Gillian Clark, Christianity and Roman Society - Huntington University

150 BOOK REVIEWS
Marsden ended his original version of this work by noting fundamentalists’ inability
to regain cultural dominance; but in his new epilogue, he examines fundamentalism’s
recent success in transforming itself into the political and cultural force that it was unable
to become in the 1920s. He notes that in contrast to the fundamentalists of the earlytwentieth
century, modern “fundamentalistic evangelicals” such as Jerry Falwell and Pat
Robertson have fought their cultural battles in the political, rather than in the
ecclesiastical, sphere. Marsden argues that fundamentalists shifted their focus of attention
to politics partly because the federal government rapidly expanded in the post-war era,
making debates over federal legislation far more significant than they had been in the
1920s. When the Supreme Court issued a series of decisions in the mid-twentieth century
that mandated an increased separation of religion from public life and appeared to
legitimate a permissive trend in American sexual morality, fundamentalists created a
political movement to reverse these developments. Yet Marsden recognizes that modern
fundamentalism is more than a political movement, so in addition to discussing
fundamentalist politics, he examines the complexities of modern fundamentalism and
evangelicalism, and analyzes the reasons for the continuing appeal of these religious
groups.
The thirty pages of new material in Marsden’s updated edition of Fundamentalism
and American Culture provide a good overview of the current scholarship on
contemporary evangelicalism and its political dimension. Marsden’s careful, nuanced
analysis of modern religious trends reflects the seasoned observations of a senior scholar
in the field. While a thirty-page epilogue is not enough space for Marsden to present
original research or posit new methods of interpretation, historians of modern American
religion will view Marsden’s thoughtful analysis of contemporary evangelicalism as a
welcome addition to his classic study of fundamentalist origins.
Todd M. Kerstetter, God’s Country, Uncle Sam’s Land: Faith and Conflict in
the American West. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2006. Pp. viii + 213.
$36.00.
Reviewed by Douglas Firth Anderson, Northwestern College (IA)
The recent addition of Warren Jeffs to the FBI’s “Ten Most Wanted Fugitives” list makes
Todd Kerstetter’s new book especially timely. Jeffs is the leader of some 10,000
adherents of the Fundamentalist Latter Day Saints (FLDS) in southern Utah and northern
Arizona. He promotes the doctrine of “plural marriage,” banned by the Church of Jesus
Christ of Latter-day Saints (CJCLDS) since 1890. According to the Christian Science
Monitor (9 May 2006), Jeffs is charged with “sexual assault of underage girls and with
arranging ‘spiritual’ marriages for girls and older men.” One academic consulted by the