Review
Gospel Marketplace
American Christianity: The Continuing Revolution
by Stephen Cox
University of Texas Press, 2014
(268 pages, $26.95, hardcover)
reviewed by Leon J. Podles
Cox linkens American spirituality to an underground oilfield. Drillers never know whether they will have a dry well or a gusher. Americans also are always trying to return to that Old Time Religion (which never really existed as they imagine it) but with the use of modern methods. Americans are strongly revivalist, although what they try to revive may range from the visits of Jesus to America (the Mormons) to medieval Catholicism (the Anglo-Catholics). Elites often try to impose a revolution from above, whether they are the unbelieving clergy of the mainline churches or hierarchical reformers of the Vatican. The laity is usually unconvinced and scatters to burgeoning congregations that claim to reconnect with the past but in an up-to-date way.
Cox does not reveal his politics in this book, but he is the editor of a libertarian journal and delights in the unplanned and unpredictable nature of homo economicus and homo religiosus. Individuals can make an enormous difference; they don't create spirituality, but they can tap into it to transform America. He mentions George Whitefield, Fanny Crosby, Henry Ward Beecher, Mary Baker Eddy, and Aimee Semple McPherson, as well as the more recent crop of televangelists: a gallery of saints and sinners—sometimes in the same person. In the absence of a state church, the American religious marketplace is free to provide for every religious need, many of which were unsuspected until someone came along to provide for them.
Cox is a historian, not a theologian, but his book documents how the Spirit blows where he will, and is always bringing out of his treasury things old and new.
Leon J. Podles holds a Ph.D. in English from the University of Virginia, has worked as a teacher and a federal investigator, and is president of the Crossland Foundation. He is the author of The Church Impotent (Spence), Sacrilege (Crossland Press), and Losing the Good Portion: Why Men Are Alienated from Christianity (St. Augustine Press). Dr. Podles and his wife have six children and live in Baltimore, Maryland. He is a senior editor of Touchstone.
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