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The Future of Evangelicalism
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13088 |
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Section : |
BOOK WORLD
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| Issue
Date : |
11 / 1987 |
3,132 Words |
| Author
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Jeffrey K. Hadden
Jeffrey K. Hadden is professor of sociology at the University
of Virginia. He is a former president of the Society for the
Scientific Study of Religion and author (with Anson Shupe) of
a forthcoming book entitled Televangelism, Power and Politics. |
EVANGELICALISM:
The Coming Generation
James Davison Hunter
Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987
302 pp., $19.95
From the dawning of the Enlightenment in the eighteenth century, scholars have prophesied the demise of faith and organized religion. But religion has stubbornly refused to fade from the center stage of the human drama in conformity with the script dictated by the sages of secularization theory. Generation after generation of believers have stayed the course, refusing to give up its faith, in conformity with the conventional scholarly wisdom of the Western world.
Evangelicalism: The Coming Generation is James Davison Hunter's second probe into the quandary of conservative Christianity's struggle to remain vital in a world dominated by modernity and the forces of secularization.
His first book, American Evangelicalism, deserved the accolades it received. Although this second effort is ever so much better than the first, it may not be as well received. Many evangelicals won't like the book because Hunter presents empirical data to demonstrate that modernity and secularization have penetrated deeply into the beliefs, the psyches, and the life-styles of evangelicals. Evangelicals have tended to view themselves as separate and apart from the world. Indeed, their cultural distinctiveness is critical to their self-identity.
To these people James Hunter brings bad news. They are not nearly as separate and apart as they think. And as happens all too often, it is the bearer of bad news who is blamed for the news. In their work, their family life, and their politics, evangelicals are found to be less distinctive than many of them perceive themselves to be. And in their theology, Hunter finds cracks in the traditional orthodoxy.
These findings are not going to sit well with many orthodox evangelicals. They are certain to scrutinize the methodology much more thoroughly than they would have, had the findings concluded that belief survives unaltered in the late twentieth century and that in their life-styles evangelicals are a people apart.
We're likely to hear criticisms that the sample is biased, the questions improperly worded, the findings
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