Book review Evangelicalism: an Americanized Christianity

Richard Kyle, professor of history and religion at Mennonite Tabor College, has written Evangelicalism: an Americanized Christianity (2006). Here is how he describes his book in the Introduction:

This volume surveys the relationship of two strong forces---evangelicalism and American popular culture. Currently, evangelicalism may be the most Americanized and dynamic brand of religion in the United States. While its roots can be found in Europe, if evangelicalism were a garment its label would read: "Made in America." But this is not a new development. While it has reached new heights in the last twenty-five years, evangelicalism and American popular culture have interacted extensively since the colonial era. And the relationship has been complex and paradoxical. It has run in both directions. In its attempt to create a Christian America, evangelicals have powerfully shaped the nation's public values. The influence, however, has run more in the other direction. The popular culture has had a tremendous impact on evangelicalism---so much so that many conservative Protestants regard evangelical and American values as one and the same. Evangelicals also have had a hate-love relationship with American culture. While many view America's political and economic systems as divinely inspired, they have hated what they regard as the nation's departure from these perceived biblical principles.

Another book, The Wars of America: Christian Views edited by historian Ronald Wells, makes essentially the same argument as professional evangelical historians examine America's wars, why we fought them and what the evangelical perspective was on each war. I sadly shook my head as I read this profoundly disturbing volume. How could a supposedly bible-believing people be so badly deceived, so allied with the kingdoms of this world? In the chapter on the Revolutionary War, George Marsden describes the development of American civil religion, a shallow version of Christianity which fit well with the widespread deism of the day. Nationalism, deism and American civil religion; in some strange way evangelicalism blended well with this syncretistic mixture.

As I read Evangelicalism, I noted how easily many evangelicals baptized and sanctified Enlightenment secular values, capitalism, nationalism, deism, Anglo-Saxon civilization, democracy, slavery and militarism tied with Manifest Destiny. As I read this book I was reminded of a black friend who was attending an evangelical bible school at the time of Martin Luther King's assassination; white students cheered because they saw King as a threat to their supposedly superior WASP values.

Now some quotations from Evangelicalism:

This marriage [between evangelicalism and capitalism] began well before the Civil War and has continued strong thereafter. . . . As the government was not to interfere in religious matters, it should not regulate the economy. . . . But while they attacked specific [social] problems, they did not seriously critique the [capitalistic] system. . . . Evangelical Protestants may not have caused consumerism, but they contributed to its rise. Their values of free choice and individualism resonated with the new consumer ethic.

As I finished Evangelicalism, I concluded that the typical white American evangelical worships the Christian trinity of Father, Son and Holy Spirit on Sunday between 11:00 and 12:00 but during the week, Monday through Saturday, the American trinity of hyperindividualism, hypermaterialism and hyperethnocentrism takes center stage and pushes the Father, Son and Spirit to the side. This is Americanized Christianity in 2014.