My entire extended family seems to be engaged in a conversation about the persistence of evangelical Christianity. Recently, I was in Raleigh, North Carolina, visiting my sister. We were driving around one Saturday afternoon, shopping for pottery, when we passed a sign that said “Old Fashioned Tent Revival Meeting Next Week—Get to Know Jesus and Be Saved.” My sister chuckled and said, “It boggles my mind that stuff like that still happens. Seems like it belongs in the nineteenth century. I don’t understand how people can really believe stuff like that anymore.” (I have learned, finally, to keep quiet when Leanne starts down this line of inquiry.) A few days before the pottery-shopping episode, I had been speaking to my cousin, who, taking a tack opposite from Leanne’s, began praising God for the miracles he was creating in the church by having evangelical Christianity continue to blossom. “There’s really no other explanation for it,” Claire said, “other than the hand of God working in this country. I don’t know how these watchmaker deity people would explain it. Here we are, the most dissolute, morally backwards country, and yet God is working here to make evangelicalism the strongest, most popular religion going.”
Christian Smith and his fellow researchers are asking the same question that my cousin and sister are asking, and, not surprisingly, they think there is another explanation than the hand of God working in people’s daily lives. It is not, after all, the job of sociologists to decree when God is working in human life. In short, Smith posits that “American evangelicalism is thriving—not only that, it is thriving very much because of and not in spite of its confrontation with modern pluralism.” The conjunction in the subtitle is the only misleading word; if the subtitle read “Embattled, Thus Thriving” rather than “Embattled and Thriving,” the reader would have Christian Smith’s thesis before opening the book.
It may seem obvious to some readers—like my cousin, for example—that evangelicalism is thriving, but Smith takes great pains to prove the claim. Contemporary American evangelicalism, writes Smith, “is more than alive and well. Indeed … it appears to be the strongest of the major Christian traditions in the United States today.” Refreshingly, Smith offers a broad conception of religious vitality. Other scholars have focused only on one criterion for religious vitality: Roger Finke, for example, has focused on church attendance and membership; others have focused on a religious group’s ability to maintain social control, or on a religious organization’s resources, assets, and likelihood of long-term survival.
In contrast, Smith offers a six-pronged definition of religious vitality:
[W]e will consider any American Christian faith tradition to be strong when its members (1) faithfully adhere to essential Christian beliefs; (2) consider their faith a highly salient aspect of their lives; (3) reflect great confidence and assurance in their Christian beliefs; (4) participate regularly in a variety of church activities and programs; (5) are committed in both belief and action to accomplishing the mission of the church; and (6) sustain high rates of membership retention by maintaining members’ association with the tradition over long periods of time, effectively socializing new members into that tradition, and winning new converts to that tradition.
Of these six criteria, perhaps the only one that Smith does not flesh out sufficiently is the first one. Unlike the other five, the first is inherently normative, and Smith does not explain how he determined what beliefs constitute the core of “traditionally orthodox Christian” theology and what was peripheral. He seems to consider a “literally true” view of the Bible, for example, to be more traditional and orthodox than a “true, not always literally” view of Scripture. Such quibbles aside, however, Smith’s six-tiered approach to religious vitality is a welcome alternative to the more narrow approaches of many other scholars.
How did Smith determine that evangelicals participate in more church activities and consider faith to be a more salient part of their lives than, say, mainliners? Through interviews, the sociologist’s bread and butter. In the summer of 1995, Smith and his team conducted 130 two-hour interviews. Then, in 1996, they conducted 2,591 telephone surveys; of those, 2,087 were with churchgoing Protestants. Then, follow-up face-to-face interviews were conducted with 96 of the self-identified evangelicals from the phone interviews. Then they interviewed 85 additional evangelicals from local evangelical churches. Finally, they also interviewed eight people who had identified themselves as fundamentalists in the phone interviews, and six people who had identified themselves as “theological liberals.”
The evangelicals that Smith interviewed often spoke of faith’s central role in their lives. One self-identified evangelical Baptist woman, for example, said, “Faith gives me security. A purpose. Meaning for my life. A reason to be here. A fellowship with Him. A standard to follow. A mental life orientation.” Mainliners, by contrast, “described their faith as merely part of the ordinary furniture of their lives.” A mainline Baptist man noted that “being a Christian hasn’t changed much about [his] life.” Evangelicals evidenced greater participation in church activities than mainliners, a stronger devotion to the mission of their church than their more liberal coreligionists and so on down the line.
