Blessed Assurance CL: A History of Evangelicalism in America

This impressionistic collection of essays addresses selected issues of evangelical history from colonial times to the present. Balmer, chair of the religion department at Barnard College of Columbia University, has achieved well-deserved fame for his nuanced explorations of the varieties of American Protestantism, and this book displays some of his strengths. Balmer offers several correctives to the prevailing wisdom about evangelicalism's origins, such as his argument that the European movement of Pietism had as much to do with evangelicalism's development as did English Puritanism. He is at his most provocative and convincing when he suggests that America's religious diversity, enshrined in the First Amendment, has been the source of its remarkable political stability. Unfortunately, the second half of this book is limited by omissions that are surprising given Balmer's previous work: he focuses on the most strident and conservative representatives of the tradition without acknowledging the broader evangelical firmament. It is disappointing that a book purporting to explain ""evangelicalism"" makes no mention of the pivotal (and politically centrist) role of the National Association of Evangelicals or such publications as Christianity Today, while devoting significant time to right-wingers Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson and the like. Such emphases only reinforce popular prejudices about the purported ultraconservatism of evangelicals. Nonwhite expressions of evangelicalism are likewise underrepresented. While this book fails to do justice to the breadth and diversity of the evangelical tradition, readers can return to Balmer's previous work Mine Eyes Have Seen the Glory for a candid yet sympathetic representation of the varieties of American evangelicalism. (Nov.)