Hindus are a logical outlier given the influx of Indians to US universities, especially with their disproportionate representation in the hard sciences. Christians and Jews follow the expected pattern, theologically liberal groups outperforming theologically conservative ones. The trend would have been starker if the author had included datapoints by theological self-identification (“evangelical,” “fundamentalist,” “conservative,” “orthodox,” “liberal,” etc…).

For the most part, these are grim days for Catholic nuns. Convents are closing, nuns are aging and there are relatively few new recruits. But something startling is happening in Nashville, Tenn. The Dominican Sisters of St. Cecilia are seeing a boom in new young sisters: Twenty-seven joined this year and 90 entered over the past five years.

The average of new entrants here is 23. And overall, the average age of the Nashville Dominicans is 36 — four decades younger than the average nun nationwide.

Unlike many older sisters in previous generations, who wear street clothes and live alone, the Nashville Dominicans wear traditional habits and adhere to a strict life of prayer, teaching and silence.

My favorite segment:

. . . Sister Anna Joseph Van Acker says she’s weary of shallow relationships rooted in texting and Twitter — and finds the depth she’s looking for in God. “He has the love you don’t find by someone leaving a message on your Facebook wall,” she says. “It’s way better than someone saying, ‘I’m eating pizza for dinner right now,’ or whatever your Facebook status says right now. You don’t get fulfilled by that. Ultimately, all you want is more. And here, we’re thirsting for more, but we’re constantly receiving more as well.”

Check out the full story here. And be sure to listen to the audio story at the top of the page — it truly brings the narrative to life.

My immediate thought after hearing the story: What would Robert Orsi say?

In his previous work, Randall Balmer—professor of American religious history at Barnard College, Columbia University—has expertly woven highly readable historical chronicle with thoughtful, provocative critique. His latest book, The Making of Evangelicalism: From Revivalism to Politics and Beyond, is no exception; in it, Balmer offers a concise survey of the relationship between evangelicalism and American culture since the 18th century that, while not without flaw, demonstrates his expertise as a historian and his insight as a critic.

Balmer structures The Making of Evangelicalism around four “turning points” in the history of the movement: (1) the transition from a Calvinist to an Arminian theology; (2) the turn from postmillennialism to premillennialism; (3) the construction of an isolationist evangelical subculture at the beginning of the twentieth century; and (4) the rise of the Religious Right. At each of these critical junctures, he argues, evangelicals dramatically re-aligned (either consciously or unconsciously) their beliefs and attitudes. Balmer peppers the study with what he calls “counterfactual speculation”—what-if questions that provide “ample opportunity to imagine a different course” for the evangelical movement (p. 2).

Balmer’s narrative begins in the 18th and 19th centuries with the surge of evangelical revivalism in America. He describes how an Arminian soteriology—the belief that God’s free gift of salvation extends to all people, not just a predetermined elect—supplanted Puritan Calvinism. That prerogative and its attendant focus on human agency, promulgated by evangelists like Charles Grandison Finney, reinforced the broader American culture’s emphasis on self-determinism while also unleashing “a reforming zeal unmatched in the annals of American history” (p. 30). Evangelicals set out to improve society by advocating the abolition of slavery, temperance, and women’s suffrage, but their optimism soon dampened in the wake of the Civil War and the cultural re-alignment caused by industrialization and urbanization.

Here, in Balmer’s estimation, is where evangelicals veered wildly off-track. Spurred by their embrace of dispensational premillennialism (which predicted the impending return of Christ to “rapture” His church) and driven from the the mainline churches over controversies regarding biblical inerrancy and Darwin’s theory of evolution, evangelicals in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century focused on the cultivation of individualistic inward piety and abandoned the amelioration of social ills to more progressive Protestants. Evangelicals retreated from the public sphere, adopted a fundamentalist outlook, and focused on the cultivation of a distinct subcultural identity.

While some might read this subcultural turn as evidence of evangelicalism’s rejection of American culture, Balmer—rooting his analysis in what that turn produced—sees it as evidence of capitulation to mainstream cultural preoccupations like consumer capitalism and the acquisition of political power: Evangelicals in the latter half of the twentieth century, he contends, became preoccupied with selling and defending their subcultural identity (and its attendant orthodoxies). Balmer credits the “neo-evagelical reawakening” of the 1950s with popularizing a marriage of revivalism and corporate culture aimed at “selling” salvation to the masses; he describes the rise of the Religious Right in the 1970s as evangelicalism’s “pandering to power” (p. 73) and rejecting their heritage of progressive activism in favor of a conservative political agenda and a vigilant defense of their subculture.

Balmer caps off his study with an eight-page conclusion that presses evangelicals to “find a better vision for the future” (p. 81) by reclaiming their early 19th-century heritage of social reform. This reveals much about Balmer’s bias; it also points toward the weakness of his study: namely, his incomplete picture of evangelicalism in the late 19th and 20th centuries.

Balmer evinces a clear distaste for evangelicalism’s development since the Civil War: he derides dispensational premillennialism as a “theology of despair” (p. 5), and blames the Religious Right for “deliver[ing] the faith into the captivity of right-wing politics” (p. 76). Such critiques, while important for evangelicals to hear, prove troublesome in the context of Balmer’s study, as they prohibit the writer from detailing some of evangelicalism’s other developments in this era. For instance, Balmer ignores virtually all the global missionary activity set in motion by evangelicals’ interpretation of premillennialism. He neglects to mention the mid-century genesis of evangelical organizations like World Vision, Compassion International, and World Relief—modern-day iterations of the reform work done by evangelicals in the 19th century. And in placing such significance on the rise of the Religious Right, Balmer marginalizes the voices of theologically conservative but politically progressive evangelicals like Jim Wallis (founder of Sojourners) and Ron Sider (founder of Evangelicals for Social Action), which emerged as early as the 1970s. Failure to acknowledge these critical developments in the evangelical movement weakens Balmer’s overall argument.

Despite these obvious flaws, Balmer’s study has some praiseworthy elements. His treatment of the origins of the Religious Right will be eye-opening reading for many. Similarly, his ability as a historian to elucidate connections across the centuries will help lay readers recognize the role that both change and consistency play in historical development; for instance, his linking of George Whitefield’s itinerant evangelism in the late 18th century with Billy Graham’s urban revivalism of the 20th century demonstrates that evangelical preachers “have always understood the importance of communicating directly with the masses” (p.13)—an important realization for those seeking to understand evangelicalism’s continued popularity in America.

Overall, readers looking for a less polemical introductory historical survey should consult Balmer’s earlier Blessed Assurance: A History of Evangelicalism in America (1999); readers seeking a more in-depth critique of the Religious Right should pick up Balmer’s Thy Kingdom Come: How the Religious Right Distorts the Faith and Threatens America (2006). Those wanting a fusion of the two will find The Making of Evangelicalism, while flawed, a sturdy resource.

Note: A version of this review is forthcoming in Brethren in Christ History & Life.