Christianity's American Fate: How Religion Became More Conservative and Society More Secular

by David A. Hollinger

Overview

Tracing the rise of evangelicalism and the decline of mainline Protestantism in American religious and cultural life

How did American Christianity become synonymous with conservative white evangelicalism? This sweeping work by a leading historian of modern America traces the rise of the evangelical movement and the decline of mainline Protestantism’s influence on American life. In Christianity’s American Fate, David Hollinger shows how the Protestant establishment, adopting progressive ideas about race, gender, sexuality, empire, and divinity, liberalized too quickly for some and not quickly enough for others. After 1960, mainline Protestantism lost members from both camps—conservatives to evangelicalism and progressives to secular activism. A Protestant evangelicalism that was comfortable with patriarchy and white supremacy soon became the country’s dominant Christian cultural force.

Hollinger explains the origins of what he calls Protestantism’s “two-party system” in the United States, finding its roots in America’s religious culture of dissent, as established by seventeenth-century colonists who broke away from Europe’s religious traditions; the constitutional separation of church and state, which enabled religious diversity; and the constant influx of immigrants, who found solidarity in churches. Hollinger argues that the United States became not only overwhelmingly Protestant but Protestant on steroids. By the 1960s, Jews and other non-Christians had diversified the nation ethnoreligiously, inspiring more inclusive notions of community. But by embracing a socially diverse and scientifically engaged modernity, Hollinger tells us, ecumenical Protestants also set the terms by which evangelicals became reactionary.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780691233888
Publisher:	Princeton University Press
Publication date:	10/11/2022
Pages:	216
Product dimensions:	5.60(w) x 8.60(h) x 0.90(d)

About the Author

David A. Hollinger is the Preston Hotchkis Professor of History Emeritus at the University of California, Berkeley. His many books include Protestants Abroad: How Missionaries Tried to Change the World but Changed America and After Cloven Tongues of Fire: Protestant Liberalism in Modern American History (both Princeton).

Table of Contents

Preface xi

1 Introduction: The Other Protestants 1

2 A Country Protestant on Steroids 10

3 Jewish Immigrants versus Anglo-Protestant Hegemony 27

4 The Missionary Boomerang 45

5 The Apotheosis of Liberal Protestantism 68

6 The 1960s and the Decline of the Mainline 90

7 Ecumenical Democrats, Evangelical Republicans, and Post-Protestants 108

8 Christianity's American Fate: A Conservative Refuge? 132

9 Beyond the Paradox of a Religious Politics in a Secular Society 157

Notes 165

Index 185

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

“Lucidly written and expansive in scope, Christianity’s American Fate situates the ascendancy of conservative evangelicalism within the broader transformation of American religion. Accessible and generative, Hollinger’s narrative is a valuable contribution to our understanding of religion and public life in America.”—Kristin Kobes Du Mez, author of Jesus and John Wayne: How White Evangelicals Corrupted a Faith and Fractured a Nation

“No contemporary historian has probed more deeply, fruitfully, or insightfully into the mind of American Protestantism than David Hollinger. Christianity’s American Fate could not be more timely. Hollinger offers challenging, thoughtful, and well-grounded insights into the peculiar path American religion has taken over the past two decades. Hollinger’s scholarship has forced me to reevaluate many of my own assumptions. I suspect he’ll do the same for you.”—E. J. Dionne Jr., author of Souled Out and coauthor of 100% Democracy

“In this highly readable history, Hollinger shows us why even nonreligious people should take a keen interest in the divisions within American Christianity. The rise of reactionary evangelicalism has enabled a politics of the irrational—with devastating consequences on American political discourse. A vital work that helps explain the growing threat of authoritarianism in the United States today.”—Katherine Stewart, author of The Power Worshippers: Inside the Dangerous Rise of Religious Nationalism

“Christianity’s American Fate is an ambitious, sweeping, and important book from one of the most knowledgeable historians working in the United States today.”—Melani McAlister, author of The Kingdom of God Has No Borders: A Global History of American Evangelicals

