Studies of late twentieth century American evangelicalism inevitably focus on the rise of the Religious Right. Brantley W. Gasaway provides a needed corrective to the tendency to see this recent historical landscape primarily from the perspective of religious conservatives, by analyzing what has been commonly called since the early 1970s, “progressive evangelicalism.” While not as numerically dominant as its politically conservative counterpart, Gasaway argues that this movement “successfully created and sustained a notable form of biblically based public engagement. In the process, they developed a public theology that became the foundation for their movement's distinctive political positions, distinguishing themselves from both the Religious Right and the political left” (276).
Gasaway's first two chapters discuss the roots and origins of progressive evangelicalism. While acknowledging the tradition's antecedents in antebellum postmillennial reform efforts, Gasaway sees progressive evangelicalism emerging out of the social unrest caused by the civil rights movement and Vietnam War in the late 1960s and early 1970s. For Gasaway, the 1973 foundation of Evangelicals for Social Action (ESA) represents the pivotal moment for chronicling the movement's birth and creating a template for its ongoing activism over the past forty years.
Gasaway discusses numerous individuals associated with this tradition since the early 1970s, including Tony Campolo, Nancy Hardesty, and Virginia Mollenkott. However, his narrative mostly centers upon two individuals: Ron Sider, a major catalyst behind the founding of ESA in 1973, and Jim Wallis, the longtime editor of Sojourners magazine. The third primary source that informs Gasaway's analysis is the journal, The Other Side, a publication that was critical to galvanizing progressive evangelical social consciousness in the 1970s and 1980s. The book's final six chapters largely consist of summations of the positions taken by Sojourners, The Other Side, and ESA (mostly through the work of Sider) related to racism, feminism, abortion, Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender equality, economic justice, and anti-militarism.
Gasaway describes how progressive evangelicals such as Sider and Wallis incorporated a range of sources into their emerging theological and political beliefs. These influences include New Left political theory, an Anabaptist theological orientation primarily associated with the work of John Howard Yoder, and the Christianity and culture models, espoused by H. Richard Niebuhr. “By arguing that the church should act in both countercultural and transformational roles,” progressive evangelicals were motivated by a desire to advocate beliefs that set them apart from the dominant culture, while also seeking to engage and transform the culture (68). While often allied with the political stances of the religious and secular left, progressive evangelicals were unique in maintaining a normative stress on the centrality of scripture. They “looked first and foremost to interpretations of the Bible in order to construct their public theology,” believing that “scripture reveals God's intended ideals for human societies” (56).
Gasaway shows how the social ethics of the progressive evangelical movement—with its insistence that reform needed to conform to biblical precepts—often clashed with both the political left and right. He draws out these tensions in discussing progressive evangelical stances on abortion and LGBT equality. Although leaders such as Sider and Wallis articulated a “pro-life” ethic that put them at odds with many liberals, they sought to resist the Religious Right's single-minded fixation on overturning the 1973 Roe v. Wade Supreme Court decision. Progressive evangelicals crafted a public posture that they hoped might reduce abortion on demand, while supporting federally-sponsored programs that would create social-welfare initiatives to aid poor women and families. Additionally, even as progressive evangelical came to support LGBT civil rights, their reluctance to embrace affirmative stances on issues such as marriage equality has often alienated them from the left.
The book returns to the persistent theme that progressive evangelicals are “politically homeless” (155). Their public theology often leaves them as outsiders in the eyes of evangelicals on the right and mainline religious groups on the left. Nevertheless, Gasaway concludes that the movement has, and will continue to have, an important role in shaping a wider debate on American public policy. Even as the Religious Right remains highly visible, progressive evangelicals have “raised the profile of their own movement as a visible alternative,” engaging issues that “advance their comprehensive vision of social justice and the common good” (270).
Gasaway provides detailed descriptions of the movement's theological and political beliefs, albeit mostly focused upon his examination of Sojourners, The Other Side, and works by Ron Sider. While Gasaway praises progressive evangelicals for what he sees as their comprehensive vision, he backs away from a broader assessment of the movement's ultimate success in getting its message across to the American public. The central focus upon figures such as Sider and Wallis is useful to help readers understand how progressive evangelicalism developed politically—tracing the evolution of the tradition since the early 1970s. However, questions arise related to the popular base of this movement, and its sustainability outside a relatively small cadre of leaders. For example, how does one assess the wider effectiveness of progressive evangelical social witness—especially as the broader American evangelical landscape in the early twenty-first century remains by and large entrenched in conservative politics?
Finally, I would have liked to see exploration of how progressive evangelicalism connects to earlier historical iterations of social Christianity—in particular, with religious leaders in the social gospel movement. While Gasaway acknowledges that evangelicals like Sider and Wallis often rejected what they saw as a lack of a biblical foundation in the social gospel, similarities exist between aspects of progressive evangelicalism and important social gospel figures, like Walter Rauschenbusch, that beg for further analysis.
No monograph can do complete justice to any given topic and Gasaway is to be commended for writing an insightful work on a subject where there is need for more critical studies. His book is an important contribution toward developing a nuanced understanding of late twentieth century American evangelicalism that looks beyond the parameters of the Religious Right.
