Skip to content

The Apostle: A Forthcoming Post

The Apostle movie posterTonight I watched The Apostle, a fascinating film that portrays American religion. The film (1997 / PG-13) stars Robert Duvall, who also wrote, directed, and financed it. Duvall plays a Holiness preacher who, after fleeing Texas because he killed his wife’s lover, starts a new congregation in a backwater Louisiana town. The plot is pretty thin, but Duvall delivers a powerful performance as the ecstatic preacher and religious entrepreneur Sonny, or “the Apostle E.F.”

I intend to write a post or two about the film’s portrayal of American religion, and in particular how it might be useful in the classroom. If you wish, you can watch the film at Hulu, or embedded below.

You can also see the trailer at Youtube. (Don’t be disappointed by the trailer. Like most trailers, it emphasizes ploy and hype more than acting.)

No comments

By Lincoln Mullen – 31 July 2010

Let Go and Let God? A Survey and Analysis of Keswick Theology / Andrew Naselli

Naselli, Andrew David. Let Go and Let God? A Survey and Analysis of Keswick Theology. Bellingham, WA: Logos Bible Software, forthcoming. 459 pages.

Andrew Naselli has an educational background shared by few theologians. He earned his BA at Baptist College of Ministry (2002), his MA and first PhD at Bob Jones University (2003, 2006), and a second PhD at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School where he was an assistant to prominent Reformed theologian D. A. Carson.

Let Go and Let God? is a rewrite of Naselli’s dissertation published by the popular Bible study software company Logos. As such, it is targeted at an audience composed mostly of seminarians, pastors, and Bible scholars. And although the first section of the book is a survey of the history of the Keswick Movement, the meat of the book is dedicated to critiquing Keswick theology from a Reformed theological perspective. In short, it is a polemic.

It may seem strange for Religion in America to feature Let Go and Let God?. We normally choose works of history, not theology. That being so, this review will focus on the historical rather than the polemical aspects of Let Go and Let God?; it is not our job as historians to make value judgments on the relative merits of the Reformed and Keswickian views of sanctification.

After Naselli’s introduction, he begins with a 94 page survey of the history of the Keswick movement. Naselli’s task is complicated by the nature of the movement as a loosely formed network of hymnwriters, evangelists, and lay authors. The name Keswick comes from the town of Keswick in the Lake District of northern England where the Keswick Convention Trust has held annual conferences from 1875 to the present. Many, though not all, adherents of Keswick theology attended these conferences.

During the meetings, conference attendees sought to consecrate themselves to God. Although they had accepted Christ as their Savior in the past, they still needed to have an additional consecration where they fully yielded themselves to God. Salvation and consecration were separate, non-contiguous events. A newly converted believer who had yet to yield his will to God was labeled a “carnal Christian” for whom sanctification had not yet begun. His life would be characterized by sinful struggles, spiritual defeat, and a lack of Spirit-given power for service. But by “letting go and letting God” that carnal Christian could begin the process of sanctification, gain victory over sin in his life, and receive Spirit-empowerment for ministry.

At the annual conference, prominent pastors, missionaries, and lay leaders would share testimonies about their personal consecration experiences. Indeed, the list of people connected to Keswick theology reads like a Who’s Who of nineteenth century evangelicalism: F.B. Meyer, Charles Armstrong Fox, Andrew Murray, Hudson Taylor, Frances Havergal, and A.T. Pierson. These men and women were representative of Keswick theology at its height. But Naselli traces the origins of Keswick theology back much earlier, through the Higher Life Movement, Oberlin Perfectionism, the Holiness Movement, and Wesleyan Perfectionism. He also describes the influence of Keswick theology in the twentieth century, on institutions like Moody Bible Institute and Dallas Theological Seminary, in the rise of Pentecostalism, and on later evangelicals like R. A. Torrey, C. I. Scofield, Lewis Sperry Chafer, John Walvoord, and Charles Ryrie.

Prior to reading Let Go and Let God? I would have been unable to define Keswick theology, let alone explain the wide-reaching Keswickian influence on evangelical theology. Assuming that other religious historians share my weakness, scholars of recent American religious history should be interested in reading Naselli’s work. Further adding to the value of Let Go and Let God? as a reference work, Naselli has included a thorough, 127-page bibliography on all things Keswick, making it a good starting point for both seminarians and historians who are interested in the Keswick movement.

No comments

By Paul Matzko – 30 July 2010

The Lives of David Brainerd: The Making of an American Evangelical Icon / John A. Grigg

Grigg, John A. The Lives of David Brainerd: The Making of an American Evangelical Icon. New York: Oxford University Press, 2009. 276 pages. ISBN: 978-0-19-537237-3.

