A Helpful Foray into Evangelical Literature

This is a helpful addition to a growing number of books written about Evangelical history and culture in recent years. I particularly appreciated the thorough treatment of the concept of "social imaginaries" and the way that the Evangelical social imagination operates. The introduction alone is a powerful corrective to our Evangelical culture blindness! The history and literary analysis felt a little piecemeal at times. The author picks different ideas from the Enlightenment, Romantic, and Modern eras and effectively shows how they shape Evangelicalism, but she doesn't give much sense of how they interact with one another even though sometimes the different ideas seem to work against each other. But, then, social imagination is a messy affair and perhaps this piecemeal approach reflects the fact that we can and do maintain contradictions within ourselves. My least favourite parts were the moments when the author moved away from cultural analysis and tried to give prescriptions for the current problems in Evangelicalism. These sections felt shallow compared to the rest of the book, which perhaps reflects the fact that the author is, first and foremost, a professor of literature. That's not a bad thing - no book or author can be all things to all people and there are lots of books that provide potential solutions to our current mess. This is the only one I've read so far that tackles Evangelical art, and it does so effectively, so I'm appreciative for that!

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