Randall Balmer is a prominent religious historian, erstwhile evangelical, and Episcopal priest. In Saving Faith: How American Christianity Can Reclaim Its Prophetic Voice, he writes from a personal as well as academic perspective. He does not explicitly identify the genre of this small, almost-sermonic book. Nevertheless, it is helpful to note the venerable tradition in which it stands. As the subtitle suggests, and as his chapter “Back to the Bible” elucidates, Balmer looks to the prophets of ancient Israel—notably Amos and Jeremiah—as models for the restoration of vital faithfulness in the church’s witness. In the American context, it was Perry Miller who introduced the term “jeremiad,” in The New England Mind: From Colony to Province (Harvard, 1953), to describe efforts by clergy in the latter half of the 17th century to address the problem of spiritual and moral declension in church and society. Balmer’s opening chapter, “How Bad Is It?”, surveys the current malaise besetting mainline, evangelical, and Roman Catholic traditions alike. While everyone already knows that the answer is plenty bad, the strength of this book is Balmer’s insistence that the woes of the American church are due not solely, or even primarily, to the threat of secularism but to failures within the churches themselves. He has composed a jeremiad in the spirit of those second- and third-generation New England puritan ministers who preached repentance and reform.
Balmer’s analysis of church decline goes deeper than most common explanations. For example, it is true that mainline churches have hemorrhaged membership ever since the 1960s partly because of liberal stances on social issues among church leaders, as conservative members left in anger and progressives switched allegiance to activist organizations. He also looks at it from another angle, blaming historic denominations’ “fixation with ecumenism” for creating a “lowest common denominator” theology with loss of clear ecclesial identity (7). As a participant in national-level ecumenical dialog myself in the late 20th century, I would quibble with this criticism of the quest for Christian unity. While Balmer’s experience may have differed from mine, I witnessed more serious theological debate in those meetings than anywhere else in church life and the documents the movement produced bristle with theological integrity. It seems more likely that the watered-down theology of progressive pulpits is the product of fascination with eclectic spirituality and an overriding concern for social justice issues, both of which render foundational theology irrelevant.
The failures of conservative Protestant churches—now commonly termed “evangelical,” since the more accurate label “fundamentalist” has unfortunately fallen by the wayside—are also well known and alienate growing segments of the population from Christianity. But again, Balmer goes deeper than familiar scandals related to sexual abuse, financial malfeasance, the cult of personality, and right-wing politics. The political mobilization of the Religious Right, born in the 1970s and taking shape with the election of Ronald Reagan, is associated most often with issues like school prayer and abortion. Balmer persuasively demonstrates in historical detail that the underlying force energizing the Religious Right, from its alignment with the Republican party under Reagan to the embrace of Donald Trump as God’s chosen leader, is “unacknowledged and unrepented racism” (11). His analysis here is worth the price of the book.
When he turns briefly to the utter failure of Catholic leadership in the sexual abuse crisis, Balmer is unrelenting in his criticism of bishops and Catholic political figures who now attempt to exercise moral authority in the civic realm. All three major Christian traditions, in their own ways, seek to “claw back their influence in a changing, multicultural society” (19). In four interconnected chapters devoted to “misguided remedies” for the loss of Christian hegemony, Balmer focuses primarily on debunking the Religious Right’s nostalgic imagining of America historically as a “Christian nation.” Informed readers will be familiar with most of his rehearsal of the history of religious diversity, separation of church and state, and lack of orthodox Christian belief among the “founding fathers.” However, it may come as a surprise to many to read a long quote from the 1796 Treaty of Tripoli, ratified unanimously by the United States Senate, which states that “the government of the United States of America is not in any sense founded on the Christian Religion” and that “no pretext arising from religious opinions” should “ever produce” war against that Islamic nation (41). In true jeremiad fashion, Balmer also describes in some detail the complicity of Christians and churches in the oppression of Native peoples and in the institution of slavery and its legacy through the Jim Crow era to “a system of inequality” today. “Any sober assessment of the influence of Christianity in America must also take into account some of the less savory chapters in our history” (52).
Balmer finally offers his wisdom for a positive future for Christianity by affirming Jesus—more so than this or that word in the Bible—as God’s Word. The teachings of Jesus, standing as he does on the shoulders of the prophets, do indeed “have some bearing on contemporary issues such as immigration, homelessness, health care, and prison reform” (59). His penultimate chapter on “Worthy Examples” of reform-minded Christians from the 18th century to recent decades (including the organizers of the 1973 Chicago Declaration of Evangelical Social Concern, the text of which appears as an appendix) sets the stage for his conclusion, “The Case for Prophetic Christianity.” Balmer sees hope for American Christianity if and wherever the church “positions itself at the margins” of society, rather than at centers of power. It’s a fairly vague and familiar admonition. A conservative reader would no doubt hear Balmer sounding like a Democrat in a progressive, shrinking mainline church. In any case, the subtitle of this otherwise compelling jeremiad might better read, Why (not how) American Christianity Must (not can) Reclaim Its Prophetic Voice.
Charles Hambrick-Stowe is an independent scholar.
Charles Hambrick-Stowe
Date Of Review:
December 17, 2024
