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The Other Evangelicals: A Story of Liberal, Black, Progressive, Feminist, and Gay Christians―and the Movement That Pushed Them Out
What’s the first thing that comes to mind when you hear “evangelical”? For many, the answer is “white,” “patriarchal,” “conservative,” or “fundamentalist”—but as Isaac B. Sharp reveals, the “big tent” of evangelicalism has historically been much bigger than we’ve been led to believe. In The Other Evangelicals , Sharp brings to light the stories of those twentieth-century evangelicals who didn’t fit the mold, including Black, feminist, progressive, and gay Christians. Though the binary of fundamentalist evangelicals and modernist mainline Protestants is taken for granted today, Sharp demonstrates that fundamentalists and modernists battled over the title of “evangelical” in post–World War II America. In fact, many ideologies characteristic of evangelicalism today, such as “biblical womanhood” and political conservatism, arose only in reaction to the popularity of evangelical feminism and progressivism. Eventually, history was written by the “winners”—the Billy Grahams of American religion—while the “losers” were expelled from the movement via the establishment of institutions such as the National Association of Evangelicals. Carefully researched and deftly written, The Other Evangelicals offers a breath of fresh air for scholars seeking a more inclusive history of religion in America.
384 pages, Hardcover
Published April 18, 2023
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January 23, 2024
A must read for anyone who is or was an evangelical Christian.
December 3, 2024
Summary: An exploration of what could have been had evangelical history gone other ways.
I have always enjoyed history. But it has mostly been a reading hobby, not something I studied. Over the past decade, I have been more intentional about reading history to fill in gaps in my knowledge, but I have also read more about the study of history. I think it was John Fea’s podcast where I first heard about the 5 Cs of the study of history. Those five Cs are: change over time, causality, context, complexity, and contingency. All five are important to understanding history.
Isaac Sharp’s The Other Evangelicals does approach all five Cs in his exploration of five groups of people who have been marginalized in evangelical history, but in many ways I read this as a book primarily thinking about contingency, the “what could have been” had evangelical history gone other ways.
As with any recent history, my own story influences how I read. I grew up American Baptist. Traditionally American Baptists are considered a mainline denomination and would be included in the “liberal” part of Christianity. I didn’t really understand how liberal the denomination was as I was growing up in part because I was in an evangelical wing of the denomination. I do very much remember going to the only national youth gathering I attended as an American Baptist and one day of the youth conference primarily used feminine references for God. There was no explanation for it and it raised all kinds of questions for other students I was with. I spend a good bit of time that day talking to others about how there were feminine images of God in scripture and how God is not gendered as we traditionally consider gender in humans. I was mostly irritated by the poor presentation, but not at all bothered by the presentation of somewhat liberal theology.
In college I spent a year going to an intentionally interracial church (I only went one year because I didn’t have a car and it was a 35 minute drive into Chicago to go to the church. I never considered going to the Black baptist church that was within walking distance of campus for some reason.) I was aware of the problems of race within evangelicalism during college and explored the development of NBEA and Tom Skinner and John Perkins and other Black leaders within the evangelical world. I was hired to work by the SBC association in Chicago right out of college as I was going to grad school. That association at the time was one of three associations (of about 1200) in the country that was predominately made up of minority churches. I mostly worked with Black churches developing church-based non-profits and spent a lot more time in Black churches, some of whom identified as Evangelical, but most did not.
Part of my grad school was a Masters of Social Service Administration (an administrative focused equivalent to an MSW). I have always been on the progressive side of the evangelical works and have followed the work of Tony Campolo and Ron Sider and others since high school. Social justice and progressive causes were are always a significant focus of my work as a Christian.
It wasn’t until I was in college that I started to understand compmentarianism. The term was only coined a few years before I started college. I knew American Baptists ordained women and that not every evangelical denomination did. But I knew women pastors and just never really considered male only pastorate as a viable option. Another church that I went to for a little while in college was a very conservative church that had a large college contingent. Again, I went in part because I didn’t have a car and friends who did have cars went there. For several months the college ministry Sunday school class studied gender, including why that church was complementarian. I stuck it out through the whole study, but was completely unpersuaded. So I had context for the book in the feminist section as well as the liberal, progressive, and Black evangelicals sections. It was only the history of gay evangelicals that I really had no historical experience with.
