tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37589721331585843.post2898003675655848340..comments2024-03-26T11:33:59.219-06:00Comments on Religion in American History: Evangelical Fundamentalism and the Command-Supply Chain: A Short Historiography of the Retail RevolutionPaul Harveyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13881964303772343114noreply@blogger.comBlogger4125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37589721331585843.post-49039118380108906882015-11-11T07:36:22.410-07:002015-11-11T07:36:22.410-07:00Thanks for the post Janine! I agree with Elesha th...Thanks for the post Janine! I agree with Elesha that the impulse to do away with church (or minimize its power) can be traced from the Reformation and on down the lineage she suggests. But the point I try to make in the book is that every one of those projects failed. Which is to say, they were either shunted to the social periphery (because they produced some sort of social disruption) or they morphed into a churchly form (i.e. a denomination) with creeds, theological traditions, and so forth) in order to maintain order. <br /><br />So what sets apart fundamentalists/self-identified evangelicals is not their <i>desire</i> to diminish the power of the "middle man" (denominations), but the <i>means</i> by which they go about doing this: methods rooted in business techniques developed between 1880 and 1910. <br /><br />Evangelicals have managed to remain relevant players by means of an ever-shifting array of independent institutions. They promote an ever-shifting "orthodoxy" rooted in some core evangelical assumptions about God and humanity, the Bible, and the inevitable results of authentic faith--an "orthodoxy" oriented toward religious experience rather than formal creeds, systematic theologies, and rituals. In other words, they are maintaining a semblance of order and control over a religious discourse. But unlike the followers of Luther or Calvin (or Wesley or Campbell or Stone or Joseph Smith or Ellen White), they are doing this without forming a sect or denomination. <br /><br />All this suggests something distinctive is going on here. And in that sense at least, I would argue that modern evangelicalism is a product of the retail revolution.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37589721331585843.post-60004327822967999882015-11-10T10:48:10.373-07:002015-11-10T10:48:10.373-07:00One can definitely make a Weberian argument, which...One can definitely make a Weberian argument, which would then be subject to all of the critiques of Weber (for examples, http://www.csudh.edu/dearhabermas/weberrelbk01.htm). I guess I'm more apt to find resonances than causation in history. Why a movement becomes popular is somewhat easier to determine than why it began at all, but even then, the historian is caught between "here's how historical actors explained themselves" and "here are all the things that were true but the actors didn't talk about." When Protestants long past and recent past describe their own ideas in religious rather than economic terms, I'm at least going to give those statements serious consideration, alongside other kinds of evidence. I'm not comfortable labeling either set of concerns "cart" or "horse," except perhaps in discussions of very specific developments.Eleshahttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03764991021577652939noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37589721331585843.post-54532310548519931202015-11-10T09:19:00.225-07:002015-11-10T09:19:00.225-07:00Great points, Elesha. Thanks for that. Nonetheless...Great points, Elesha. Thanks for that. Nonetheless, I'm still not sure which is the cart and which is the horse. One might make the Weberian argument that Protestantism was itself the product of the retail revolution of the 1600s, right? Janine Giordano Drakehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15743145462085629472noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37589721331585843.post-75551383481891495572015-11-10T09:06:14.910-07:002015-11-10T09:06:14.910-07:00Really interesting, Janine. I'm not sure I can...Really interesting, Janine. I'm not sure I can go quite this far, though: "we must consider twentieth century evangelicalism (and particularly Fundamentalism) as the product of a retail revolution." If you mean evangelicalism and Fundamentalism as cultural phenomena, led by salesmen rather than scholars and remarkably adept at using 20th-century marketing techniques, yes. But these movements' ideological effort to recapture "Old Time Religion" and "Cut Out the Middle Man" reflects much older trends within Protestantism. Luther and Calvin acted on this impulse, touting "sola scriptura" and dethroning priests. The Puritans were primitivists, as were nineteenth-century figures like Alexander Campbell, Barton Stone, William Miller, and Joseph Smith. Evangelicalism and Fundamentalism are "products" of this history, too, not only of the invention of direct-to-consumer marketing.Eleshahttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03764991021577652939noreply@blogger.com