BOOK REVIEW

Axel R. Schafer (ed): American Evangelicalsand the 1960s

University of Wisconsin Press, Madison, 2013, 292 pp

Paul Matzko

Received: 27 February 2014 / Accepted: 7 March 2014

� Religious Research Association, Inc. 2014

Axel Schafer has assembled the essays in American Evangelicals in the 1960s in

order to put the last nail in the coffin of the ‘‘backlash thesis.’’ Until the last decade,

scholars studying modern evangelicalism argued that the New Christian Right rose

in reaction against the cultural tumult of the 1960s. As society liberalized and

secularized, their reasoning went, conservative evangelicals responded with a

countermovement to return America to its founding, Christian principles. Scholars

rooted about in the 1960s for evidence that the New Christian Right began as a

backlash against the sexual revolution, desegregation, and the counter-culture.

Recently, historians like Mark Noll and Grant Wacker have criticized the

backlash thesis by showing how evangelicals appropriated the rhetoric, symbols,

and attitudes of the ‘60 s counter-culture for their own ends. Schafer acknowledges

the contribution of this literature, calling it ‘‘adaptationist.’’ Schafer, however,

believes that the adaptationist approach falls short of the true nuance of how

evangelicals interacted with the developments of the 1960s. He wants to

‘‘transcend’’ the ‘‘adaptationist view of a movement whose content is defined by

its efforts to wrap itself in a modernist cloak’’ (p. 7). To use older language, the New

Christian Right was both in the 1960s and of the 1960s.

Space does not permit a detailed summary of each of the twelve essays that

Schafer marshals in support of his thesis. It begins with an entry from respected

religious historian Paul S. Boyer—perhaps his last work before his death in 2012—

that briefly outlines and critiques the backlash view of the New Christian Right. The

essays in Part I then focus on how evangelicals interacted with ‘60 s culture,

showing the many ways in which they, in the words of Eileen Luhr, ‘‘sought to

P. Matzko (&)

Department of History, Pennsylvania State University, 108 Weaver Building, University Park,

PA 16802, USA

e-mail: paulmatzko@gmail.com

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Rev Relig Res

DOI 10.1007/s13644-014-0166-1

engage with—but also strictly limit—the social, political, and cultural transforma-

tions of the era’’ (p. 63). Luhr’s essay discusses the use of revolutionary rhetoric by

Christian youth-oriented newspapers and their gradual turn against the Vietnam

War. Steven Miller explores the complicated reaction of evangelical leaders like

Billy Graham and Carl Henry to the civil rights movement, favoring racial equality

while expressing skepticism of the movement’s call for government action. Daniel

K. Williams looks at the sexual revolution and how evangelicals responded to it

with marital sex manuals, an endorsement of birth control, a new emphasis on

wifely submission, and stronger opposition to abortion. Darren Dochuk’s essay is

the odd-ball of the section, but no less interesting for it. He examines the surprising

ties between evangelical American businessmen, the Canadian oil sands, and the

evangelical premier of Alberta.

A notable feature of this collection is its inclusion of essays by five European

scholars of American evangelicalism. Four of their essays comprise Part II, which is

dedicated to the relationship between evangelicals and the State. Often, the State

looms in the background of the American literature on the New Christian Right as

an ill-defined, somewhat ominous presence; meanwhile evangelical leaders scurry

about in the foreground trying to dismantle the government. These four essays show

the nuance in evangelicals’ relationship to the State, typically welcoming certain

government programs while simultaneously remaining rhetorically standoffish.

Axel Schafer details evangelicals’ growing willingness to take subsidies from the

government. Emma Long highlights the fact that evangelicals’ reaction against the

secularization of the public school system was neither as universal nor as trenchant

as previously supposed. Similarly, Andrew Preston shows that although a majority

of evangelicals supported the Vietnam War in its early years, that support waned as

the war dragged on. Finally, Kendrick Oliver explores how Chuck Colson’s

imprisonment for his role in the Watergate scandal and his subsequent conversion

convinced him to support liberal reforms for the prison system, not the law-and-

order policies associated with later conservatives.

Part III is a hodge-podge in which David Swartz reminds us not to forget about

the evangelical Left, Hans Krabbendam discusses the boom in evangelical missions

to Europe following World War II, and Neil Young complicates the relationship

between evangelicals and Catholics during the 1960s. Young’s essay deserves

particular praise for teasing out the way in which evangelicals coupled detente

toward individual Catholics with a continuing distrust of the institutional Catholic

Church following Vatican II.

Unfortunately, the whole of the book is not greater than the sum of its parts. Each

individual essay, including Schafer’s, bludgeons the backlash thesis, showing that

evangelicals did not simply react against the cultural and political developments of

the 1960s. Yet I am not sure that Schafer has gone beyond the adaptationist

interpretation that he criticized at the outset. For example, we learn that evangelicals

adapted revolutionary rhetoric to their own ends, began to accept federal largesse,

and selectively embraced the sexual revolution. These are just a few of the ways that

evangelicals adapted their behavior and beliefs to better reflect the mood of the

1960s. As Schafer acknowledges in his introduction, killing off the backlash thesis

leaves an analytical vacuum that these essays cannot fill, so the book defaults to the

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adaptationist perspective. Nevertheless, those with an interest in American religious

history, the New Christian Right, or modern evangelicalism will learn a great deal

from this diverse collection of essays.

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