One last point, I took two classes with Mark Noll in college and audited another when he was guest lecturer at University of Chicago Divinity School. Noll’s approach to rooting mid 20th century neo-evangelicals as part of a longer tradition of evangelical Protestants was my dominate way of thinking of evangelicalism until fairly recently. Matthew Avery Sutton’s essay about evangelical historiography gave language to not just my concern about the use and definition of evangelical, but also to the method of thinking about evangelicalism as historically rooted group of people that arose out of the English reformation. I still strongly appreciate Noll, Marsden and other evangelical historians, but I am now going be reading their history with more nuance than I did previously. That is a very long introduction to a fairly straight forward book.
The Other Evangelicals looks at the history of the Evangelical movement that arose in the late 1940s and early 1950s and the ways that his five areas of self-identified evangelicals who were liberal, progressive, Black, feminist and gay. In most of these sections there were fairly clear lines of who was in and who was out regardless of self-identification. In the chapter on liberal evangelicals, the main focus was on biblical studies and the fight over inerrancy. The Chicago Statement on Inerrancy was not the first fight to define what an Evangelical understanding of the Bible was, but by the time it was written in the late 1970s, it was clear that there was little tolerance for a more liberal stream of evangelicals who were less concerned with plenary inspiration and an error free bible.
The main illustration in the liberal chapter was Bela Vassady, a Hungarian WWII refugee who was one of the early professors at Fuller Seminary starting in 1949. Vassady was a European who identified as evangelical, but his stream of evangelicalism did not match up with Fuller’s understanding of biblical orthodoxy because he was too sympathetic to Barth and did not reject German methods of biblical theology outright. Vassady had helped to found the World Council of Churches and understood his role to be ecumenical. The story of opposition to Vassady was a good reminder that Christian colleges and seminaries have been accused of being “liberal” for a very long time. The influence of donors concerned about the mission of school and liberal drift has always been present.
The chapter of Black Evangelicals I think was important (although not new by any means) because evangelicals tend to think of themselves as theologically defined. The traditional definitions of evangelical by NAE or Bebbington are rooted in theological statements. But the chapter on Black Evangelicals makes clear that theology was never enough. Billy Graham opposed the methods of the civil rights movement, speaking against the 1963 March on Washington and MLK Jr explicitly on a number of occasions. Sharp quotes Graham, “There is only one possible solution to the race problem and that is vital personal experience with Jesus Christ on the part of both races…any man who has a genuine conversion experience will find his racial attitudes greatly changed.” (p127)
While the chapter on Black evangelicals includes a variety of people, the story is often similar to William Bentley’s. Evangelicalism was a theological tradition that took scripture seriously and at least claimed to value intellectually serious study. Bentley was exposed to white evangelicalism in the 1940s and was attracted to the theology, but was concerned that it “..could be doctrinally correct and, at the same time, hold backward attitudes toward such and important issue as race in America.” Bentley evangelically formed the National Black Evangelical Association in 1963 at a time when Wheaton and many other evangelical schools officially or unofficially still prohibited interracial dating on campus.
Much of the tension beyond explicit racism was rooted in different approaches toward evangelism and ministry. While many members of the NBEA agreed with Graham about the priority of personal conversion as the main method of solving social issues, the Black church historically had been more open to social action as a legitimate role of the church. (Although the National Baptist and the Progressive Baptists split in the 1960s along similar lines.)
The issues raised by Black evangelicals were not confined to just Black evangelicals, white progressives evangelicals also pushed the broader evangelical movement to think more clearly about social action as a role of the church. The 1960s protest movements, racism, war, and poverty were driving forces for progressive evangelicals who championed the working in marginalized communities as a central role of the church. But as the chapter concluded, the requirement for theological conservatism and the social requirement for individualism in approaching social issues like race, meant that progressive evangelicals had an uphill battle to draw attention to social conditions and social ministries that addressed the systemic causes of social problems.
