Seemingly one of the most often-cited works of American religious history, Turner’s story is how agnosticism went from an almost invisible form of private doubt to a public and utterly plausible intellectual option in the latter part of the nineteenth century. The “bad guy” of this tale is not really Darwin, or capitalism, or Transcendentalism – it is Christianity. Turner makes a believable case that the Christian impulse to ride the coat tails of an ascendant scientific mindset actually sowed the seeds of Christianity’s subsequent irrelevance and decline in cultural influence.
Essentially, Christian teachers and preachers claimed too much – that God and his ways were actually quite comprehensible. The natural theology of William Paley was apparently swallowed whole by an entire generation (or two) of evangelical leaders, giving a sense of certainty to religious longings by showing how nature was a clear pointer to and interpreter of God’s existence and involvement.
But when Darwin and other scientists started to question the necessity of a Creator and pointing to the sheer bloodiness of nature as the means of its advancement, there was a cataclysmic disruption in the American religious psyche.
Turner details the before, during, and after of this scenario in a very accessible and readable manner. Although religion continued to flourish in America, even in the midst of the sea change that was taking place, Turner’s take on its implications is all but unassailable. “Belief became then for the first time, remains still, subcultural.” Turner explains how this came to be.
As one reads of the 19th Century evangelicals trying to make God accessible to the spirit of their age, similar maneuvers by evangelicals of our day come to mind: Open Theism, the Emerging Church, or the church of Your Best Life Now. Anyone who thinks that it’s a good idea for the church to “ride the wave” of cultural trends should read Without God, Without Creed before heading to the beach.
Reviewed by: Patrick Rist
