History as guide to past, present, and future

What exactly is history for? As one of the humanities, history offers moral lessons, but it can also serve as autobiography for a people, nation, or movement. Reading American history tells us how we developed, and it instructs us about the struggles—political, cultural, and religious—that have brought us to the present. It can also surprise us by illuminating previously unobserved developments.

For Christians, history confirms the value of every human life, as well as the ubiquitous problem of sin. God’s workings in past events can be difficult to discern with certainty outside of Biblical history. But Providence is hard to miss in episodes such as the Reformation of the 16th century or the Great Awakening of the 18th century.

I have read thousands of nonfiction books over the years, but four works have deeply shaped the way I view history, especially religious history.

A foundation for truth

George Marsden was my doctoral adviser, so I am not exactly unbiased, but his Jonathan Edwards: A Life helped shape my views on Christianity and history writing. Marsden brilliantly captures the context, triumphs, and foibles of the pastor-theologian who would help lead the Great Awakening. Edwards was one of the titans of Christian intellectual history, and he’s also the theologian who has made the biggest impact on my faith. Marsden’s book remains the best biography of Edwards.

An honest appraisal

Despite being an avowed atheist, Perry Miller was the most influential historian to write about American Puritans. Many historians before Miller were hostile toward the Puritans because their theology was not sufficiently “progressive.”

With his The New England Mind (two vols.), Miller single-handedly rehabilitated the Puritans, not because he fundamentally agreed with their doctrines, but because he saw them as people who acted on principle. Like many World War II–era intellectuals, Miller was troubled by the atomic bomb and unrestrained technology. The Puritans made decisions based on intellectual conviction and ethical seriousness. Miller thought Americans should get to know them again.

Defining a movement

Like Marsden, David Bebbington demonstrated that devout Christians can be first-rate intellectual historians. His Evangelicalism in Modern Britain is a deeply researched and accessible survey of religious development in Britain through the 1980s.

The book is best known for the “Bebbington quadrilateral,” the four characteristics that have defined evangelicals: conversionism (the need to be born again), activism (especially missions and evangelism), Biblicism (an especially high regard for the Bible), and crucicentrism (the centrality of the cross).

Bebbington’s definition has attracted many critics, especially since 2016, when some scholars began to paint virtually all evangelicals as malicious power-mongers. Such academic critics essentially see past evangelicals as Trump voters in waiting, an especially puzzling implication when applied to evangelicals outside the U.S. But the carping about Bebbington’s work hasn’t produced a definition remotely as compelling as the quadrilateral, which seems likely to outlast our current political furor.

Visions of the future

Philip Jenkins’ The Next Christendom: The Coming of Global Christianity is arguably the definitive book on the shift of the demographic center of Christendom to the Global South of Latin America, sub-Saharan Africa, and East Asia. Before reading The Next Christendom, I still tended to think of Europe and North America as the centers of Christian strength. This remains somewhat true financially and institutionally, but Christianity’s areas of greatest growth are in places like Brazil, Nigeria, and China.

These areas have seen phenomenal growth in Pentecostalism, but also in Catholicism and “mainline” Protestant denominations. African growth in Methodism and Anglicanism precipitated two of the most significant schisms in contemporary church history—the breakups of the global Anglican Communion and the United Methodist Church. In both cases, leaders in North America and Britain followed a path of liberalization on sexuality, but they were blindsided by the demographic reality of the Global South. Conservative Methodists and Anglicans in Africa were unwilling to follow the lead of Northern elites, who had more money and resources but far fewer followers. Joined by small numbers of Global North conservatives, Christians of the Global South created networks of faithful Methodists and Anglicans, defining the future of those denominations.

In America, where the focus is on church decline, patterns of growth still exist. American church growth tends to be in urban immigrant-led churches, whether Haitian Baptists, Nigerian Pentecostals, or Korean Presbyterians. Jenkins’ work shows how these extraordinary patterns emerged.

These histories remind us of exemplars in the past, such as Edwards, and they inform us about exciting developments such as the shift of Christian momentum to other parts of the globe.

Some people ask me if we could have another Great Awakening. I reply “of course.” History shows that revival has happened in the past, drawing on the depths of the evangelical and Reformed traditions, and even today awakenings are still sparking around the world.

—Thomas S. Kidd is research professor of church history at Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary and author of numerous books, most recently Christian History, vol. 2 (B&H)