Gillian Clark, Christianity and Roman Society - Huntington University

118 BOOK REVIEWS
evangelicals cultivated a vital Christianity—the main goal according to Bebbington
(252)—expressing their faith through worship, outreach, and mission follows in chapter
three. The next two chapters emphasize the effects of two intellectual movements upon
evangelicalism: the Enlightenment and Romanticism, while chapter six discusses
conservative evangelical reactions to such developments as higher criticism and
Darwinism, and chapter seven outlines evangelical engagement with the pressing social
problems of the day. The final chapter, taking its name from the book’s title, functions as
a closing argument to Bebbington’s case: it is both summation and coup de grace. Ever
the historian, Bebbington oft times traces the changes in evangelical attitudes or practices
during the period. For example, he deftly traces evangelical changes in preaching and
worship styles (90-6) as well as the gradual relaxation of evangelical attitudes towards
recreation (233-9).
For Bebbington, the latter half of the nineteenth century represents both the best and
worse aspects of the evangelical movement. As a movement, evangelicalism continued to
expand globally, all the while shaping social life and politics throughout the West (254-
7). An era in which “public as well as private life was conditioned by evangelical
concerns” (257), this dominance led to positive social accomplishments: combining
social concern with evangelism (99-101), increasing opportunities for women in the
church (216-26), and crusading against sexual exploitation (242-3). Sometimes, however,
Bebbington overstates the case. For example, he gives Northern evangelicals too much
credit for opposing slavery in the United States. Aside from a few holiness groups,
Northern evangelicals were often complicit. Much Northern anti-slavery zeal came from
non-evangelicals such as William Ellery Channing and ex-evangelicals like L. Maria
Child. The Society of Friends also provided much abolitionist fervor in the North.
Despite Bebbington’s embrace of the Friends as evangelical (he cites them as examples
many times), they skirt the boundaries of Bebbington’s own evangelical quadrilateral.
Like George Marsden and Mark Noll, Bebbington also perceives that evangelical
thought began to suffer in this period, chaining itself to Enlightenment thinking
(particularly commonsense philosophy), leading to a decline in Calvinism in favor of
Arminianism (120-39). Bebbington looks askance at these developments, even though
they are largely responsible, through the holiness impetus, for the social efforts he lauds
in the period. Evangelical intellectual change in the nineteenth century is also affected by
“the permeation of Romanticism,” and this shift towards Romantic categories of thought
among some evangelicals was the beginning of liberalism as many evangelicals modified
traditional doctrinal views of God, the atonement and hell, softening them while reemphasizing
the incarnation (166-72). In addition, Bebbington ties together “novel” or
“radical” (184, 213) conservative theological developments such as the faith mission
approach, heightened expectation regarding the second advent of Christ (i.e.
dispensational premillennialism) and a renewed emphasis on personal holiness to “the
Romantic mood that was steadily permeating English-speaking societies all over the
world (212).” Interestingly enough, this issue of evangelical acquiescence to the
intellectual moods of the Enlightenment and Romanticism might offer some helpful
historical pointers in the issues surrounding the recent “emergent church” conversation.