Professor George Marsden recently visited Princeton’s campus to
deliver a lecture entitled, “How ‘Otherwordly’ American
Fundamentalists Became Political,” based on his most recent book
on the subject. Marsden, the Francis A. McAnaney Professor of History
at the University of Notre Dame, is widely recognized as a leading scholar
in American Evangelical studies and general religious history. His more
specific interests include Jonathan Edwards, Christianity in America during
the early 1900s, and Modern Fundamentalism and American Culture, topics
about which he has written extensively and for which he has received numerous
awards. Marsden’s books include The Soul of the American University:
From Protestant Establishment to Established Nonbelief, The Outrageous
Idea of Christian Scholarship, Jonathan Edwards: A Life, and Fundamentalism
and American Culture: The Shaping of Twentieth-Century Evangelicalism,
1870-1925.
The editors of Revisions were able to sit down with Marsden
to discuss his research and other topics relevant to Christianity and
culture. Given the theme of the current magazine, Marsden gladly shared
his experiences and thoughts about Christianity’s interaction
with society, culture, and politics. His ideas point to the profound
influence of Evangelicalism on politics and a much-needed reexamination
of Christianity’s interaction with culture.
A lot has been written on Christianity and Culture from
H. Richard Niebuhr and T.S. Eliot to C.S. Lewis and J. Gresham Machen.
What do you think the Christian’s role is in transforming culture,
or whether Christians should transform it at all?
In Niebuhr’s terms, it is important to cultivate Christians’
apartness from the culture, separation from the culture and changing
of the culture. I tend to like the Christ in Culture paradox (in the
world but not of the world) but Niebuhr’s categories are not mutually
exclusive at all. In fact, everybody has, depending on what the issue
is, some elements of where you’d say: “Christians should
stay away from this part of the world.” The general rule for what
people usually mean by that, with respect to politics, tends to cultivate
a sense that ultimately the Kingdom is not of this world, and political
solutions are going to be only partial and imperfect solutions. And
although it is a Christian obligation to use whatever resources we have
to improve the culture, we should not have illusions about how far that
is going to go. I think it’s important that Christians transcend
the political alignments of their day by not having their social agendas
set by some secular political coalition.
This brings up another good question. The role of evangelicals
in politics since the 1980s has become more pronounced. What do you
think the negative impact of that involvement in politics has been,
and do you think that evangelicals’ interest in politics really
compromises the fundamental theological tenets that evangelicals believe
in? For example, with the overemphasis of homosexuality and abortion,
do you think these policy stances compromise the gospel of grace?
To answer the general question, I do think it is certainly possible
that political affiliations will corrupt or tarnish Christian groups
just because there are temptations of political power. I heard Tony
Campolo speak the other week and he said that mixing Christianity and
politics is like mixing ice cream and manure: it doesn’t hurt
the manure but it ruins the ice cream. There is something to that and
at the same time, he is someone who would say that Christians have an
obligation to care for the poor, care for political agendas, and care
for issues of sexual fidelity and purity. All of these issues are important,
but we get caught up with the power issues in our political projects
so much that it overshadows the kind of things that Christianity is
really about. In effect, politics becomes a sort of gatekeeper for the
church. If you’re not in a particular political position, you
won’t feel comfortable in certain kinds of churches. It should
be the opposite. A church should be embracing the gospel that will include
all sorts of different people.
During your lecture, you spoke about the possibility of
a “Christian Studies” major devoted to exploring our academic
approach to evangelicalism. Do you think there should be a Christian
Studies major?
I think “Christian” as an adjective is something difficult
to sell at the university because people who use Christian as an adjective
are primarily the religious right. So when you use the word Christian,
whatever your broad agenda might be, what people hear is “fundamentalist.”
I was on a panel on faith-related scholarship with a conservative Jewish
scholar; he was completely in agreement with all the things I had to
say about the relationship between faith and scholarship. But he said
of the term “Christian scholarship” that it sounds imperialistic
and offensive. And for that reason, he could not entertain the thought.
I think it is better to talk about intentional, faith-informed scholarship.
I think there could be centers on campus that would cultivate scholarship
from Christian perspectives to encourage Christian students and faculty
to think about their relationship with their faith to what else they
are studying. These centers should have reading groups and groups in
different disciplines who talk about those sorts of issues. That would
be supplementing what the university does. Also, connecting such a program
with particular professors who would be sympathetic to it might provide
this outlet without forcing the university to establish a full-fledged
Christian studies program. I think in principle it would make sense,
the same way you would have an Islamic studies program or the like,
and I would like to see that.
What do you think are some disciplines that Christians
need to pursue that they have been neglecting in the academy. We’ve
seen Barak Obama in Illinois who has been incorporating more values-talk
and faith-talk into politics and we find that the Democratic Party really
wants to have more of that language infused in their policies and platforms.
Do you think that more Christians need to enter politics or study political
science, or do you think the suggestion is over-stated because of the
current trend of evangelicalism in politics?
I certainly think that politics is a good thing for Christians to enter,
and the academic contribution of that would be to get Christians thinking
in ways that transcend the usual political agendas. Being a Christian
means being a cultural critic; whatever you are doing, you ought to
think of the Christian reasons for doing it while being wary of the
party politics that persist. If you get through undergraduate work and
then get into political work but you have not thought about what it
means to be a Christian in politics, then you are very likely to be
co-opted by the political agendas of the right or left. Whereas if you
are thinking about Christianity and politics and accumulating some principles
to bring into your vocation, then you can choose much more wisely. Politics
is a difficult vocation because politics is the art of compromising
while adhering to one’s principles. To hold those two things in
balance is always very difficult for Christian politicians.
If you could change one thing about Princeton academics,
what do you think you would change?
I think I would change the prejudice that assumes a perspective with
a religious root is illegitimate. Often people dismiss positions they
do not like in virtue of these positions’ religious foundations.
But it should be recognized that religious perspectives are legitimate
perspectives. Religion cannot be considered an illicit category across
the board.