The feminist story of evangelicalism is often assumed to be different than the actual history. The term complementarian wasn’t coined until 1988. While evangelicals were socially and theologically conservative, there were hundreds of women ordained within the SBC in the 1970 and the later orientation toward conservative gender roles was really a backlash to an earlier egalitarian movement.
Again, the concluding chapter on gay evangelicals prioritizes how evangelicals handling of scripture led to the cracks in the approach toward gay evangelicals. In many cases, those who were more inclusive rooted their inclusion on their reading of scripture. There was also a pragmatism that came to the fore as it became clear that changing orientation was not easy.
One of the problems of evangelicalism is a lack of imagination for any other contingency. In many cases, there are and have been many other paths that have been explored, but without knowledge of those paths, it is difficult to not make some of the same mistakes that have already been made.
The Other Evangelicals is very readable history. It is a history that I both knew a lot about but also had details and streams of evangelicalism that I was completely unaware of. I have been skeptical of the label evangelical since the early 90s when I was at Wheaton. The theological definitions of evangelicalism always seem to be less important than the social or cultural identity. The Other Evangelicals was far less political than I thought it would be. The progressive and liberal chapters were more about approach than particular content. And the chapters about feminists and gay evangelicals while they were more about content of those two areas again, came down to largely being about approach.
Evangelicalism grew out of a desire to be less fundamentalist than the early 20th century fundamentalism, but in many ways the evangelical movement never had a full break from fundamentalism. As fundamentalists of the early 20th century became less comfortable self identifying as fundamentalists and increasingly used the term evangelical, the fight over the approach that evangelicalism has toward culture has continued to be largely the same fight.
This was originally posted on my blog at https://bookwi.se/the-other-evangelic...
I have always enjoyed history. But it has mostly been a reading hobby, not something I studied. Over the past decade, I have been more intentional about reading history to fill in gaps in my knowledge, but I have also read more about the study of history. I think it was John Fea’s podcast where I first heard about the 5 Cs of the study of history. Those five Cs are: change over time, causality, context, complexity, and contingency. All five are important to understanding history.
Isaac Sharp’s The Other Evangelicals does approach all five Cs in his exploration of five groups of people who have been marginalized in evangelical history, but in many ways I read this as a book primarily thinking about contingency, the “what could have been” had evangelical history gone other ways.
As with any recent history, my own story influences how I read. I grew up American Baptist. Traditionally American Baptists are considered a mainline denomination and would be included in the “liberal” part of Christianity. I didn’t really understand how liberal the denomination was as I was growing up in part because I was in an evangelical wing of the denomination. I do very much remember going to the only national youth gathering I attended as an American Baptist and one day of the youth conference primarily used feminine references for God. There was no explanation for it and it raised all kinds of questions for other students I was with. I spend a good bit of time that day talking to others about how there were feminine images of God in scripture and how God is not gendered as we traditionally consider gender in humans. I was mostly irritated by the poor presentation, but not at all bothered by the presentation of somewhat liberal theology.
In college I spent a year going to an intentionally interracial church (I only went one year because I didn’t have a car and it was a 35 minute drive into Chicago to go to the church. I never considered going to the Black baptist church that was within walking distance of campus for some reason.) I was aware of the problems of race within evangelicalism during college and explored the development of NBEA and Tom Skinner and John Perkins and other Black leaders within the evangelical world. I was hired to work by the SBC association in Chicago right out of college as I was going to grad school. That association at the time was one of three associations (of about 1200) in the country that was predominately made up of minority churches. I mostly worked with Black churches developing church-based non-profits and spent a lot more time in Black churches, some of whom identified as Evangelical, but most did not.
Part of my grad school was a Masters of Social Service Administration (an administrative focused equivalent to an MSW). I have always been on the progressive side of the evangelical works and have followed the work of Tony Campolo and Ron Sider and others since high school. Social justice and progressive causes were are always a significant focus of my work as a Christian.
It wasn’t until I was in college that I started to understand compmentarianism. The term was only coined a few years before I started college. I knew American Baptists ordained women and that not every evangelical denomination did. But I knew women pastors and just never really considered male only pastorate as a viable option. Another church that I went to for a little while in college was a very conservative church that had a large college contingent. Again, I went in part because I didn’t have a car and friends who did have cars went there. For several months the college ministry Sunday school class studied gender, including why that church was complementarian. I stuck it out through the whole study, but was completely unpersuaded. So I had context for the book in the feminist section as well as the liberal, progressive, and Black evangelicals sections. It was only the history of gay evangelicals that I really had no historical experience with.
