Since 2016, numerous scholars have observed that Donald Trump’s rise to power was made possible by the overwhelming support of white evangelicals. In Christianity’s American Fate: How Religion Became More Conservative and Society More Secular, David A. Hollinger takes a broader approach by arguing that in order to understand the contemporary political moment in the United States, one must first understand the conditions that made evangelicalism “synonymous with Christianity writ large” (2). In the pages that follow, Hollinger chronicles the intellectual history of the 20th century, highlighting the events and conditions that led to the relatively rapid decline of Mainline Protestantism (which he terms “ecumenical” Protestantism) in the United States, arguing that the rise of evangelicalism must be understood in “dialectical relationship with another Protestantism” (3). Hollinger’s work is both analytic and narrative, weaving together the events of the 20th century to demonstrate the essential role that ecumenical Protestants played not only in the rise of the religious right, but also in the growing number of secular Americans identifying as what he calls “post-Protestant” (4).
Hollinger’s argument hinges on the central claim that America is home to two families of Protestants, ecumenical and evangelical, shaped in response to the intellectual movements of their time. Movements such as the rise of Darwinian evolution and German higher criticism, along with the increase in ecumenical colleges and universities in the 18th century, helped solidify a “two-party Protestantism” (22). These two streams sometimes engaged each other directly, but otherwise coexisted to maintain the “Protestant cultural hegemony” until it was disrupted in the years leading to the 1960s and the decline of ecumenical Protestantism in the United States (26). While Hollinger identifies a number of changes during the 20th century that challenge the “Protestant Establishment,” he claims that there are two major factors, both ethnoreligious in nature, that greatly influence the shifting landscape of ecumenical Protestantism and the subsequent rise of evangelical influence in the early 20th century.
The first factor, and the focus of his third chapter, is the entry of Jewish immigrants into the United States and their growing representation in positions of cultural power. In particular, Hollinger argues the arrival of refugee intellectuals in the interwar years transformed the ethnoreligious makeup of the academic elite as Jewish philosophers and scientists began to overcome the anti-Semitic barriers to academic appointments in the country’s leading colleges and universities. Due to the influence of Jewish voices, the academy is forced to contend with its Protestant epistemic bias and undergo a process of “de-Christianization” in favor of a more secular orientation. Hollinger contends that while there were many who resisted this move towards religion-free engagement of the disciplines, pluralist voices in defense of a more inclusive America “inspire cosmopolitan striving amongst Anglo-Protestants” (32).
In chapter 4, Hollinger explores the influence of ecumenical missionaries whose experiences developed an ethos of religious ecumenism and ethno-racial inclusion. Similar to the influence of Jews at home, American missionaries abroad encountered diversity in new ways that challenged the centrality of American and Protestant essentialism. In a phenomenon that he calls the “missionary boomerang,” American missionaries went overseas and returned as “informal ambassadors from foreign peoples to Americans and vocal advocates of tolerance and inclusion” (47). Hollinger outlines the stories of ecumenical missionaries such as Pearl Buck, John Hersey, Henry Luce, Gallen Fisher, and William A. Eddy, who returned to the United States after seeing globalism at work, becoming vocal advocates for uplifting religious pluralism, antiracism, decolonization, and multiculturalism as American values. Ecumenical churches were irrevocably changed by the witness of these missionaries who testified to the scope of humankind and inspired a “tide of empathic identification with non-Christian peoples” (61).
Given the influence of both Jewish Americans and the missionary boomerang, ecumenical leaders were challenged with developing a church that celebrated globalism and the diversification of American society while remaining true to its theological values. This more cosmopolitan Protestantism dovetailed with the rise of the social gospel movement and modernism that flourished in the Progressive era. At the same time the ecumenical Protestants committed themselves to antiracist and globalist initiatives, the fundamentalist movement gains traction. Theologians like Reinhold Neibuhr, Paul Tillich, and other prominent scholars at liberal seminaries lead the theological charge for a more cosmopolitan Protestantism while paying little attention to their evangelical counterparts who were adopting their own form of social and economic modernization. Hollinger points out that it was hard for ecumenical intellectuals to ignore the growing influence of Billy Graham, but stood by their theological approaches, assuming that “provinciality seemed to mark evangelicals as destined for oblivion” (89). Hollinger argues that this was ecumenical Protestantism’s fatal flaw, for while “Billy Graham was making Christianity simpler and more accessible, the ecumenical intelligentsia was making it more demanding” (95). This reality, alongside the growth of higher education, an increasingly secular society, and the sheer inability to maintain youth membership into adulthood, brought the decline of ecumenical Protestantism just as evangelicalism rapidly grew in membership.
Hollinger’s portrayal of the religious history of the 20th century is a story of two Protestantisms fighting for the ability to claim their own as the heralds of American Christianity.
He attempts to demonstrate that the shift in cultural authority between ecumenicals and evangelicals is to be understood dialectically—the social, political, and theological demands of ecumenical Protestantism directly contribute to the rise of an evangelicalism marked by a continued interest in biblical inerrancy, Protestant essentialism, and American nationalism. Hollinger makes this point to demonstrate that these evangelical commitments that are so apparent in the contemporary religious right are not new, but are decades in the making. The election of Donald Trump and the events of January 6, 2021, are not outliers in a blameless evangelical past, but are indicative of an evangelical tradition that thrived on the remains of ecumenical progressivism and idealism.
Overall, Christianity’s American Fate is an impressive work of intellectual history that aptly brings to the forefront how much the United States has been shaped by the internal debate between two Protestantisms. The book has much to offer in its thought-provoking analysis of the relationship between a wide variety of religious groups in the United States, from evangelicals to Mainliners to those adhering to a more secular worldview.
Sara Tillema is PhD candidate in the Study of Religion at the University of California, Davis.
Sara Tillema
Date Of Review:
July 31, 2023