Re-forming the Center: American Protestantism, 1900 to the Present

Christian Century, Oct 27, 1999 by Milton J. Coalter

Re-forming the Center: American Protestantism, 1900 to the Present.

Edited by Douglas Jacobsen and William Vance Trollinger Jr. Eerdmans, 508 pp., $28.00.

THAT THE MAIN title of this book appears on its front cover without capitalization is a clue to the book's motivation but not to the bulk of its contents. The majority of these well-researched and informative essays are not primarily about the center of American Protestantism. Instead, they strive to disprove thesis that two major religious parties have contended for the allegiances of white 20th-century Protestants.

According to that thesis, a coalition of conservatives, evangelicals, charismatics and fundamentalists on the right have battled a cadre of mainline, liberal and progressive Protestants on the left for dominance. First proposed by Jean Miller Schmidt and Martin Marty in the '70s, this image of "two diametrically and bitterly opposed camps" has become so much a part of sociological and historical analysis that the notion of a contemporary culture war is common in the academy, the press and the church.

Employing a variety of excellent case studies of denominations that frequently have been used to prove this paradigm, as well as essays on traditions and movements that "cannot be, and did not want to be, squeezed into one of the two parties," Douglas Jacobsen and William Vance Trollinger Jr. seek to expose the "inadequacies and inaccuracies of the two-party model." They contend that this bipolar stereotype does not square with the experience of the vast majority of Protestants. Moreover, it has had the destructive effect of blinding white Protestants to the diversity within and outside their ranks, thereby unnecessarily curtailing their opportunities to find common cause with others in the pursuit of faithful discipleship.

So much of this book is dedicated to this contention that even the editors acknowledge that it may be seen as "an exercise in overkill.... Doesn't everyone already admit that the two-party model is, at best, a limited tool for exploring the dynamics of American Protestantism?" No, Jacobsen and Trollinger insist. This bogus thesis remains the default, shorthand interpretation of the Protestant scene used by scholars and churchpeople.

The more interesting question might be: Why is the promise of this work's title left unfulfilled? These essays will long stand as helpful reminders of the complexity of "lived religion," an experience that seldom falls into nice, neat either-or patterns. An essay by Marry, in turn, provides a useful warning against jettisoning too quickly the idea that Protestant "conservatives" and "liberals" are at odds with one another and that they press their fellow disciples to take sides on such still unresolved issues as abortion, homosexuality and scriptural revelation.

The argument carried through much of this volume reverses the old caution not to lose sight of the big picture when attending to the details of historical events. It claims that historians, sociologists and church leaders have not been able to see the trees because they have concentrated too hard on the forest. They have ignored the evidence against the two-party thesis that careful attention to the variety of the Protestant experience would have provided. Jacobsen and Trollinger associate attending to the variety with a "postmodern" perspective on American Protestantism. They spurn grand schemes to categorize the options available to American Protestants because they believe that such models constrict this community's vision and foment unnecessary and destructive division in the body of Christ.

Faith communities certainly need a clear map of the diverse historical, sociological and theological geography that surrounds them. But do they not also require a sense of where God calls them to stand or, perhaps more important, to move? After all, Christians are called to be a pilgrim people seeking the path to God, rather than wandering nomads distracted by the infinite variety of flora, fauna and terrain along the way.

Essays by Mark Ellingsen and Gerald Sheppard--on the value of postliberal biblical narrative theology and a postmodern rediscovery of the gospel, respectively--suggest that the supposed two parties in conflict over scripture and theology share misleading Enlightenment assumptions that any Protestant center, present or future, should avoid. Indeed, Ellingsen makes the intriguing proposal that many laypeople already regard the scriptures the way postliberal narrative theologians do.

These two helpful essays are not enough to fulfill the promise of the book's title. One can learn a great deal from this volume about American Protestantism from 1900 to the present, as well as about the shortcomings of the two-party thesis that has dominated the interpretation of the period. But the latter is so fully examined that little space remains for addressing the tantalizing topic of re-forming Protestantism's center, and thus of aiding those Protestants who have found no home in either the religious "right" or "left."