One last point, I took two classes with Mark Noll in college and audited another when he was guest lecturer at University of Chicago Divinity School. Noll’s approach to rooting mid 20th century neo-evangelicals as part of a longer tradition of evangelical Protestants was my dominate way of thinking of evangelicalism until fairly recently. Matthew Avery Sutton’s essay about evangelical historiography gave language to not just my concern about the use and definition of evangelical, but also to the method of thinking about evangelicalism as historically rooted group of people that arose out of the English reformation. I still strongly appreciate Noll, Marsden and other evangelical historians, but I am now going be reading their history with more nuance than I did previously. That is a very long introduction to a fairly straight forward book.
The Other Evangelicals looks at the history of the Evangelical movement that arose in the late 1940s and early 1950s and the ways that his five areas of self-identified evangelicals who were liberal, progressive, Black, feminist and gay. In most of these sections there were fairly clear lines of who was in and who was out regardless of self-identification. In the chapter on liberal evangelicals, the main focus was on biblical studies and the fight over inerrancy. The Chicago Statement on Inerrancy was not the first fight to define what an Evangelical understanding of the Bible was, but by the time it was written in the late 1970s, it was clear that there was little tolerance for a more liberal stream of evangelicals who were less concerned with plenary inspiration and an error free bible.
The main illustration in the liberal chapter was Bela Vassady, a Hungarian WWII refugee who was one of the early professors at Fuller Seminary starting in 1949. Vassady was a European who identified as evangelical, but his stream of evangelicalism did not match up with Fuller’s understanding of biblical orthodoxy because he was too sympathetic to Barth and did not reject German methods of biblical theology outright. Vassady had helped to found the World Council of Churches and understood his role to be ecumenical. The story of opposition to Vassady was a good reminder that Christian colleges and seminaries have been accused of being “liberal” for a very long time. The influence of donors concerned about the mission of school and liberal drift has always been present.
The chapter of Black Evangelicals I think was important (although not new by any means) because evangelicals tend to think of themselves as theologically defined. The traditional definitions of evangelical by NAE or Bebbington are rooted in theological statements. But the chapter on Black Evangelicals makes clear that theology was never enough. Billy Graham opposed the methods of the civil rights movement, speaking against the 1963 March on Washington and MLK Jr explicitly on a number of occasions. Sharp quotes Graham, “There is only one possible solution to the race problem and that is vital personal experience with Jesus Christ on the part of both races…any man who has a genuine conversion experience will find his racial attitudes greatly changed.” (p127)
While the chapter on Black evangelicals includes a variety of people, the story is often similar to William Bentley’s. Evangelicalism was a theological tradition that took scripture seriously and at least claimed to value intellectually serious study. Bentley was exposed to white evangelicalism in the 1940s and was attracted to the theology, but was concerned that it “..could be doctrinally correct and, at the same time, hold backward attitudes toward such and important issue as race in America.” Bentley evangelically formed the National Black Evangelical Association in 1963 at a time when Wheaton and many other evangelical schools officially or unofficially still prohibited interracial dating on campus.
Much of the tension beyond explicit racism was rooted in different approaches toward evangelism and ministry. While many members of the NBEA agreed with Graham about the priority of personal conversion as the main method of solving social issues, the Black church historically had been more open to social action as a legitimate role of the church. (Although the National Baptist and the Progressive Baptists split in the 1960s along similar lines.)
The issues raised by Black evangelicals were not confined to just Black evangelicals, white progressives evangelicals also pushed the broader evangelical movement to think more clearly about social action as a role of the church. The 1960s protest movements, racism, war, and poverty were driving forces for progressive evangelicals who championed the working in marginalized communities as a central role of the church. But as the chapter concluded, the requirement for theological conservatism and the social requirement for individualism in approaching social issues like race, meant that progressive evangelicals had an uphill battle to draw attention to social conditions and social ministries that addressed the systemic causes of social problems.