This should come as no surprise; scholars have voluminously documented the “decline” of the mainline church. More striking, however, was that Smith’s interviews turned up slightly lower levels of religious vitality among fundamentalists than among evangelicals. For example, Smith found that greater numbers of fundamentalists than evangelicals were content to turn up in church only on Sundays (or more rarely). He also notes that while “self-identified fundamentalists … tended to emphasize their belief in orthodox doctrine, they sometimes didn’t reflect the same intensity about the matter [as evangelicals] and occasionally even showed signs of compromise on or indifference to matters of theological truth.”
At this point, Smith turned his attention to considering the question of why evangelicalism is thriving in contemporary America. It shouldn’t be, according to many sociologists. Increasingly, evangelicals are supposedly out of step with modernity: old-fashioned, backwards, clinging to absolutes that are distinctly out of fashion in this day of relativism and situational ethics. Why then, asks Smith, is evangelicalism thriving in America? If America is the preeminent modern society, imitated around the globe, how can it concomitantly be one of the world’s religious hot spots?
Smith, of course, is not the first person to consider these questions. Sociologists have spun numerous theories about religious vitality, and in his third chapter, Smith takes on four well-known rival explanations. First, Smith considers what he terms the “sheltered enclave” theory. Here, he is referring to the influential work of Peter Berger and his student James Davison Hunter. According to this theory, a religion “is not merely an organized population of fellow believers but a socially maintained and sacredly defined cultural milieu that sustains a distinct worldview.” Strong religions are those that can provide “secure moral orders that make life and the world meaningful and significant” for believers.
A second popular theory is the status discontent theory, which, for example, might see the rise of the Christian Right “as motivated by the desire to counteract status decline resulting from the cultural devaluing of traditional, conservative Protestant lifestyles.”
A third theory is the supply-side theory of Roger Finke, Rodney Stark, Laurence Iannaccone, and their fellow travelers. The idea behind this theory is that “religious regulation and monopolies create lethargic religions” but then in a competitive market environment, strong religions will thrive:
Capable religions thrive because their religious “entrepreneurs” capitalize on unregulated religious environments to aggressively market their religions to new “consumers”; in these environments, religious “firms” (denominations and traditions) that possess superior organizational structures (denominational policies), sales representatives (evangelists and clergy), products (religious messages), and marketing (evangelistic) techniques flourish.
Finally, there is the “strictness theory,” which suggests that religious groups that demand something from their adherents thrive, while more liberal, lax groups languish. Articulated by Dean Kelley in the 1970s, this theory holds that strict demands produce commitment to the group, discipline, and zeal to spread the faith. Lenient religious groups, however—those “characterized by relativistic beliefs and values, an appreciation for a diversity of views and lifestyles, and an interest in dialoguing with, rather than judging, the views of outsiders”—produce merely a lukewarm commitment to the faith, high levels of individualism, and an extreme hesitance about bringing outsiders into the faith.
Not surprisingly, in evaluating these theories, Smith determines that none satisfactorily explains evangelicalism’s success. Smith’s own explanation bears a typically cumbersome sociological label—he calls it a ” ‘Subcultural Identity’ Theory of Religious Strength”—but his account of it is admirably clear. In a nutshell, Smith contends that—contra the widely accepted views of Hunter and his followers—evangelicalism is strong not despite, but precisely because of, the diverse and pluralistic context of contemporary America:
American evangelicalism … is strong not because it is shielded against, but because it is—or at least perceives itself to be—embattled with forces that seem to oppose or threaten it. Indeed, evangelicalism … thrives on distinction, engagement, conflict, and threat. Without these, evangelicalism would lose its identity and purpose and grow languid and aimless. Thus … the evangelical movement’s vitality is not a product of its protected isolation from, but of its vigorous engagement with pluralistic modernity.
Evangelicals, Smith argues, draw the core of their identity from identifying the Other and drawing real and symbolic boundaries between themselves and these (often menacing) alternatives. Granted, this is hardly unique to evangelicals. Men cannot think about their maleness without contrasting themselves with women; white people cannot think about whiteness without looking at blacks; and so forth. Nonetheless, this insight, applied to evangelicals, does help explain the strength of the evangelical movement in contrast with the mainline churches.
Mainliners do not, by and large, identify an Other: the mainliners interviewed by Smith and his researchers tell us over and over again that they do not consider Christianity to be superior to, or even opposed to, any other religious tradition. These mainliners do not see themselves as the faithful remnant poised in opposition to other spiritual seekers; as one mainline Lutheran that Smith interviewed put it, “Whatever trips your trigger is fine with me, if that’s your belief system.” Mainliners are engaged in society but do not see themselves as being distinct from it. Fundamentalists, according to Smith, are in the opposite place: they are so distinct from the broader society that they don’t engage with it at all.
And, unlike the strictness theory, Smith’s new theory appears to explain why evangelicalism is more successful in America than fundamentalism. To thrive, a religion must maintain a precarious balance between being distinct from the culture and engaging in and with it.
