The Magazine

Unsocial Gospel

D.G. Hart on American Protestantism.

Jun 30, 2003, Vol. 8, No. 41 • By ROBERT W. PATTERSON
Single Page Print Larger Text Smaller Text Alerts

That Old-Time Religion in Modern America

Evangelical Protestantism in the Twentieth Century

by D.G. Hart

Ivan R. Dee, 247 pp., $24.95

The Lost Soul Of American Protestantism

by D.G. Hart

Rowman & Littlefield, 197 pp., $37.50

EVANGELICALS number in the tens of millions in the United States, but you'd hardly know it from their intellectual, moral, and cultural influence on the rest of the nation. Compared with the prestige of Catholic colleges and universities, evangelical schools appear to be second class. Compared with Jewish public thinkers, evangelical intellectuals create very little of the nation's stock of public ideas. This observation is nothing new and, in fact, evangelicals themselves are often the first to concede the point, as did historian Mark A. Noll in his acclaimed 1995 volume "The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind." What many Americans may forget, however, is that this was not always the case, but appears to be a casualty of the twentieth century.

To read more, you must be a Weekly Standard Subscriber

We're Sorry,

the rest of this article is available only to subscribers.

You have two options:

Subscribing today will provide you with immediate, complete access to the current issue, as well as to all back issues on the site. Each week you will be able to read articles from the newest issue even before print copies are mailed!

Privacy Policy