The feminist story of evangelicalism is often assumed to be different than the actual history. The term complementarian wasn’t coined until 1988. While evangelicals were socially and theologically conservative, there were hundreds of women ordained within the SBC in the 1970 and the later orientation toward conservative gender roles was really a backlash to an earlier egalitarian movement.
Again, the concluding chapter on gay evangelicals prioritizes how evangelicals handling of scripture led to the cracks in the approach toward gay evangelicals. In many cases, those who were more inclusive rooted their inclusion on their reading of scripture. There was also a pragmatism that came to the fore as it became clear that changing orientation was not easy.
One of the problems of evangelicalism is a lack of imagination for any other contingency. In many cases, there are and have been many other paths that have been explored, but without knowledge of those paths, it is difficult to not make some of the same mistakes that have already been made.
The Other Evangelicals is very readable history. It is a history that I both knew a lot about but also had details and streams of evangelicalism that I was completely unaware of. I have been skeptical of the label evangelical since the early 90s when I was at Wheaton. The theological definitions of evangelicalism always seem to be less important than the social or cultural identity. The Other Evangelicals was far less political than I thought it would be. The progressive and liberal chapters were more about approach than particular content. And the chapters about feminists and gay evangelicals while they were more about content of those two areas again, came down to largely being about approach.
Evangelicalism grew out of a desire to be less fundamentalist than the early 20th century fundamentalism, but in many ways the evangelical movement never had a full break from fundamentalism. As fundamentalists of the early 20th century became less comfortable self identifying as fundamentalists and increasingly used the term evangelical, the fight over the approach that evangelicalism has toward culture has continued to be largely the same fight.
This was originally posted on my blog at https://bookwi.se/the-other-evangelic...
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November 9, 2023I struggled with the introduction and first chapter, mostly because I don't have a strong grasp on that level of theological discussion. The rest of the book was incredibly readable and engrossing. I was especially interested to read about the anti-feminist crusade led by Grudem and Piper, as I remember my mom telling me years ago that my great-aunt "can't stand" Piper and I've come to understand why as I've become more aware of how virulently he opposes women. My paternal grandmother also worked with Piper in ministering to the Hmong community in Minneapolis until her death and I'm so curious about it all because she was a very strong woman who (to my impression) married my grandpa in large part because the Christian Missionary Alliance wouldn't allow her to work in Asia on her own. My grandparents' marriage was one that was definitely egalitarian in practice but was represented as "led" by my very passive grandpa, and I grew up in the shadow of that type of practice, as a strong, opinionated female, frequently being told that although I was smart and capable like my grandma (who unfortunately died when I was only 7), my personality was "wrong" and I needed to tone it down. All that to say, I appreciate the very thorough and informative approach of this book, most specifically in regard to feminism, based on my personal experience as a female in evangelical spaces.
October 18, 2023
I grew up proudly evangelical. Was trained at evangelical seminaries. Pastored at an evangelical church. But as time went on and the political underbelly of evangelicalism became more apparent to me, I was left with seemingly two choices: I could either walk away from it all or make a distinction between being politically and theologically evangelical. It was the late Ron Sider who helped me work through that distinction and my time spent with Christians Against Trumpism that kept me in the evangelical fold. I discovered that one could be evangelical but not That Kind of Evangelical. So then, The Other Evangelicals: A Story of Liberal, Black, Progressive, Feminist, and Gay Christians—and the Movement that Pushed Them Out, gave me an undiscovered history that helped me contextualize my place in evangelicalism and understand that I was not alone.
The Other Evangelicals is a reworking of Isaac Sharp’s dissertation for his Ph.D. in social ethics at Union Theological Seminary. As such, it is an inherently academic work that is comprehensive and has the references to prove it. Sharp divides the book into five chapters, each one covering the history of a particular marginalized group within evangelicalism: the liberals, the Black evangelicals, the progressives, the feminists, and the gay evangelicals. One weakness that I see in this is that the formatting prevents Sharp from easily discussing the intersectionality between these groups. However, Sharp is also progressing along a somewhat linear timeline. Evangelical and the liberals is focused on the 1940s-50s, Black evangelicals on the 60s, progressives on the 70s-80s, feminism gets scattered throughout the eras, and gay evangelicals are likewise scattered with discussing ending in the 21st century.
