Near the end of this fascinating collection of essays, Joel Carpenter asks an important question and then offers an equally important answer: “So how new is the new evangelicalism?” Apparently not very. “There is not one trend or emphasis” among the new evangelicals profiled in this book, Carpenter explains, that was not evident in the work of a group of progressive evangelicals who in the early 1970s crafted an innovative statement of beliefs on social issues as well as an agenda for future action (275). Editors Philip Goff and Brian Steensland agree with Carpenter that much of what is happening in the new millennium is built upon the foundations established during the disco era. “Today's new evangelicals,” they argue, “are but the most recent iteration of evangelicalism's long-standing tendency to spin off its own renewal movements” (2). Nevertheless, the subjects of this book offer important new insights into the state of evangelical faith in the modern United States.
The essays in this collection focus on a variety of different trends and movements within contemporary American evangelicalism. “This book,” Goff and Steensland explain, “offers one of the first scholarly research efforts to document the forefront of contemporary evangelical social engagement” (2). Written from a variety of disciplinary perspectives ranging from history to sociology to political science to anthropology to ethnography, the essays focus on numerous evangelical groups that are actively and aggressively trying to distinguish themselves from mainstream evangelicalism and especially its associations with the Moral Majority, the suburban megachurch movement, and the Republican Party.
The authors focus on many different dimensions of the “new” evangelicalism. They analyze new alliances, such as evangelical engagement with Catholics; new practices, such as monasticism and “radical hospitality”; new issues, such as growing evangelical concern over the environment, human rights, and poverty; and new approaches to issues such as race and gender. One essay even offers a re-analysis of an old issue, abortion rights. Together they demonstrate how new forms of action as well as new theological presuppositions are helping to shape the emerging generation of evangelicals.
While all of the essays offer important insights, a few particularly stand out. Sociologists Gerardo Marti and Michael O. Emerson demonstrate how and why evangelicals, in their desire to celebrate “diversity,” have in fact perpetuated damaging racial stereotypes. Evangelicals, they conclude, “may actually be hurting progress in race relations because of the specifically racialized orientations brought to such schemes” (179). Daniel Williams contributes an excellent essay on the evangelical left's pro-life ideology, highlighting missed opportunities and roads not taken. Unlike the evangelical right, which united with the Republican Party in search of legal and policy solutions to the abortion problem, the evangelical left “posed a much more radical challenge to the culture and sought to change social attitudes as well as societal laws” (207). David Swartz discusses evangelicals' growing interest in and action on global human rights. “The evangelical encounter with the two-thirds world,” he writes, “critically encouraged this new global sensibility that in turn broadened and intensified evangelical social engagement” (223). John C. Green helps to quantify many of the issues addressed in this book by analyzing polling data. He breaks evangelicals into four categories: evangelical left, center, right, and populists. The evangelical populists, he determines, offer the “largest” opportunity for future change. The populists mix conservative views on old issues like abortion with progressive views on new issues like environmentalism and may be the group most likely to lead evangelicalism's divorce from the GOP. Meanwhile, Joel Carpenter masterfully puts the “new” evangelicals into context in a historical summary that traces the work of the new evangelicals back through time.
While the various groups highlighted in this study are engaged in creative and innovative work, they have much in common with their 1970s-era predecessors. Both groups fretted that the more mainstream evangelical communities had not sufficiently attacked the problems of the modern world. Furthermore, both generations agree that while evangelical Christians need to engage better with their communities, they continue to see the state most often as an enemy rather than an ally. The new evangelicals may have a greater social conscious than their Cold War era grandparents and great-grandparents, but they seem to be as skeptical of the power of the state as were their fundamentalist predecessors who rallied against the New Deal. Rather than offering a vision of a “new” evangelicalism, the great value of this book is in showing how evangelicalism has long served as a malleable faith that can be applied in many ways to many issues without ever actually attacking American capitalism. An evangelicalism that sought to dismantle the market economy would truly be “new.”
In sum, Goff and Steensland have put together an excellent collection of essays that have tackled an important phenomenon from many different angles. The New Evangelical Social Engagement may mark the beginning of the end of evangelicalism's close alignment with the Republican Party and the suburban megachurch movement, or it may represent a series of roads not taken. Whatever the future of evangelicalism, the editors have provided an important book that marks a key moment in the long trajectory of the evolution of a powerful American faith.
