My previous post excoriates the snide, tendentious article by Prof. Matthew Sutton as he finds fault (or thinks he does) with a generation of evangelical historians of American evangelicalism—ranging in age from George Marsden to Randall Balmer.
In the interest of lighting a candle rather than cursing the darkness, I offer this reflection on this dozen or so historians, most of whom I have known and valued as inspirations and some as friends, even mentors. I have in mind particularly, and alphabetically, Randall Balmer, Edith Blumhofer, Joel Carpenter, Nathan Hatch, George Marsden, Mark Noll, George Rawlyk, Harry Stout, and Grant Wacker.
(The photo shows Nathan Hatch and Mark Noll listening to the English historian David Bebbington.)
I will refer to them as “the ISAE bunch” because I got to know them through the late, lamented Institute for the Study of American Evangelicals. Housed at Wheaton College, the ISAE was a multi-decade powerhouse of grants, conferences, and books that revolutionized the study of American religion. I studied with George Rawlyk at Queen’s (B.A., 1980) and then attended Wheaton to study with Mark Noll (M.A., 1982). I hung around the Chicago area for another five years (Ph.D., The University of Chicago, 1987) before heading for parts west (Iowa, Manitoba), while still returning frequently for those storied conferences.
Here’s today’s point. A lot of evangelical energy, especially in the United States, goes to apologetics, the defense of the faith through argument. (I have argued that argument is not all there is, or should be, to apologetics, but let’s let that thumbnail sketch of it stand for now.) It’s almost a subculture of interlocking authorities, books, podcasts, debates, and conventions, from Biola University on the west coast to Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary out east, by way of Houston Christian University in between.
However much good is done by all that conversation—and much of it seems to me to be pretty self-contained—two major developments in the American academy stand as apologetics done right.
One of those is the astonishing rise of Christian philosophers and of the subdiscipline of philosophy of religion to positions of respect in the larger guild. William Alston, George Mavrodes, Alvin Plantinga, and Nicholas Wolterstorff, among others, led a renaissance of explicitly Christian philosophy that changed their profession and their field. Indeed, Christians discussing the philosophy of religion with colleagues of various stripes has become one of the most dynamic areas of academic philosophy.
The other apologetic success is the equally astonishing rise of American evangelical historians studying American evangelical history. Before 1980, American religious history was dominated by liberal or lapsed Protestants. (I read through thousands of pages of such authors as part of my introduction to the field at Chicago, culminating in Sydney Ahlstrom’s magisterial A Religious History of the American People, Doubleday, 1975.) Today, historians can publish resentful articles bemoaning evangelicalism as a theme, and evangelical historians themselves, everywhere they look on the landscape of American religious historiography.
What’s most remarkable to me is that these revolutions occurred with very little bloodshed, so to speak. No ruling hegemony had to be overthrown by (verbal) violence. Instead, Alston, Plantinga, Wolterstorff, et al. have been matched by Marsden, Noll, Hatch, et al. in key respects, respects that have prompted, yes, respect from their peers.
I have had the great blessing of hanging around such eminences, so I can testify directly to the traits I here extol. (I didn’t know Bill Alston or George Mavrodes, but Al Plantinga patiently answered email queries of mine for three decades and Nick Wolterstorff has generously mentored an amateur philosopher such as I even longer. I know the historians better.)
In brief, this is a fellowship marked by friendliness, mutual encouragement, appreciation of others’ talent and work, ecumenicity (especially toward non-evangelical Protestants and Roman Catholics), and a welcome to newcomers older and younger alike. Both of these revolutions have been led by giants astonishingly generous with their time toward lesser lights, impressively willing to give credit to others, and always on the lookout, it seems, to offer scholarly companionship to anyone who shares their interest.
Let me use George Marsden as an exemplar.
(In the photo, George is sitting beside Mark Noll.)