Lives of David Brainerd coverAs John Grigg observes, David Brainerd is second only to Jonathan Edwards in evangelicals’ memory of the Great Awakening. His often-republished diary has been a staple of evangelical devotional literature since Edwards published his Life of Brainerd in 1749. Academic historians take note of Brainerd too, both for his role in the controversies surrounding the Awakening and for his missionary efforts among the Delaware Indians. Grigg’s The Lives of David Brainerd is a history of both Brainerds. The book’s first section contains a careful reconstruction of Brainerd’s life, while the second section examines the memory of Brainerd since his death.

Continued…

No comments

By Lincoln Mullen – 21 July 2010

Sunday, July 4th

Each year that July 4th falls on a Sunday, church leaders have to make a series of decisions. Sould we place an American flag on the podium? Should we sing God Bless America or My Country Tis of Thee during the worship service? Do we include a tribute to our military servicemen and servicewomen? Do we recite the Declaration of Independence? The manner in which churches celebrate July 4th depends in large part upon their understanding of American history. Clergy who believe that Revolutionary America was a Christian nation led by orthodox or evangelical founding fathers are far more likely to incorporate the pomp and circumstance of Independence Day celebrations into their congregational worship.

The subject of the Christian roots of America is a contentious issue today. Politicians invoke it in an attempt to curry favor with voters. Schoolboards fight over its inclusion in curricula. This blog has no intention of addressing the rights or wrongs of such a politicized topic.

Politicians and historians ask very different questions. For politicians history often becomes a tool for gaining cultural and political power. The past becomes the servant of the present. Politicized history is simplified history told in stark monochrome, a tale inhabited by clear heroes and obvious villains. But for historians, history comes in shades of grey; we seek to show historical events in their complexity. We try to understand the past on its own terms. Thus the politically-charged question, “Was America a Christian nation?” cannot be answered with a simple yes or a no.

If you’d like to explore the historical role of Christianity in the founding of America, I’d recommend The Search for Christian America. Mark Noll, Nathan Hatch, and George Marsden approach the topic from a historian’s perspective. The Search for Christian America is a golden oldie by now (1983), but it remains the must-read book for understanding the role of Christianity in the founding of the United States. Noll, Hatch, and Marsden – each of whom is an evangelical Christian and a well regarded historian – carve out a middle ground between advocates of an essentially Christian America and those who believe that America was founded purely upon secular, Enlightenment ideals. Pick up a copy for your summer vacation reading list.

3 comments

By Paul Matzko – 4 July 2010

Recent Books on Religion and the Revolution

The American Revolution is a perennial topic for historians, but despite the constant output of books on that subject, there are few good, recent books on religion in the Revolution. Good, that is, in the sense that the book is suitable for undergraduates or general readers and that the author does not have an axe to grind in the style of Glenn Beck. Two new books promise to fill that gap.

American Insurgents cover

The first book is T. H. Breen’s American Insurgents, American Patriots: The Revolution of the People, published this May. The book is not exactly about religion. It is a history of the Revolution from 1774 to 1776, in which Breen argues that the Revolution owes at least as much to the people of the “middling sort” as it does to the founding fathers. A key part of his argument is that the “young, evangelical” colonists started an insurgency because of their religious beliefs. Evangelical, mostly Calvinist religion taught them that their natural rights as Englishmen were in fact given by God; those rights came with God’s command to  preserve them. Religion also explained the duties that monarchs had to fulfill in order to be legitimate. For most people, then, the insurgency was an “appeal to heaven”—in both a Lockean and an evangelical sense. This argument runs throughout the book, but it is particularly the theme of chapter 9, “An Appeal to Heaven: Religion and Rights.”

God of Liberty coverThe second is Thomas S. Kidd’s God of Liberty: A Religious History of the Revolution. This book is still forthcoming, due out in October. Kidd is a professor at Baylor University, and the author of The Great Awakening: The Roots of Evangelical Christianity in Colonial America (2007). If God of Liberty is of the same quality as The Great Awakening, then it promises to become the comprehensive history of religion in the Revolution. We’ll have a review when the book comes out.

1 comment

By Lincoln Mullen – 25 June 2010

Religion by the Numbers in USA Today

Earlier this year USA Today ran an article and an interactive infographic about a recent survey of American religion. The American Religious Identification Survey has released data about the religion affiliations of Americans, finding that most religious groups have lost adherents since 1990.

