Paging through 40 years of Christianity Today, one notices the advertisements for books in every issue. Mark Noll and David Wells might be right in chastising evangelicals for not thinking well (The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind, 1994; and No Place for Truth, 1993; respectively), but evangelicals apparently do read. And what they have read over the last four decades tells us a lot about them.
Evangelicals, of course, care about evangelism. D. James Kennedy’s Evangelism Explosion (1970) is probably the most widely used single guide, beyond Bill Bright’s little tract on The Four Spiritual Laws. For those who sought to respond to the intellectual challenges posed to the faith, Josh McDowell offered Evidence that Demands a Verdict (1972), doubtless the most popular apologetics handbook of our time. And for those who needed inspiration as much as information, Elisabeth Elliot’s powerful missionary books, preeminently her account of the Ecuador martyrs, Through Gates of Splendor (1957), motivated many to join in the evangelistic enterprise. A recipient of evangelism, Charles Colson told of his becoming Born Again (1976) and soon took his place as a leading figure in American evangelicalism. Evangelist Billy Graham, of course, has been the leading figure among American evangelicals, and he has served them with many books through the years. His study of Angels: God’s Secret Agents (1977) has been, to his own surprise, the biggest seller.
The receptive response to Graham’s angelology may have presaged the astonishing success of This Present Darkness (1976) and subsequent novels by Frank Peretti, whose tales of supernatural conflict revived a long-dormant evangelical interest in spiritual warfare. Such warfare also was guided and inspired by John Wimber, leader of the Vineyard movement and author (with Kevin Springer) of Power Evangelism (1986), the book that introduced “signs and wonders” into the American evangelical lexicon. Even Peretti’s sales, however, pale in comparison to the bestseller of the 1970s, Hal Lindsey’s The Late Great Planet Earth (1970). Lindsey imaginatively freshened up dispensational eschatology for a new generation, and many others followed in his wake.
Lindsey’s success showed that, in at least some respects, evangelicals continued to care about the Bible. Sometimes they have gone to war over it. Harold Lindsell’s The Battle for the Bible (1976) called evangelicals to arms over the question of inerrancy, and Jack Rogers and Donald McKim’s effort to show that evangelicals did not have to share Lindsell’s views on The Authority and Interpretation of the Bible (1979) merely added fuel to the fire.
Another firestorm of controversy over the Bible was touched off by Henry Morris and John Whitcomb by their defense of “creation science” in The Genesis Flood (1961). Indeed, the cry of “creation versus evolution” continues to ignite evangelical interest decades later, as it did decades before among fundamentalists. It was George Marsden’s account of Fundamentalism and American Culture (1980) that helped the many evangelical heirs of the fundamentalists to understand why they acted and thought as they did. Marsden’s book more than any other marked the emergence of the prominent new school of evangelical church history that had been foreshadowed by Timothy Smith and Ernest Sandeen in a previous generation.
Mostly, though, evangelicals have preferred to read and profit from the Bible. Berkeley Mickelsen’s widely used textbook, Interpreting the Bible (1963), gave evangelicals helpful guidelines. Scottish scholar F. F. Bruce led the way in offering evangelicals useful commentaries, although William Barclay’s even more popular paperback series (begun in the 1950s and revised virtually until his death in 1978) introduced the common reader to critical theories previously unfamiliar to most evangelicals. For pastors and scholars, George Ladd (notably in A Theology of the New Testament [1974] and The New Testament and Criticism [1967]) and Roland Harrison (especially in his ubiquitous Introduction to the Old Testament [1969]) encouraged evangelicals to benefit, if cautiously, from modern critical study of the Bible. Many of those pastors, furthermore, probably were taught the basics of preaching the Bible from a primer like Haddon Robinson’s Biblical Preaching (1980) and a sophisticated consideration of the preacher’s task from works such as John R. W. Stott’s Between Two Worlds (1982). American evangelicals focused on the Bible in the most basic respect as they generated a profusion of paraphrases and translations, most notably Kenneth Taylor’s Living Bible (1971) and the New International Version (1973)-with Eugene Peterson’s currently popular The Message (1993) only the latest in this stream.