So, we’re thriving, evangelical readers might reflect with a self-satisfied purr. We already knew that. My church is booming, and the mainliners down the street are downsizing. Why we’re thriving is not so important, and, sociology aside, I agree with your cousin.
Not so fast. Although Smith began his research hoping to determine why evangelicalism is so strong, along the way he also gained some insight into why evangelicalism is not as strong as it might be.
The majority of evangelicals, Smith observes, believe that as Christians, they need to “change the world.” Evangelicals may not agree about what is wrong with the present landscape—followers of Jim Wallis would outline a different political agenda than devotees of Ralph Reed—but there is a consensus among evangelicals that America is plagued by tremendous social, economic, and cultural ills, and that Christians have an obligation to reshape the country into something more pleasing in the eyes of God.
But Smith argues that if evangelicals succeed at many of their goals—retaining members, bringing new people into the fold, and so forth—they by and large are failing to bring about social change. Moreover, “many of the subcultural distinctives which foster evangelicalism’s vitality as a religious movement … are the very same factors which can foster its ineffectiveness as an agent of social change.”
It is perhaps not surprising that evangelical political muscles are atrophied. American Christians are out of practice at world reforming. The current evangelical consensus that Christians have an obligation to reform the world is, in fact, a return to a mindset more characteristic of the early nineteenth century than of much of this century. Antebellum evangelicals (at least in the North) were involved in all manner of political reforms—abolition, temperance, antiprostitution, and so forth, causes embraced in the name of God. Postmillennial evangelicals, optimistic about humanity and the world, believed that they not only could, but were obligated to, perfect the world in order to hasten Christ’s second coming, which would occur only after the millennium.
The theological overtaking of American evangelicals by a premillennial outlook—that Christ would rapture true believers prior to the millennium—had a dramatic impact on how evangelicals thought about society. There was no longer any sense that the world needed to be perfected, or even could be perfected prior to the endtime. As Dwight L. Moody put it, “I don’t find any place where God says the world is going to grow better and better. I find that the earth is to grow worse and worse.”
Only in the last 20 or 30 years have evangelicals returned to a stance of social activism (even if those involved in the Moral Majority would claim that theologically they were strictly premillennial). Smith’s interviews reveal that the desire to reform the world has once again permeated the rank-and-file evangelicals; oral history interviews that I have conducted with evangelical women confirm this. As one Maryland evangelical I interviewed put it bluntly, “The world around us is going to hell in a handbasket, and I as a Christian cannot stand by and let that happen. We are called by God to transform the world around us, to make it look as close to the Kingdom of God as we can. Right now, everything is pretty far from the Kingdom, but we have to change that.”
In the last chapter of American Evangelicalism, Smith focuses on what he calls the “personal influence strategy,” which he sees as the primary tool in evangelicals’ social-change toolbox. According to Smith, contemporary evangelicals do not think in terms of systemic, organized political change. Although on the nightly news we are used to hearing about Operation Rescue and Christian organizations set up for funneling money to selected congressional and gubernatorial candidates, this type of political involvement is a reflection of only a minority of Christians. The rest of us strive to “change the world” in another way—through one-on-one, interpersonal, individual influences.
Evangelicals did not volunteer support for, say, the government’s implementing a plan of wealth redistribution; instead, they would encourage their neighbor to join them one afternoon a week fixing sandwiches for the local soup kitchen. As one woman said, “I can’t solve the world’s problems, but I can sure love the person next to me that is homeless or beaten up.” Or, as a Presbyterian woman observed, “Some of the areas need to be done on an individual basis, more active Christian involvement. Let’s say for the hungry, evangelical churches find a way to hook up resources so they can help. Or help inner-city areas by providing more tutoring on a more regular basis for some of the students.” Those would be noble and worthy projects, indeed, but, as Smith observes, they will probably not accomplish evangelicals’ goal of “transforming the world around us.”
Smith no doubt wrote his book with a primarily academic audience in mind. But evangelical readers across the board have a valuable lesson to learn from Smith. He is not prescriptive—he does not conclude with a neat recipe for how evangelicals should go about getting their political lives in order. Nonetheless, his observation that the individualistic approach to social change is “strategically inadequate for the task of social transformation” should serve as a much needed wake-up call. Devote a week in your small group to discussing and praying about Christian politics—and start with a perusal of the last chapter of American Evangelicalism.
Lauren F. Winner is Kellett Scholar at Cambridge University.
Copyright © 1998 by the author or Christianity Today/Books & Culture Magazine. For reprint information call 630-260-6200 or e-mail bceditor@BooksAndCulture.com.