Each of these chapters could be a book in and of itself and indeed might have been better served as an expanded five-volume series, however ambitious that might have been. The Other Evangelicals is not meant to provide an exhaustive history but rather point to the major players and events that led to these minority groups being marginalized within evangelicalism. As much as there was, I found myself wanting more. In most areas, I found Sharp to be sufficient. The only chapter I felt needed more work was the final chapter on what Sharp calls “the gay evangelicals.” Even the use of that term belies a narrow focus and a failure to use the best language to describe LGBTQ+ Christians.
One the best things The Other Evangelicals does is present evangelicalism as a movement that got to where it is because of the major players within it desiring power. It contextualizes evangelicalism within the history of American politics and while it’s no Jesus and John Wayne, it does help set a more academic and expansive backdrop to it. This is an important book for evangelicalism. For some on the margins, it might make them stay and fight. For those outside evangelicalism, it helps trace the historical pathway to the present politicalization of the movement. Engaging and interesting, The Other Evangelicals allows readers to wonder what might have been and may embolden deconstructing Christians to tear away the toxicity of evangelicalism while retaining its theological core.
The Other Evangelicals is a reworking of Isaac Sharp’s dissertation for his Ph.D. in social ethics at Union Theological Seminary. As such, it is an inherently academic work that is comprehensive and has the references to prove it. Sharp divides the book into five chapters, each one covering the history of a particular marginalized group within evangelicalism: the liberals, the Black evangelicals, the progressives, the feminists, and the gay evangelicals. One weakness that I see in this is that the formatting prevents Sharp from easily discussing the intersectionality between these groups. However, Sharp is also progressing along a somewhat linear timeline. Evangelical and the liberals is focused on the 1940s-50s, Black evangelicals on the 60s, progressives on the 70s-80s, feminism gets scattered throughout the eras, and gay evangelicals are likewise scattered with discussing ending in the 21st century.
Each of these chapters could be a book in and of itself and indeed might have been better served as an expanded five-volume series, however ambitious that might have been. The Other Evangelicals is not meant to provide an exhaustive history but rather point to the major players and events that led to these minority groups being marginalized within evangelicalism. As much as there was, I found myself wanting more. In most areas, I found Sharp to be sufficient. The only chapter I felt needed more work was the final chapter on what Sharp calls “the gay evangelicals.” Even the use of that term belies a narrow focus and a failure to use the best language to describe LGBTQ+ Christians.
One the best things The Other Evangelicals does is present evangelicalism as a movement that got to where it is because of the major players within it desiring power. It contextualizes evangelicalism within the history of American politics and while it’s no Jesus and John Wayne, it does help set a more academic and expansive backdrop to it. This is an important book for evangelicalism. For some on the margins, it might make them stay and fight. For those outside evangelicalism, it helps trace the historical pathway to the present politicalization of the movement. Engaging and interesting, The Other Evangelicals allows readers to wonder what might have been and may embolden deconstructing Christians to tear away the toxicity of evangelicalism while retaining its theological core.
January 20, 2024
Sharp has made a case that by a series of exclusions, the power brokers of post - WW2 Evangelicalism excluded liberals, non-inerrantists, black denominations, egalitarians, progressives, feminists, gay affirming people, many of whom otherwise held evangelical views on Christ, his death and resurrection and the authority of Scripture. Finally he concludes that the near universal identification with Republican, culture warfare politics was always inherent in the Label.
In short Evangelical turned out to be little more than a rebranding of Fundamentalism.
The evidence is pretty clearly in favor of this thesis. However a weakness in the analysis is that he passed over in some cases why a group could fit a theological designation. This was especially glaring in the first chapter on modernism/liberalism. Although this is a historical book as opposed to theological, it is evident that Sharp is writing as an outsider to the label. The chapter on liberalism and modernism and the chapter on gay believers travel lightly on the question of theology or the confessional content of those groups.
I'm inclined to agree with the main thread. My own experience in urban settings in "blue" communities has kept me from using the label for nearly two decades. More recently I have decided that I don't fit the label myself.
