Book Review: The Rise of Evangelicalism

Title: The Rise of Evangelicalism
Author: Mark Noll
Publisher: IVP
Number of pages: 330
Purchased: IVB bookclub, January 2006 ($0.20 promotional price)
Recommended by:
Begun: 4/11/2006
Finished: 3/1/2007
Rating: ***

Review: Despite the fact that Mark Noll (named one of America’s 25 most influential evangelicals by Time magazine in 2005) recently left Wheaton College Graduate School to teach at the University of Notre Dame (beginning fall of 2006), and despite the fact that he believes that there are “groups that today can be called both evangelical and Roman Catholic” (17), Noll presents and excellent understanding, and an engaging presentation of the rise of “evangelicalism” in eighteenth-century Britain and the American Colonies.

Tracing the rise of evangelicalism is a difficult task because the movement never has been “a hard-edged, narrowly defined denomination. Rather, evangelicalism was and is a set of defining beliefs and practices easier to see as an adjective (e.g., evangelical Anglicans, evangelical missionary efforts, evangelical doctrine) than as a simple noun” (21).
This book is the first volume of “A History of Evangelicalism: People, Movements and Ideas in the English-Speaking World.” It covers the age of Edwards, Whitefield and the Wesleys (up to 1795). Noll identifies the late 1730s as the period when modern evangelicalism emerged (59).

The book begins with an overview of the era’s landscapes--political, ecclesiastical and geographical. Noll then describes the “antecedents” and “stirrings” that converged to give rise to the evangelical movement. They are Puritanism (e.g., Cotton Mather, d. 1728, Thomas Boston, d. 1732), Continental Pietism (e.g., August Hermann Franke, d. 1727, Nicholas Ludwig von Zinzendorf, d.1760), and High-Church Anglicanism (e.g., Samuel and Susannah Wesley).

The book then moves to the Colonies to cover the revival that began in late 1734, and traces the conversion of the Wesley brothers and Whitefield. Their interconnectedness, along with the Wesleys’ early connection to the Moravians, and Whitefield’s friendship with Edwards are what Noll identifies as the early threads of the movement, which being woven together began the distinctive cord of “evangelicalism.”

This book follows the development of evangelicalism, including early consolidation as well as fragmentation, through the death of George Whitefield. The narrative is lively, sprinkled with interesting anecdotes. However, this book is more than a simple historical narrative of evangelicalism. It is an analysis of how evangelicalism was shaped by its era, and in turn how it shaped its world. Though Noll does not discredit the role of the supernatural in the creation and shaping of evangelicalism, he does not attempt to explain it or identify its particulars. “What all who look to explain things in [a merely] spiritual way have assumed is that they could understand clearly the ways of God in the world” (140). “It is not excessive to claim that the early evangelicals created evangelicalism. ... Human agency must always be a large factor in interpretations of early evangelical history” (142). His analyses are helpful and of special benefit to any 21st-century individual who would claim to wade in that stream of Christianity descending from 18th-century evangelicalism. Though one may take issue with some of Noll’s assessments, this book will help develop an evangelical self-consciousness that is not parochial and limited to this present era.

“The Rise of Evangelicalism” will give you a greater appreciation for our spiritual heritage and a greater love for the men and women who helped to form it. Though Noll attempts to write from the perspective of an objective historian, he unashamedly identifies himself with the cause. He closes the book with a series of personal testimonies of those “for whom Christianity had moved from the realm of inherited beliefs to the sphere of experimental faith” (284). He concludes: “An evangelical historian of evangelical history may be pardoned for his own conclusion that in many particulars they also sound like the truth” (290). They are the truth. That’s why this book is worth reading.