Understanding Fundamentalism and Evangelicalism: A Review

This book is in effect a sequel to an earlier book by the author, Fundamentalism and American Culture (1980). It actually consists almost entirely of seven papers and lectures that Marsden addressed to specific topics, but he has here reshaped them and provided a framework that makes this a book that stands entirely on its own; unfortunately since the concerns of some of these originally independent chapters do overlap, the book does get somewhat repetitious in spots. Marsden intended to make the subject matter understandable and interesting to all readers, whether new to the study of this aspect of religion in America or other polished professionals like himself. In this readerÆs opinion, he succeeded admirably in achieving this goal.

Overall, the book is written with the almost chatty clarity and simplicity that can in fact be achieved only by an historian who has long struggled with and mastered all the details of his subject. The viewpoint throughout is historical, neutral, and compassionate. One could only guess

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As he states in his Introduction, the vast cultural changes during the half-century from 1870 to 1920 split the evangelical movement into the theological liberals, who sought to maintain better credibility in the modern age and made common cause with the traditionally liberal Protestant denominations, especially the Episcopalians, and the conservatives, who maintained the traditional beliefs and by about 1920 had begun calling themselves fundamentalists. The fundamentalist movement lost popular support by 1930, largely because of the negative publicity generated by the media during the Scopes trial, in which William Jennings Bryan was upstaged by Clarence Darrow (Marsden 59-60), and began to become a separatist movement. By about 1960, when the movement again began to be noticed by the media, separatism had become almost another test of faith (Marsden 5). The chapter is quite rich. To exemplify the kinds of thinkers who shaped Evangelical thought, Marsden provides brief biographies of such ôstarsö as Henry Ward Beecher, Phillips Brooks, Josiah Strong, Russell H. Conwell, and Dwight L. Moody. He covers the central role of missions, the role of women, the rise of the ôsocial gospel,ö the different ways in which the two wings o
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Approximate Word count = 1488
Approximate Pages = 6 (250 words per page)

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