For a time I thought that I did fit on the left edge, but now I think that I never did. At any rate, either Evangelicalism moved rightward, or I mistook it for something other than what it always was.
In short Evangelical turned out to be little more than a rebranding of Fundamentalism.
The evidence is pretty clearly in favor of this thesis. However a weakness in the analysis is that he passed over in some cases why a group could fit a theological designation. This was especially glaring in the first chapter on modernism/liberalism. Although this is a historical book as opposed to theological, it is evident that Sharp is writing as an outsider to the label. The chapter on liberalism and modernism and the chapter on gay believers travel lightly on the question of theology or the confessional content of those groups.
I'm inclined to agree with the main thread. My own experience in urban settings in "blue" communities has kept me from using the label for nearly two decades. More recently I have decided that I don't fit the label myself.
For a time I thought that I did fit on the left edge, but now I think that I never did. At any rate, either Evangelicalism moved rightward, or I mistook it for something other than what it always was.
April 23, 2023
THIS IS IT!
In this Definitive History of 20th and 21st century Evangelical identity-formation, Isaac B. Sharp, guides us on a narrative tour de force of the exclusionary formation of a nation-changing religious and political movement.
How might Evangelicals be defined?
You will recall, in 1976, Jimmy Carter, a publicly professing Born Again, Evangelical was elected President of the U.S., and "the game was on!" Within four years Reverend Jerry Falwell's Evangelical Moral Majority claimed credit for helping elect Ronald Reagan President, in1980.
By 2016, 81% of White Evangelical Christians voted for Donald Trump, propelling him into the White House.
Who ARE these evangelical Christians? And importantly, who are they NOT?
Meticulously researched (29 pages of works cited, and 45 pages of footnotes appearing at book's end), Sharp's volume is impressively encyclopedic, yet written in a highly readable conversant style. (I felt the author and I were comfortably seated by a warm fireplace nursing a cup of hot coffee while enjoying engaging, delightful conversation.)
Were Liberal, Black, Progressive, Feminist, and Gay Christians ever considered Evangelical? The reader may be surprised.
Religious and political scholars, AND lay persons, who insist on being well informed regarding important societal movements, will want to read this valuable work.
Happy reading!
In this Definitive History of 20th and 21st century Evangelical identity-formation, Isaac B. Sharp, guides us on a narrative tour de force of the exclusionary formation of a nation-changing religious and political movement.
How might Evangelicals be defined?
You will recall, in 1976, Jimmy Carter, a publicly professing Born Again, Evangelical was elected President of the U.S., and "the game was on!" Within four years Reverend Jerry Falwell's Evangelical Moral Majority claimed credit for helping elect Ronald Reagan President, in1980.
By 2016, 81% of White Evangelical Christians voted for Donald Trump, propelling him into the White House.
Who ARE these evangelical Christians? And importantly, who are they NOT?
Meticulously researched (29 pages of works cited, and 45 pages of footnotes appearing at book's end), Sharp's volume is impressively encyclopedic, yet written in a highly readable conversant style. (I felt the author and I were comfortably seated by a warm fireplace nursing a cup of hot coffee while enjoying engaging, delightful conversation.)
Were Liberal, Black, Progressive, Feminist, and Gay Christians ever considered Evangelical? The reader may be surprised.
Religious and political scholars, AND lay persons, who insist on being well informed regarding important societal movements, will want to read this valuable work.
Happy reading!
September 22, 2024
This is a terrible non-book. By "non-book" I mean that it isn't a single discussion of a single subject, but instead pulls together a wide range of people who don't meet any sensible and consistent definition of "evangelical." By "terrible" I mean it doesn't prove anything except the obvious: that a certain group of white American evangelicals didn't like or otherwise associate with a variety of other people—which is news to precisely no one.
Indeed, this is another volume in the trendy "grievance as history" genre, of the sub-genre "evangelical studies," populated by books like those of Anthea Butler, Matthew Sutton, and Daniel Silliman. There are some good forays into archives and some helpful narratives offered along the way. But, like these others, Sharp's book doesn't hang together and it certainly doesn't come close to proving its thesis.