Evangelicals have not been as industrious in systematic theology, although Carl F. H. Henry’s six-volume study of God, Revelation, and Authority (1976-83) looms large among several similar projects (even as some would see Karl Barth yet as the most influential twentieth-century author among evangelical theologians). Donald Bloesch reacquainted evangelicals with the historic riches of Christian thought in his two-volume presentation of Essentials of Evangelical Theology (1978-79), a project that Thomas Oden, among others, has taken up with vigor. A highly technical but, in academic circles, widely influential book by philosopher Alvin Plantinga, God and Other Minds (1967), inaugurated a rejuvenation of Christian philosophy in this generation, among evangelicals as well as others. And Swiss psychiatrist Paul Tournier’s books (The Meaning of Persons, 1957) spoke strongly to a generation of serious Christians in the United States.
American evangelicals have been greatly enriched by theology written at a popular level yet with real spiritual substance, especially from the ready pens of Englishmen John Stott and J. I. Packer. Stott’s Basic Christianity (1958) continues to introduce people to the gospel, and Packer’s Knowing God (1973) is an acknowledged classic.
It was Stott’s view of Christian Mission in the Modern World (1975) that provoked many to reconsider the importance of the social dimensions of Christian witness and service. Ron Sider’s Rich Christians in an Age of Hunger (1977) impressed many evangelicals with an Anabaptist-influenced ethic they had not encountered before. John Howard Yoder introduced evangelicals to what he saw to be The Politics of Jesus (1972) from a similar perspective, and Donald Dayton pointed the way toward Discovering an Evangelical Heritage (1976) of social ministry. Richard John Neuhaus’s The Naked Public Square (1984) called for Christian cultural engagement of a different sort; the title phrase Neuhaus coined for that book continues to set the boundaries for debate.
Few areas of public concern have motivated evangelicals as powerfully
as have issues concerning the family. James Dobson’s Dare to Discipline (1970), a straightforward text on childrearing by a well-credentialed psychologist, helped to launch the career of one of American evangelicalism’s most influential pundits, as Dobson now engages a wide range of issues through his Focus on the Family organization. With Intended for Pleasure (1977), Ed and Gayle Wheat pioneered a new genre: evangelical sex manuals. Marabel Morgan made her own contribution to domestic life by advocating what she called The Total Woman (1973), while Patricia Gundry’s Woman, Be Free (1977) and Letha Scanzoni and Nancy Hardesty’s All We’re Meant to Be (1974) sounded quite different themes for women. Thus, for evangelicalism, the gender question emerged into prominence, where it has remained ever since.
Some of the groundwork for evangelical cultural engagement in matters of the family was laid by Francis Schaeffer and C. Everett Koop. In their book and film series, Whatever Happened to the Human Race? (1979), they raised many evangelicals’ awareness by asking about abortion, euthanasia, and other bioethical issues. Ah, Francis Schaeffer. For some evangelicals, finding fault with him has been a mark of sophistication. It remains, however, that many, many evangelicals-including some of the most prominent evangelical intellectual leaders-were first inspired to serious Christian thought about culture by Schaeffer’s pioneering books Escape from Reason and The God Who Is There (1968). It is perhaps fair to say, however, that one author’s books indisputably affected American evangelicals during this period more than did Francis Schaeffer’s-or those of any of the other authors mentioned above. And that author was neither American nor quintessentially evangelical. I mean, of course, C. S. Lewis.
Even though many of his most popular books were written before this last 40-year period, Lewis’s influence swept over American evangelicalism only latterly-indeed, like a tide whose influence has not receded more than 30 years after his death. The most prominent of the popular titles-Mere Christianity (1952), The Screwtape Letters (1942), The Problem of Pain (1940), A Grief Observed (1961), Miracles (1947), and, perhaps above all, the Chronicles of Narnia (1950-56)-merely hint at Lewis’s colossal impact upon a generation and more who sought practical wisdom, digestible theology, wit, verve, logic, and imagination.
For those inclined to parlor games, it might make an interesting evening for readers to ask each other which books ought to have influenced American evangelicalism more than they did. But if this listing is even approximately accurate (and another parlor game could be played in disputing it!), American evangelicals can be known indeed by the literary company they have kept.
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