Evangelicalism and the Sea of Faithaa

At a time when the term ‘religion’ is being stretched to cover a multitude of sins, this study moves in the opposite direction: it argues that religion and religious change should be examined first through its dominant traditions, in this case, evangelical Christianity. It is not just the more speculative neo-Darwinists who wish to invent some generic phenomenon of religion: the problem exists among ‘specialised’ students of religion, from defenders of the secularisation thesis, exaggerating and homogenising the religiosity of the pre-modern era, to its critics, arguing for continuity and survival by ever more elaborate redefinition. Both sides evoke a sense that, for all its protean forms, there is a basic phenomenon called ‘religion’ which can be lifted up for condemnation or praise. The American sociologist, Robert Wuthnow, summarises the current academic consensus, as it swings back from the old paradigm of decline: ‘Scholars have had it with talk of secularization. They earn their spurs by telling what's good about churches.’ Debates are moralised and scholars are found defending a unitary concept that is, in historical terms, a mirage. Alluring as the image remains, Matthew Arnold's ‘Sea of Faith’, with its timeless rhythms of comfort and solace, represents a profoundly misleading idea. This single, unified sea of faith never was. It would not be unfair to suggest that in thus unifying the warring forces of religious expression, Arnold betrayed the perspective of the outsider – someone inclined to find analogues and alternatives for what had been concrete and personal for people like his father. Indeed, Arnold's theory that the ‘real germ’ of the idea of God is ‘a consciousness of the not ourselves that makes for righteousness’might represent the start of a ‘religious studies’ mentality of generic categories and analogical reasoning: a definitional fluidity that resists decline by expanding and ultimately evacuating the concept of religion. This book is based on the conviction that religions are different and must be explored on their own, often bafflingly precise, terms. More pertinently, it argues that Christianity must be interpreted through its dominant and divisive traditions rather than reinvented as some sort of timeless deposit, varying in form not substance. If Arnold's metaphor is to live, it must be as the toiling sea of schism that Christians lived and experienced, and we must be prepared to make qualitative distinctions as to what excited it.