(I deal with Sutton and Silliman's historiography on my blog here: https://www.thinkbettermedia.ca/blog)
I frankly don't understand how it passed muster as a doctoral dissertation, let alone as a published book. But it certainly blows with the Zeitgeist, and in some quarters, that's all that matters.
Indeed, this is another volume in the trendy "grievance as history" genre, of the sub-genre "evangelical studies," populated by books like those of Anthea Butler, Matthew Sutton, and Daniel Silliman. There are some good forays into archives and some helpful narratives offered along the way. But, like these others, Sharp's book doesn't hang together and it certainly doesn't come close to proving its thesis.
(I deal with Sutton and Silliman's historiography on my blog here: https://www.thinkbettermedia.ca/blog)
I frankly don't understand how it passed muster as a doctoral dissertation, let alone as a published book. But it certainly blows with the Zeitgeist, and in some quarters, that's all that matters.
June 10, 2023
A fascinating and well-researched exploration of just what the “evangelical movement” has been and is in modern US history. The presentation is not entirely user-friendly. Although I would say this is well-written, it seems something of an insider’s guide. Insiders, in this case, would be other graduate-level or higher scholars of theology or divinity. This was not written as a popular history. But it is worth the extra reading effort for a better understanding of forces in US faith and politics that the media often references but never explains or likely fully understands. It’s also useful food for thought, perhaps prompting the reader to think about what it is they really believe, how they define those beliefs, and who/what are they excluding (perhaps unfairly).
January 29, 2024
Why are evangelicals mainly straight, white people with mainly men in charge? This book will tell you why. The first section defining an evangelical is very boring. Just skim that section. The book doesn’t become interesting until the chapter on Black evangelicals.
The 1970’s was a very happening time in the evangelical movement. Lots of exciting stuff with Blacks, women, liberals, and even homosexuals. Alas, any gains were crushed by white, straight, conservative men in leadership.
Now I wonder why so-called evangelical Christians are not just called fundamentalist Christians. The love of God and Jesus Christ belong to all people. They seem to have forgotten that.
The 1970’s was a very happening time in the evangelical movement. Lots of exciting stuff with Blacks, women, liberals, and even homosexuals. Alas, any gains were crushed by white, straight, conservative men in leadership.
Now I wonder why so-called evangelical Christians are not just called fundamentalist Christians. The love of God and Jesus Christ belong to all people. They seem to have forgotten that.
May 25, 2023
Evangelicalism’s collapse
Sharp’s scholarly analysis clarifies the stupefying emergence of an evangelicalism that has become synonymous with Trumpism. Over the past 50 years, the self-identified evangelicals who have been “pushed out” tell the sad story -Tom Skinner, Virginia Mollenkott, Jim Wallis, Russell Moore, for starters. The Tribe we call Evangelical is the penultimate Us/Them ideology with heaven and hell hanging in the balance. The only ones left who will claim the name are sell-outs to white Republicanism.
Sharp’s scholarly analysis clarifies the stupefying emergence of an evangelicalism that has become synonymous with Trumpism. Over the past 50 years, the self-identified evangelicals who have been “pushed out” tell the sad story -Tom Skinner, Virginia Mollenkott, Jim Wallis, Russell Moore, for starters. The Tribe we call Evangelical is the penultimate Us/Them ideology with heaven and hell hanging in the balance. The only ones left who will claim the name are sell-outs to white Republicanism.
October 5, 2023
This book was a bit of a slog, to be honest, although I was interested in the various "evangelicals" who have been pushing the boundaries since the creation of the term. There were several I hadn't heard of, and their stories were interesting and inspiring to me. But I couldn't help but struggle with the format of the book, which put folks into separate categories with very few references to how intersections of identity came into play (notable example is Virginia Mollenkott).
December 14, 2023
Such a gripping historical narrative that persuaded me by the end. I loved the different angle this book takes on the question of evangelical identity in America.
Full video review here: https://youtu.be/Jt95QJweeb0
Full video review here: https://youtu.be/Jt95QJweeb0
April 23, 2023
Learned most in the first four chapters, the least from the chapter on LGBTQ+. Helpful to broaden the scholarship on Evangelicalism.
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