Continued…

1 comment

By Lincoln Mullen – 21 June 2010

"Such Dead Theology": Ethics, A. L. Eisenhower, and the Brethren in Christ

With this post, Religion in America welcomes its first guest author. Devin Thomas is a recent graduate of Messiah College and a soon-to-be graduate student at Temple University. He studies twentieth-century American religious history, primarily the history of the Brethren in Christ Church. This essay is reposted from his blog The Search for Piety and Obedience.

In his essay “The Holiness Churches: A Significant Ethical Tradition,” historian Donald W. Dayton identifies an essential difference between the holiness movement of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, and the fundamentalist and evangelical traditions of the same period:

“The Holiness movement differs from fundamentalism and evangelicalism in that it is more oriented to ethics and the spiritual life than to a defense of doctrinal orthodoxy. Indeed, one of the distinctive features of the Holiness traditions is that they have tended to raise ethics to the status that fundamentalists have accorded doctrine.”

This orientation toward ethical living (and against doctrinal precision) was evident in the lives of many of members of the Brethren in Christ Church who embraced Wesleyan Holiness teaching at the turn of the century — though few embodied it more fully than Abraham L. Eisenhower, a veterinarian-turned-roving-evangelist-turned-orphanage-caretaker.

Continued…

1 comment

By Devin C. Thomas – 12 June 2010

Hermeneutics and the Supreme Court

Prominent religion professor Stephen Prothero has begun blogging for CNN. In a recent post he reported on a speech given by Justice David Souter. At the 2010 Harvard commencement, Souter called into question the “Originalist” reading of the US Constitution. He accused originalism of being overly facile, taking the text at face value without accounting for the document’s internal contradictions. Souter used the example of the Pentagon Papers to argue that the First Amendment right to freedom of expression was contradicted by the federal government’s constitutional responsibilities to provide for the national defense and to manage foreign policy.

Souter believes that the language of the Constitution is clear, but it remains internally inconsistent because it “embodies the desire of the American people, like most people, to have things both ways. We want order and security, and we want liberty.  And we want not only liberty but equality as well.” This inherent ambiguity alarms Originalists who seek to make the Constitution self-consistent out of a “longing for a world without ambiguity, and for the stability of something unchangeable in human institutions.”

The clash between Originalist justices (eg, Antonin Scalia) and those like David Souter is a matter of epistemology, the question of how they determine what is true. They have adopted different hermeneutics of truth. Continued…

2 comments

By Paul Matzko – 7 June 2010

The Cultural History of American Fundamentalism: A Review Essay

Bendroth, Margaret Lamberts. Fundamentalists in the City: Conflict and Division in Boston’s Churches, 1885-1950. New York: Oxford University Press, 2005.

Carpenter, Joel A. Revive Us Again: The Reawakening of American Fundamentalism. New York: Oxford University Press, 1997.

Larson, Edward J. Summer for the Gods: The Scopes Trial and America’s Continuing Debate Over Science and Religion. New York: Basic Books, 1997.

Marsden, George M. Fundamentalism and American Culture. 2nd ed. New York: Oxford University Press, 2006.

Watt, David Harrington. A Transforming Faith: Explorations of Twentieth-Century American Evangelicalism. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1991.

In 1980 George Marsden published Fundamentalism and American Culture, a history of the first decades of American fundamentalism. The book quickly rose to prominence in the historical profession, provoking new studies of American fundamentalism and contributing to a renewal of interest in American religious history. The book’s timing was fortunate, for it was published as a resurgent fundamentalism was becoming active in politics and society. The rise of the Christian right provoked the question: where did the movement come from?
Continued…

13 comments

By Lincoln Mullen – 1 June 2010

The King James Bible and the World It Made, 1611-2011

Next year is the 400th anniversary of the King James Version of the Bible. The Baylor-based Institute for Studies of Religion will be hosting a conference on April 7th-9th.

So far, the conference organizers have confirmed the participation of quite an impressive list of historians and theologians, including Mark Noll, Philip Jenkins, N. T. Wright, Alister McGrath, and David Bebbington.

From the conference website:

Major conference themes will include the way that the King James Bible created a common literary and religious culture in the English-speaking world; the significance of vernacular translation for Christian growth and development; and the challenges posed by recent declines in biblical literacy and the end of the King James’s dominance as the Bible translation for English-speaking Christians.

So mark your calendars and clear your schedules! To quote one of my professors, this is “arguably the Christian academic conference of the upcoming year.”

No comments

By Paul Matzko – 19 May 2010