“The most important feature of American religious history over the past century has been the continuing struggle between evangelical and ecumenical Protestants. This battle remains at the core of today’s extremely polarized politics, as the heirs of the Progressive Era ecumenical Protestants now find themselves in the secular, liberal camp, still fighting the ever-more-conservative evangelicals. In Christianity’s American Fate, David Hollinger, one of the country’s leading historians of religion, provides an accessible, well-written narrative about the causes, contours, and consequences of this central conflict.”—Robert D. Putnam, coauthor of The Upswing: How America Came Together a Century Ago and How We Can Do It Again

Editorial Reviews

★ 08/22/2022

This cogent and comprehensive chronicle by historian Hollinger (Protestants Abroad) outlines how Protestant America’s “two-party system” came to be. Divided between progressive, cosmopolitan “ecumenicals” on the one hand and conservative evangelicals on the other, this system, Hollinger contends, has shaped U.S. politics for centuries, and the “destiny of the United States as a whole remains significantly determined by individuals and groups who claim the authority to speak for Christianity.” The author details how “Protestant cultural hegemony” formed in the country’s earliest years and was disrupted in the 20th century by the assimilation of Jewish immigrants and the dissent of Protestant missionaries critical of Protestantism’s “religious parochialism.” The 1960s saw the split between ecumenicals and evangelicals grow as the latter resisted calls to engage in the civil rights movement while the former agitated for racial justice. Hollinger describes the decline of ecumenical churches, which lost a third of their congregants amid growing secularization by the 21st century, leaving evangelicals with a larger relative share of “Christianity’s hollowed-out remnant.” The history is thorough and often surprising, demonstrating how contemporary political fissures have been shaped by internecine conflicts within Protestantism. This is superlative religious history. (Oct.)

Publishers Weekly

"[A] nuanced account. . . . [Christianity’s American Fate] offers a path to greater understanding of how a transformation occurring in full view over decades escaped the notice of many who watched in bafflement and horror as the events of January 6 unfolded. Rather than another January 6, the greater threat that Christian nationalism poses to American society may be, as [the book] warn[s] us, its normalization."—-Linda Greenhouse, New York Review of Books

"Christianity’s American Fate is at once accessible and erudite, weighing in at a lean 199 pages and yet packing a formidable analytical punch. Hollinger touches on a wide range of issues. . . . [A]nyone who cares about the past, present, and future of American Christianity will be challenged by this book, which like the entirety of Hollinger’s corpus is provocative in the best of ways."—-Heath W. Carter, Christianity Today

From the Publisher

★ 2022-09-22
A superbly concise examination of how American Christianity’s division into a Protestant two-party system parallel to the existing political one came to deeply alter the nation’s recent politics.

Among the preeminent scholars of American intellectual culture, especially of religious thought, Berkeley historian Hollinger, who admits to having “drifted away” from faith, focuses on how religious Christianity, previously only one among many sociocultural factors at play in public as well as private life, attained its current prominent role in politics. The author asks important questions: How did 20th-century American Protestantism break apart into evangelical and ecumenical camps? Why did White evangelicals gain such influence in the nation’s life? What made Donald Trump and the evangelicals take advantage of each other? While harshly condemning such figures as Billy Graham for racial prejudice, anti-intellectualism, and political favoritism, Hollinger never surrenders his scholarly balance. He fully acknowledges how evangelicalism “made it easy to avoid the challenges of an ethnoracially diverse society and a scientifically informed culture.” He sharply criticizes the mainline churches, the “ideological disarray of American ecumenical intellectuals,” and ecumenical Protestants generally for their failure to realize the growing strength of evangelicalism in their “multidecade campaign to achieve more cosmopolitan Protestantism.” Hollinger makes central to his story the roles both of anti-Jewish and anti-Catholic currents within evangelical Protestantism and the emergence of what he calls “Post-Protestants” and those claiming to be “nones”—people without any felt religious affiliation. The author’s only misstep is the relative lack of attention he pays to the growth among evangelicals of anti-Muslim bias since 9/11. In the end, for all his discouraging reflections, Hollinger, betraying some optimism, reminds us that the bitterness of evangelical opposition to recent social and cultural developments reveals how far post-Protestant social and ethical values have spread beyond religion into public life generally.

A critically important, authoritative history of great, immediate relevance.

Kirkus Reviews