Standing Against the Whirlwind : Evangelical Episcopalians in Nineteenth-Century America

by Diana Butler Bass

Standing Against the Whirlwind is a history of the Evangelical party in the Episcopal Church in nineteenth-century America. A surprising revisionist account of the church's first century, it reveals the extent to which evangelical Episcopalians helped to shape the piety, identity, theology, and mission of the church. Using the life and career of one of the party's greatest leaders, Charles Pettit McIlvaine, the second bishop of Ohio, Diana Butler blends institutional history with biography to explore the vicissitudes and tribulations of evangelicals in a church that often seemed inhospitable to their version of the Gospel. This gracefully written narrative history of a neglected movement sheds light on evangelical religion within a particular denomination and broadens the interpretation of nineteenth-century American evangelicalism as a whole. In addition, it elucidates such wider cultural and religious issues as the meaning of millennialism and the nature of the crisis over
slavery.

Hardcover

First published June 1, 1994

About the author

Diana Butler Bass is an author, speaker, and independent scholar specializing in American religion and culture. She holds a PhD in religious studies from Duke University and is the author of seven books, including the bestselling Christianity for the Rest of Us, released by HarperOne in 2006. It was named as one of the best religion books of the year by Publishers Weekly and Christian Century, won the Book of the Year Award from the Academy of Parish Clergy, and was featured in a cover story in USA Today. Her much-anticipated next book, A People's History of Christianity, will be released in March 2009 from HarperOne. She is currently Senior Fellow at the Cathedral College of the Washington National Cathedral in Washington, D.C. Bass regularly consults with religious organizations, leads conferences for religious leaders, and teaches and preaches in a variety of venues.

Bass blogs at Progressive Revival on Beliefnet and Sojourners' God's Politics. She regularly comments on religion, politics, and culture in the media including USA Today, Time, Newsweek, The Washington Post, CNN, FOX, PBS, and NPR. From 1995 to 2000, she wrote a weekly column on American religion for the New York Times syndicate. She has written widely in the religious press, including Sojourners, Christian Century, Clergy Journal, and Congregations.

From 2002 to 2006, she was the Project Director of a national Lilly Endowment funded study of mainline Protestant vitality—a project featured in Newsweek, U.S. News and World Report, The Washington Post, and the Los Angeles Times. Bass also serves on the board of directors of the Beatitudes Society.

She has taught at Westmont College, the University of California at Santa Barbara, Macalester College, Rhodes College, and the Virginia Theological Seminary. She has taught church history, American religious history, history of Christian thought, religion and politics, and congregational studies.

Bass and her husband, Richard, live with their family in Alexandria, Virginia. She is a member of the Episcopal Church of the Epiphany in downtown Washington, D.C.

Reviews

[Susan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Really really interesting and readable history of the Evangelical movement in the 19th century Episcopal Church. The focus is on the second Bishop of Ohio, his adherence to and propagation of Evangelism in the Episcopal Church, and the integration of his views with those more focused on ritualism. It was interesting to read about factions in the church that later led to low church and high church, and the theological debates of the 19th century that appear in different forms in the 20th and 21st. I have read Diana Butler Bass' more recent books aimed at a wider audience- they are highly readable and engaging. I was not disappointed in this, her dissertation made into a book- it was highly readable - not your typical dry academic tome.

[Chris Schutte · Rating 4 out of 5]

Excellent study of the 19th-century Evangelical movement within The Episcopal Church through the life and ministry of Bishop Charles McIlvaine of Ohio.