In the mid-1980s, George found out from his friend Mark Noll that my master’s thesis, written under Mark’s supervision, focused on E. J. Carnell, formerly a professor and briefly the president of Fuller Theological Seminary. George was working on his history of Fuller and deigned to obtain a copy of my little effort.
He subsequently sent me a kind note of approval—which letter you better believe I have kept pressed between the front cover and first page of my own thesis copy. He cited the thesis and even quoted me by name. Look and see how he has done exactly that with dozens of other theses and thesis-writers over his career. His footnotes are studded liberally with references to out-of-the-way un-prominent historians, including student historians.
Startling was the contrast between the ISAE’s fellowship and what I encountered upon my return to Canada a couple of years later, still in the mid-1980s, to begin research on Canadian evangelicalism for my dissertation. Attending a conference in Toronto in honour of the retirement of Emmanuel College’s John Webster Grant—the one truly superb Canadian church historian of his generation—I was dismayed by the petty suspicion and gossip of the doctoral students and a couple of their mentors I encountered.
Grant himself, I hasten to say, was magnanimous. He let me host him for lunch and quickly made me feel at home again in my native land. He shared bits of academic lore and even some very candid opinions about his own United Church with this youngster eager to make connections in Canada like those I had made through the ISAE in the US.
Otherwise, though, the jockeying for position in a country with precious few job openings (then and now) was both fierce and sad. I hastened back to Chicago and the friendly courtliness of the ISAE gang. I later experienced its like in Canada only once: when George Rawlyk, funded by ISAE money, held the once-ever conference on evangelicalism in Canada a decade later at Queen’s.
This is how apologetics—of a more general, implicit, sort—can succeed, even if (and sometimes particularly if) the agents of it aren’t motivated primarily by apologetical concerns. This is showing, not just telling, what the Christian mind can do.
The University of Pennsylvania historian Bruce Kuklick was a fellow traveler of the ISAE bunch. Clearly not identifying as an evangelical, he liked what he saw in the work of this group, and in the group itself, and sometimes participated in one or another of their wide-ranging projects.
Kuklick more than once chided them, however, for not demonstrating the difference having a Christian mind would make in the writing of history. Having forsworn the “providentialist” history of so much pop evangelical history and biography—“And so God clearly did this wonderful thing and the church rejoiced”—what, then, made what the ISAE bunch wrote any different from what any good historian would write?
I think Kuklick raised a point that I’d like to tackle myself sometime. But for now, I’ll pronounce this double commendation in defense of my ISAE friends.
First, they raised a whole subject matter into prominence. A whole community (or set of communities) previously under-studied now had to be taken seriously by everyone in the guild.
That’s “added value.”
Second, the ISAE bunch approached this subject matter differently. Previous historians who deigned to look at evangelicalism looked at it as, at best, friendly critics, and usually with condescension: the Perry Millers, William McLoughlins, and so on. Here now instead were critical friends: people who knew evangelicalism from the inside out and took it as seriously, and respectfully, as they took their own parents. They thus noticed what others didn’t, and explained what others couldn’t understand.
That’s “added value” also.
(The photo shows George Rawlyk in his prime—1988—trying his best to educate a hapless hanger-on.)
In sum, the ISAE historiographical revolution (like the philosophical one) was a quiet apologetical triumph of Christian scholarship. Do good work—so good that sensible people, at least, will acknowledge it as such. Do good work with goodness: camaraderie, honour toward those doing different things in different ways, circumspection about one’s claims—even if those claims boldly challenge the received wisdom, and courtesy always. Esteem older ones, encourage and empower younger ones. Build a healthy conversation, even a community.
That’s how two entire academic domains were changed by orthodox Christians in the last half-century. I can’t speak here to the so-called Seven Mountain Mandate, but these two hills were taken for the cause of Christ by Christian soldiers using Christian means.
Let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father in heaven. (Matthew 5:16)
They are the apologists I admire most.
(Thanks to ISAE majordomo Dr. Larry Eskridge, himself an accomplished historian, for the photos.)
