Theology Today - Vol 47, No. 2 - July 1990 - BOOK REVIEW - Between the Times: The Travail of the Protestant Establishment in America, 1900-1960

190 - Between the Times: The Travail of the Protestant Establishment in America, 1900-1960

Between the Times:
The Travail of the Protestant Establishment in America, 1900-1960
Edited by William R. Hutchison
Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1989. 322 pp. $39.50.

The authors of the twelve essays in this volume agree that the Protestant establishment in twentieth-century America consisted roughly

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of a network of leaders within seven mainline denominations. They agree, implicitly or explicitly, that a capacity for exercising "influence" or "hegemony" is the sign of an establishment. And they agree that the establishment in America had to undergo a painful adjustment between 1900 and 1960 in order to negotiate the transition to a more diverse culture. But the essays, written mainly by participants in the Harvard Colloquium in American Religious History and underwritten mainly by the Lilly Endowment, prove amenable to two interpretations.

They can be read as chronicles of decline. Parish ministers lost influence and local laity never achieved it (Edwin Gaustad). Denominational colleges had to acquiesce to standards set by or for secular universities (Dorothy Bass). Mainline churches published fewer magazines and journals; lost their cozy alliance with radio networks; and abandoned television to the hucksters (Dennis Voskuil). By 1960, their self-assurance as social reformers had begun to erode (William King) and their ecumenical dreams for federation or union were about to fade (Robert Schneider). The white male leadership slighted churchwomen, who nonetheless made their influence felt (Virginia Brereton); remained geographically and culturally distant from black Christians even while they issued tentative manifestos against segregation (David Wills); and drew ambivalent reactions from Catholics and Jews, who were not yet sure that Protestants were trustworthy (Benny Kraut). The social sciences undermined their values (Robert Moore); a growing knowledge of other religions undercut their missionary zeal (Grant Wacker); and encounters with Billy Graham and the National Association of Evangelicals left them bemused (Mark Silk).

But the essays can also be read as chronicles of successful persistence. Parish ministers guided liturgical renewal. Mainline groups deployed campus ministers and nurtured the academic study of religion. Their ecumenical organizations served the churches well and kept the ideal of unity visible. United Church Women showed that establishment Protestantism could honor high ideals; the struggle for civil rights showed that it could respond effectively to social injustice; and its more positive relationships with Catholics and Jews after 1960 suggest that it laid some solid foundations for mutual understanding. The encounter with world religions, moreover, sometimes deepened Protestantism's own self-understanding; the clashes with Graham and the National Association of Evangelicals sometimes opened doors for dialogue; and the academy's admiration for Reinhold Niebuhr showed that even secular social scientists could occasionally learn something from a theologian.

The volume's editor, William Hutchison, an historian at Harvard Divinity School, clearly prefers the second reading. He sees the essays as stories of religious groups who maintained a religious and cultural hegemony far out of proportion to their numerical strength. Compared to the decline in Protestant cultural authority between 1790 and 1860, he argues, the realignments of the twentieth century have been merely overdue adjustments. To interpret them as signs of dramatic decline,

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furthermore, is to exaggerate considerably the earlier strength and efficacy of mainline religion, whether in the nineteenth century or in the early twentieth.

Hutchison suggests that not every essayist in the group would necessarily share his overall assessment, and, indeed, some of the essays accentuate the theme of decline more forcefully than Hutchison does in his conclusion. A few rejoice that Protestant power has faded. All of them struggle with terminology. They often try to avoid terms like "mainstream" or "mainline" that might suggest favorable normative judgments. They prefer to speak of hegemony, the power structure, and establishment. The problem is that to a reader in a nation whose founding documents forbid the establishment of religion these terms also suggest normative judgments, albeit slightly negative and disparaging ones.

The editor notes that the essayists had to be selective; they could not cover every appropriate topic. The omissions are nonetheless intriguing. The volume contains almost nothing about academic theology; Reinhold Niebuhr gets a couple of pages, but the essays otherwise largely ignore the theologians. Most of the essayists also have little to say about local congregations, about grass-roots religion at the parish level. The focus is rather on the network of leaders: scholars, celebrated preachers, and, most of all, administrators.

Within these limits, the essays prove to be both illuminating and suggestive. The reason one can interpret the volume as an argument either for or against the thesis of decline is that the essayists avoid oversimplifying the complexity of the issue. The book is instructive precisely because it respects the ambiguity of its subject matter.

E. Brooks Holifield
Emory University
Atlanta, Georgia