry Falwell a fundamentalist. He still considers Jerry Falwell a fundamentalist because of his dispensationalist Baptist position and Falwell's distancing himself from Billy Graham. Marsden nonetheless does state that "Falwell was in fact a reformer of fundamentalism, whose role in some ways paralleled that of Graham and his new evangelical cohorts of the 1950s. 'Neo-fundamentalist' is an appropriate term for Falwell's movement." And in the discussion of the opposition of militant fundamentalists to Falwell, he writes, "In this dispute, the stricter fundamentalists were probably correct that Falwell's movement was similar to the new-evangelical movement of the 1940s and 1950s."
Although he does not always sympathize with fundamentalist thought, he at least credits it with being thought and not some expression of a reactionary socio-economic subculture. In one pointed comment he notes, "For the fundamentalist, what one believes is of the utmost importance. . . . The American intellectual establishment, in contrast, has a tendency to reduce beliefs to something else, hence devaluing the importance of ideas as such. So, for instance, fundamentalist ideas themselves have long been presented as though they were 'really' expressions of some social or class interest. It seems fair to inquire in such cases as to who is really the anti-intellectual."
Marsden's overall grasp of the nature of fundamentalism and evangelicalism is so firm that one should at least consider his observations. For example, when he describes characteristics of strict fundamentalism as "separatism, insistence on strict doctrinal purity, and incivility towards persons with other beliefs," the first two are so clearly on the mark that fundamentalists need to ponder whether they are guilty of the third as well. In brief, Marsden's Understanding Fundamentalism and Evangelicalism is a work of provocative interpretation for discussion; it is a creditable addition to evangelical historical scholarship. It remains to the fundamentalist to weigh those interpretations, to discard those that are invalid, and to profit by those whose validity they admit.
Other books reviewed in this issue.
George Whitefield: God's Anointed Servant in the Great Revival of the Eighteenth Century by Arnold Dallimore. Westchester, Ill.: Crossway Books, 1990. 219 pp.
Billy Sunday and the Redemption of Urban America by Lyle W. Dorsett. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1991. 224 pp.