How Do We Interpret Evangelical History?

The Dust-up Between John Fea, Beth Alison Barr and Kristin Kobes du Mez

Last week, there was quite the dust-up between historians of evangelicalism John Fea, Beth Allison Barr, Kristin Kobes Du Mez. All three historians have written critical historiographies of evangelicalism, Barr’s The Making of Biblical Womanhood , Du Mez’s  Jesus and John Wayne, and John Fea’s Believe Me: The Evangelical Road to Donald Trump. The ‘dust-up’ was over an Atlantic article by John Fea where he recounts some of the positives of evangelicalism and its history, specifically pointing to the positive impact of the ministry of James Dobson on his dad and his family growing up. Fea complained that “Du Mez’s and Barr’s, as works of evangelical history, are woefully flat and do not explain historically the story of my father.” This resulted in several responses to Fea’s Atlantic article, including in NewYork Magazine, Patheos, Du Mez’s own Substack response, and various other Substacks. It was a dust-up/push back of sorts.

This is not the first time someone has criticized an historiography for being one-sided. Indeed Du Mez and Barr have been challenged on this before. (See Roger Olson here for instance.) Through all of this however, it does seem obvious that people writing history are not doing it “objectively” (in the naive sense). They are doing it from within a perspective, maybe even an agenda. History is perspectival and this is why, when reading histories, it is important to read different histories, where we are able to see, highlight and reveal threads of this history from different perspectives, especially the voices that have been marginalized. This is why I find it fascinating that John Fea starts out his Atlantic article with the story of his father and James Dobson, just as Beth Allison Barr starts her book narrating her experience as professor, wife of a youth pastor in a Southern Baptist church in small town Texas. This hearkens back to when Don Dayton wrote his landmark history of evangelicalism (Discovering as Evangelical Heritage 1976) by saying in the prologue, “Whether the fact is admitted or not, most books arise out of the author’s personal history. This book is no exception … fairness to the reader requires frankness about the life situation behind one’s writing. This book is the product of the author’s struggle to reconcile the seemingly irreconcilable in his own experience: the Evangelical heritage in which he was reared and values bequeathed him by the student movements of the 1960’s.”  …. Barr, Fea and Dayton were all in their own way acknowledging the lens they bring to their reading of a history.

All of it speaks to the fact that it is impossible to remove our own lens in the writing, narrating, and uncovering of the forces at work within a history. It is a rule of reading and writing history. This just makes so much sense to me. It really is noncontroversial. There are many sides, many different lens to read various histories, and we learn so much when we read histories through different lens knowing and recognizing the context from which each lens comes. This is why we read texts, especially histories, from those marginalized within those histoires. Has there been anything more salient these past twenty years, than the need for all of us to read the history of slavery, racism in this country, through the eyes of black persons? It doesn’t mean one history is more right than another history prima facie. But to truly understand the questions at work in history, we must read more than one history, from various lens.

On Looking at Evangelicalism Through the Lens of Power

In my just-released book Reckoning with Power, I did some recounting of the history of evangelicalism via the lens of being on the right and wrong side of power. I am writing from the lens of my own years long wrestling with the the problem of power, my own, and other leaders around me. In the intro I give a hat tip to historians like Du Mex, Barr, Jemar Tisby and Fea, saying:

In recent years, many books have narrated the history of evangelicalism’s abuse of power and the destruction it has wreaked on people’s lives. Jemar Tisby’s The Color of Compromise described the history of evangelicalism’s (and its predecessors’) complicity with slavery and racism. Anthea Butler’s White Evangelical Racism accomplished a similar feat. Kristin Kobes Du Mez’s Jesus and John Wayne detailed the evangelical church’s cultivation of a toxic masculinity and patriarchy within its own culture and politics. Kevin Kruse’s One Nation under God told the story of evangelicalism’s (and its immediate predecessors’) leaders joining with corporate economic power to gain the control necessary to lead a “Christian nation.” John Fea’s Believe Me outlined the evangelical church journey to align politically with Donald Trump. These are just a few of the books that have been published within this genre in the last decade. They all expose, in horrific detail, the history of evangelical Christianity’s complicity with abusive power that led to hideous cultural sins.

These complicities, once revealed, leave us incredulous, asking, “Why does this keep happening?” Are these examples of just a few bad apples in evangelicalism, or is there something woven deeply within the fabric of evangelicalism itself that [A1] leads again and again to these moral failings? Are these examples of Christianity or apostate heresy? Or is naming something apostasy just an easy out? Is there a problem in the design because this same apostasy keeps happening again and again in the name of Christ?

In this book I seek to answer these questions by asserting that it is evangelicalism’s (as well as many other past historical Christianities’) complicity with worldly power that has led it to its present demise. It is the church on the wrong side of worldly power. But just as important, when the evangelical church has been on the right side of God’s power, in submission to Christ’s power by the Spirit, some of the greatest social revolutions in history came forth.

Reading History from the Right Side of Power

As you can see from those brief paragraphs, evangelicalism’s history has been complicit with the grotesque sins of slavery, racism, toxic masculinity and patriarchy. There has also been times when evangelicalism (or its immediate predecessors depending on how you define evangelicalism) has actually led in abolitionist movements, women’s liberation and suffrage movements, anti-poverty crusades etc. It all has to do with which side of power these versions of evangelicalism occupied.

To me, this is an untold story in the histories to which I have alluded to. Using the work of Jemar Tisby, my own teacher Donald Dayton and James Cone, I try to illustrate this lens in order to understand more deeply the story of evangelicalism at its worst, as well as at its best, as told by Tisby, Du Mez, Barr, Fea, and many others. I do not know if Tisby, Cone or Dayton would totally approve of my use of their work (I did run it by Don Dayton for three hours in his apartment a few months before he passed away). But here is what I said in the epilogue of ‘Reckoning with Power.’

If we look closely at these historical moments, each time white Christians in America sided with proslavery, patriarchal, and exploitive economic practices—in other words, with the wrong side of history—they were occupying a place of privilege, aligned with worldly power, money, class, and status. That is, following the theme of this book, the church was on the wrong side of power. Aligned with worldly power, the church acted to guard the status quo.

On the other hand, when Christians were present among the marginalized, oppressed, and the powerless (in terms of worldly power), space was opened up, God moved in the power of the Spirit, and the church led the world for justice. And so, more often than not, when the church found itself on the wrong side of history, the problem was fundamentally that the church was on the wrong side of power.

Christians, when situated among the powerless (not possessing worldly power) and their churches, became the instigators of the abolitionist, feminist, poverty-alleviating transformative movements. They were not perfect. Some were racists. They were still constantly tempted to blur the powers. But by and large, the church that ended up on the right side of history working for justice—that, in fact, led that history—was the church first postured under the power of God at work among the poor.

The Lesson Here Is?

I appreciate very much the work of all of historians Kristin Kobes du Mez, Beth Allison Barr, Jamar Tisby, John Fea, and others who write the histories of evangelicalism we all must deal with if we are going to understand this cultural moment we’re standing in. (special thanks to John Fea who endorsed Reckoning With Power). I think each one has made a major contribution. But what I think is special, is the ability to have these kind of discussions, back and forth, as to how we are to understand our histories, see through multiple lens, and make space for something new with each new learning they offer us. Having these kind of discussions teaches us how to live.

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You can order Reckoning With Power here.