22AR27-18

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AR 27:18 - Mark Noll, the rise and decline of "a Bible Civilization"

In this issue:

AMERICAN HISTORY - the path of cultural fragmentation

ENVIRONMENTALISM - increasing hostility toward the religious right, and the interpretation of climate "science"

PENTECOSTALISM - tied by the Left to "the global surge of right-wing populism"

Apologia Report 27:18 (1,571)
May 18, 2022

AMERICAN HISTORY
America's Book, by Mark Noll (Professor of History Emeritus, University of Notre Dame) <www.bit.ly/38QLCXS> -- the Oxford University Press ad copy announces that Noll "shows how the Bible decisively shaped American national history even as that history influenced the use of Scripture." Compare that last clause with subtitle: "The Rise and Decline of a Bible Civilization, 1794-1911."

Noll "explains why Tom Paine's anti-biblical tract The Age of Reason (1794) precipitated such dramatic effects, how innovations in printing by the American Bible Society created the nation's publishing industry, why Nat Turner's slave rebellion of 1831 and the bitter election of 1844 marked turning points in the nation's engagement with Scripture, and why Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson were so eager to commemorate the 300th anniversary of the King James Version of the Bible." Lots to learn here.

"Noll's magisterial work highlights not only the centrality of the Bible for the nation's most influential religious figures (Methodist Francis Asbury, Richard Allen of the African Methodist Episcopal Church, Catholic Bishop Francis Kenrick, Jewish scholar Solomon Schechter, agnostic Robert Ingersoll), but also why it was important for presidents like Abraham Lincoln; notable American women like Harriet Beecher Stowe, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and Frances Willard; dedicated campaigners for civil rights like Frederick Douglass and Francis Grimké; lesser-known figures like Black authors Maria Stewart and Harriet Jacobs; and a host of others of high estate and low. The book also illustrates how the more religiously plural period from Reconstruction to the early twentieth century saw Scripture become a much more fragmented, though still significant, force in American culture, particularly as a source of hope and moral authority for Americans on both sides of the battle over white supremacy - both for those hoping to fight it, and for others seeking to justify it."

It seems history is repeating itself in an ironically similar sense. Has the early twenty-first century also seen Scripture become "a much more fragmented, though still significant, force in American culture, particularly as a source of hope and moral authority for Americans on both sides of the battle" - in the current conflict over how "whiteness" itself is interpreted?

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ENVIRONMENTALISM

The Nature of the Religious Right: The Struggle between Conservative Evangelicals and the Environmental Movement, Neall W. Pogue (Assistant Professor of Instruction, University of Texas, Dallas) <www.bit.ly/38QKXpF> -- the publisher's promo says that Pogue "explains how ideas of nature played a role in constructing the conservative evangelical political movement, why Christian environmental stewardship was supported by members of the community for so long, and why they turned against it so decidedly beginning in the 1990s."

Pogue also "examines how white conservative evangelical Christians became a political force known for hostility toward environmental legislation. Before the 1990s, this group used ideas of nature to help construct the religious right movement while developing theologically based, eco-friendly philosophies that can be described as Christian environmental stewardship. On the twentieth anniversary of Earth Day in 1990, members of this conservative evangelical community tried to turn their eco-friendly philosophies into action. Yet this attempt was overwhelmed by a growing number in the leadership who made anti-environmentalism the accepted position through public ridicule, conspiracy theories, and cherry-picked science."

Contrast the above to with what the following speakers had to say on controversial environmental issues <www.bit.ly/3OZSdQA> at the March 2022 Steamboat Institute summit on "U.S. Energy Policy, Climate Science, Freedom and Prosperity":

* - Steven Koonin (Undersecretary for Science in the Obama Administration Energy Department) "Carbon and Climate Catastrophe" -- the unsettled science of climate change

* - Bjorn Lomborg (President, Copenhagen Consensus Center) "The Cost of Climate Alarmism" -- smart climate policy that doesn't destroy prosperity

* - Alex Epstein (President and Founder, Center for Industrial Progress) and Andrew Dessler (Climate scientist and Professor at Texas A&M) debate "Should America Rapidly Eliminate Fossil Fuel Use to Prevent Climate Catastrophe?"

* - Patrick Moore (Director, CO2 Coalition; Founder and Past President, Greenpeace) gives the keynote dinner address, "Carbon and Climate Catastrophe" -- reviewing the faulty science behind climate change propaganda

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PENTECOSTALISM

A little knowledge can be dangerous, as we can all guiltily attest. It's been just twenty years since Philip Jenkins wrote The Next Christendom: The Coming of Global Christianity <www.bit.ly/3LEiUrf> which anticipated Pentecostalism's phenomenal growth in the southern hemisphere. It seems that just recently this idea is being discovered by some of its godless critics.

In the left-leaning Jacobin Magazine ("Pentecostalism Is Becoming the New Religion of the Global Poor," Apr 15 '22), Elle Hardy leads with "People around the world are flocking to the Pentecostal church.... That's bad news, as the rise of Pentecostalism is tied to the global surge of right-wing populism."

Unsurprisingly, notorious South African religious leaders are offered as prima facie evidence of Pentecostalism's aberrant nature. "'Professor' Lesego Daniel claimed he had the gift of turning 'petrol into pineapple,' encouraging his congregation to drink gas as a kind of communion. One of his protégés, Pastor Lethebo Rabalago, was nicknamed the 'Prophet of Doom' for spraying churchgoers with a brand of insecticide to help cast out demons in the form of AIDS. Meanwhile, Prophet Penuel Mnguni would stomp on semi-naked congregants and have them eat live snakes as he delivered them from evil."

Hardy correctly observes that "Southern Africa's wildest, most popular, and wealthiest young preachers don't do things by the book, and their congregations love them for it." But from here she broadens the charge, asserting that "The new Pentecostalism is a straight middle finger at all of the institutions that have failed them. This is the faith of the world's working poor.

"Of some 2 billion Christians worldwide, over one quarter are now Pentecostal, up from just 6 percent in 1980. It's predicted that by 2050, a billion people — or one in ten of us — will be inside the tent. Not bad for a movement started in Los Angeles in 1906...."

Hardy helpfully observes that "Pentecostalism is a branch of evangelical Christianity," noting that "the average Pentecostal is a young woman in sub-Saharan Africa or Latin America. ...

"People, particularly in and around big cities, are turning to Pentecostal churches because they are the only places catering to both their spiritual and material needs. ...

"Most Pentecostal churches don't practice faith quite like South Africa's young showmen preachers, but some of the practices look no less alien to those outside the movement. To see firsthand the revolution taking place in Latin America, I traveled to the working-class suburb of Brás in São Paulo. In Brazil, Pentecostals have risen from 3 percent of the Brazilian population in 1980 to over 30 percent today — upending five hundred years of Catholic dominance in only a few decades."

Unfortunately, Hardy seems unaware of the efforts within Pentecostalism to address the Word-Faith movement. <www.bit.ly/3yimWlP> What's more, she confuses the issue by using the Universal Church of the Kingdom of God, a cultic and only superficially Pentecostal movement, as a primary example. <www.bit.ly/3ML3AKe>

Hardy admits that "there's a growing body of evidence that the prosperity gospel actually delivers. Research has found that people who come from poverty, or cycles of violence and addiction, have greater chances of escaping that world if they join an evangelical church...." However, from this point on, Hardy's discussion becomes less coherent and increasingly sensational. <www.bit.ly/3OUdDyx>

For much more on the above, see her recent book Beyond Belief: How Pentecostal Christianity Is Taking Over the World. <www.bit.ly/38SMNGn>

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