Thread by @timkellernyc

LONG THREAD: Here is a simplified generalization of American Christianity adapted from a Mark Noll paper. Every positive advance in evangelical history has been accompanied by unfortunate side effects.
(1) Martin Luther proclaimed enduring evangelical principles 1/19

(God’s free grace, justification by faith, the supremacy of Scripture). He also relied heavily on his prince to promote reform in Saxony’s churches and so remained committed to organizing all society, if necessary by force, according to God’s will.

(2) The Great Awakening 2/19

of George Whitefield and Jonathan Edwards (1740s) inspired personal belief, church renewal, and significant outreach to Native Americans and enslaved Africans. But it also turned evangelicals into activists focused on immediate conversions and personal sanctification, and 3/19

away from applied Protestant thought in philosophy, science, and politics.

(3) Many evangelical leaders supported the American Revolution (1776) as a struggle of God versus Satan, and liberty/truth/righteousness versus tyranny/lies/ corruption. In this struggle 4/19

Loyalists to Great Britain who did not recognize the nascent United States as “God’s New Israel” were called “infidels.” English evangelicals (John Wesley) & a few in America wondered why patriots were so excited about “enslavement by Parliament” (a 2-penny tax on tea) when 5/19

they supported the chattel enslavement of Africans.

(4) During the Second Great Awakening (1795-1840) evangelicals accomplished marvels in evangelism (mostly Methodists), education (Congregationalists & Presbyterians in the lead), missions (Baptists), Bible distribution. 6/19

Some treated these as more important for the Republic than advancing the Kingdom of God.

(5) Controversy over slavery during the Civil War (1830-65) witnessed serious Christian reliance on Scripture to attack the institution (abolitionists black & white), defend the institution

(white southerners, some white northerners), and regret its abuses like prohibiting slaves to read and rampant white-on-black sexual predation, while hoping for slavery’s elimination, but not considering the system itself as sinful (the majority white northern view). 8/19

Because the theological question was solved by armies & not agreement on biblical teaching, public reliance on biblical teaching suffered a major blow.

(6) Congress and President Hayes removed Union armies from the South in 1876-77, in effect allowing lynching & enforced 9/19

segregation to prevail. White evangelicals were almost completely silent. Because of the earlier evangelical inability to unite on scriptural values concerning slavery-very few evangelicals tried to bring scriptural values to bear on the great moral crises of this later era 10/19

Jim Crow segregation and the new industrial order.

(7) In the fundamentalist-modernist controversies (1915-1935) fundamentalists defended crucial Christian teachings (the authority of Scripture, the atonement, the Virgin Birth, & resurrection). But they often took their 11/19

lead from pulpiteers deploying slogans instead of careful reasoning, proof-texting instead of serious Bible study, anti-intellectual sensationalism about biblical criticism and science instead of discerning investigation.

(8) In the 1930s and 1940s, neo-evangelicals 12/19

(E. J. Carnell, Carl Henry) tried to bring more serious Bible study, deeper thinking, and more social responsibility back to northern white fundamentalists. Billy Graham was an attractive public face. But leaders also often promoted a rabid anti-communism that amalgamated 13/19

proclamation of the gospel with defense of the United States.

(9) The Civil Rights legislation of the 1960s for the first time made white evangelicals into a cohesive political force. Southern white evangelicals had defended segregation and were Democrats. Northern white 14/19

evangelicals accepted some measure of integration and were Republicans. When Democrat Lyndon Johnson passed Civil Rights legislation, southern white evangelicals became Republicans (after briefly supporting Jimmy Carter in 1976). Many white evangelicals, North and South, 15/19

worried about the expansion of federal power that was required to overcome segregation, even as white southern evangelicals eventually accepted integration. Expanded government and Supreme Court decisions affecting faith question (abortion, prayer in the public schools) 16/19

confirmed white evangelicals in their fear of Big Government. By contrast, African American evangelicals almost all voted Democratic thereafter.

(10) The Immigration Act (1965) and the Lausanne Congress on World Evangelization (1974) opened evangelicals to renewal 17/19

of churches by Hispanic, Korean, Vietnamese, Chinese, and other ethnic contributors—and to worldwide evangelical movements not particularly worried about American problems. We are here, in other words, as a product of an exceptional history—for good and for ill. 18/19

This outline summarizes Mark Noll material taken mostly from A History of Christianity in the United States and Canada; America’s God (Oxford University, 2002); The Civil War as a Theological Crisis (UNC, 2006); and God and Race in American Politics (Princeton, 2008). 19/19