The Society for the Advancement of Ecclesiological Theology

August 21, 2009 by Gerald Hiestand

Millinerd on Hart’s Deconstructing Evangelicalism

Matthew Milliner (of Millinerd fame) has a very nice review of David Hart’s Deconstructing Evangelicalism: Conservative Protestantism in the age of Billy Graham. Putting it mildly, Hart is not sympathetic to North American evangelicalism. For Hart, there is no substantive connection between Edwards (good) and contemporary evangelicalism (bad). The organic connection between Edwards and contemporary evangelicalism is a “fantasy” – a creation of historians such as Marsden and Noll. Critiquing Hart’s revisionist history, Matt insightfully comments:

The book’s oddest feature is how it both suggests that evangelicalism is “a fantasy,” but also credits it with an eroding American ecclesial culture and depriving millions of lasting spiritual nourishment. (A rather concrete fantasy.) No doubt chasing after evangelicalism is like chasing after the wind, but there are times, it seems not unreasonable to suggest, when that fleeting wind is the Holy Spirit. If evidence of intellectual output and coherent tradition is paramount, are we to suppose that the explosion of Global South Pentecostalism isn’t actually happening?

and again,

Hart’s attempts to sever the connection between neo-evangelicalism and the American Awakenings will be very appealing to ex-evangelicals, but the move is less than convincing. Hart claims that “historians have shown” this connection to be false, for the Revival “tradition ran out of gas in the mid to late nineteenth century.” With that assertion, a wimpy footnote points to only one such historian (Conforti). The majority report, which in addition to Noll and Marsden would now include Thomas Kidd, have also shown the long view of North American evangelicalism. Hart himself, in an unguarded moment in an interview, claims the experience based evangelical worship of today can indeed be traced to American revivalism (which he dislikes.) Hart, therefore, can connect the unpleasant part of the Great Awakening to contemporary evangelicalism, but reserves the best parts – the intellectual ones – for his own Reformed tradition.

Read the whole thing here.

Categories: Evangelicalism