In our family, I am the book dog-earer. One criterion that determines which books I consider writing book reflections on is how much I dog-ear (or, if the Bibliovore brought them into the marriage, how much I want to dog-ear) them. One Faith No Longer: The Transformation of Christianity in Red and Blue America, by George Yancey and Ashlee Quosigk, suggested by Alisa Childers in a video some time ago, falls in the first category. So, here you go! As a reminder, here's the general outline of this post: I will . . .
- Contextualize the author's writings as a whole (bibliography)
- Bring the author's major ideas to the present day
- Comment on major sections of the book, or important chapters, depending on organization
Authors' Bibliography
Yancey, a Baylor professor, is the more seasoned co-author; he has written widely on American Christianity in relationship to racial topics, progressivism, and culture (topics). I think his skill in crafting subtitles is excellent. From oldest to most recent, his titles include:
- Beyond Black and White: Reflections on Racial Reconciliation
- Just Don't Marry One: Interracial Dating, Marriage, and Parenting
- Who is White? Latinos, Asians, and the New Black/Nonblack Divide
- United by Faith: The Multiracial Congregation as an Answer to the Problem of Race
- Interracial Contact & Social Change
- Interracial Families: Current Concepts and Controversies
- Beyond Racial Gridlock: Embracing Mutual Responsibility
- One Body, One Spirit: Principles of Successful Multiracial Churches
- Neither Jew Nor Gentile: Exploring Issues of Racial Diversity on Protestant College Campuses
- Transcending Racial Barriers: Toward a Mutual Obligations Approach
- What Motivates Cultural Progressives? Understanding Opposition to the Political and Christian Right
- So Many Christians, So Few Lions: Is There Christianophobia in the United States?
- Hostile Environment: Understanding and Responding to Anti-Christian Bias
- Compromising Scholarship: Religious and Political Bias in American Higher Education
- There is no God: Atheists in America
- Dehumanizing Christians: Cultural Competition in a Multicultural World
- Prejudice in the Press? Investigating Bias in Coverage of Race, Gender, Sexuality, and Religion
- Beyond Racial Division: A Unifying Alternative to Colorblindness and Antiracism
Quosigk has written one book besides One Faith: a title in the Bloomsbury Advances in Religious Studies series called American Evangelicals: Conflicted on Islam. This came out a month or two before One Faith No Longer. The book explores viewpoint diversity about Islam within the American Evangelical branch of Christianity.
Because this book was written so recently (2021), the walk-through will be current enough to contextualize the major ideas Yancey and Quosigk intended to communicate as well as what I took away from my read.
Book Walk-Through: Major Ideas
This book combined solid sociological research (as far as I am familiar with research methods--I have no background in sociology) with lucid prose in 8 chapters. The "bookend" chapters outline history of the conflict between modernist and fundamentalist American Christianity. The central chapters break down the results of the authors' joint research, which had multiple data sources.
Chapter 1: History of the conflict. The two "camps" are operationally defined as modernists and fundamentalists. Fundamentalists are then equated with conservatism in Christianity. The introduction does note that almost the entire sample of "conservative" Christians were Evangelical. Notably, the fundamentalist movement did not emerge until the late 19th century. Over time, "conservative" Christianity became aligned with "conservative" politics (i.e., the Republican party), for better or worse. As the two cultures grew apart, they also became less able to understand each other.
Chapter 2: Politics relating to American Christianity. My main takeaway here was that the American National Election Studies (ANES) survey has been around long enough to provide interesting data on how political views tend to relate to religious views in the US. The scale uses a thermometer concept (how warm/cool one feels) to assess attitudes toward certain groups or issues.
Chapter 3: Pro-life "buts". Data for this chapter came from blog posts, where people of varying levels of influence curate their public image as they write about topics and issues. Yancey and Quosigk specifically sought bloggers with minority/contrarian views within their camp (progressive vs conservative) on the issues of life/natalism and immigration reform. Pro-life progressives want to be pro-life on their own terms, focusing on nuances of the life issue and condemning the lack of apparent sympathy and nuance in the conservative pro-life camp. Pro-reform evangelicals, especially in the post-2016 political climate, have to carefully distance themselves from Trump, focusing on the biblical mandate for mercy. Evangelicals, but not progressives, "directly challenge their political allies" (p. 72) since that is less costly for their worldview.
Chapter 4: In-group and out-group concepts relating to Christians' opinions on those of other faiths. This chapter is based on semi-structured interview data. My biggest takeaway was the in/out concept that articulates part of the reason people tend to dichotomize into "us" versus "them."
Chapter 5: Conservative (fundamentalist) Christians characterized. The operational definition is further specified as those generally holding to Jonathan Edwards' views. The hymn, "In Christ Alone," serves as an exemplar of the (Calvinist) theology. What are some themes or characteristics of this group?
- Preferring the label "Christian" first, but being comfortable equivocating that and "Evangelical"
- Emphasizing a literal interpretation of the Bible with its primary purpose being a reference standard for moral choices
- Focus on original sin and inherent sinfulness as a core doctrine of Christianity
- Atonement theology emphasizing God's wrath (substitutionary) due to the existence of hell
- Distrust of the efficacy of national government to truly reform society
- Insistence on the importance of free speech to allow Christianity to flourish in society
- Overall negative views on Islam and its constructs, but mixed views on relationships
Chapter 6: Progressive Christians characterized. Interview themes in this chapter are summarized as "theologically flexible and politically optimistic" (p. 137). How does this work out in practice?
- Progressives like being called "evangelical" but not "evangelical-plus," depending on how much belief deconstruction they have done.
- However, they did not like being called "Christian" because of developed connotations and because their worldview tends to be more relativistic/pluralistic
- They see theology as quite flexible because "others" confuse the concept of the text with its interpretation(s)
- They center their theology on Jesus, specifically, their conceptions of Him that emphasize social justice and issue-specific voting over voting on a party line
- However, they also support government intervention for social justice
Chapter 7: Progressive Christians further characterized in terms of how they relate to other groups. Overall, interviewees saw Muslims and Muhammad positively as people to be learned from, the Qur'an as speaking about the same God as presented in the Bible, Islam as a culture more than a religion (which I partially agree with based on my own experience and reading), and the importance of focusing on shared human nature in interfaith conversations. In working with Muslims, they only want to partner with others who share their views. They tend to view fundamentalist/conservative/evangelical Christians as "unlearned and inflexible" (p. 179).
Notably, one interviewee called out the practice of single-issue (pro-life) voting in the 2016 election, accurately highlighting the need for leaders to have virtuous moral character, without which specific policies don't really matter. (On a side note, prominent Christian authors on the autism spectrum, including Rod Dreher, have called out the same president for damaging the prospects of American Christianity by his pairing of reprehensible character with good policies.)
Chapter 8: Possibilities for "red" and "blue" Christian co-communities. After analysis of data and examination of the worldviews of each group, the authors conclude that progressive Christians and fundamentalist/evangelical/conservative Christians are two distinct religious groups and should treat each other as such. Whether both are Christian they do not decide.
What's the bottom line?
Christianity is not monolithic. It hasn't really been monolithic throughout its history, but divides among heterodox and heretical groups within the Christian label are somewhat wider today.
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