Historians assert U.S. still mostly Protestant

If Americans take stock of their nation religiously as well as politically and militarily this first Fourth of July after Sept. 11, they might ponder the claim that "America is still in many ways a Protestant nation."

So we're advised by Randall Balmer, Barnard College historian, and Lauren Winner, a Columbia University doctoral student, in their popular history "Protestantism in America." It's the latest volume in Columbia University Press' notable "Contemporary American Religion" series. (Other titles have treated U.S. Buddhism, Islam and Catholicism.)

The Protestant branch of Christianity retains its hold on the American majority, they write, despite Roman Catholic growth (63.7 million members) and the major immigration of non-Christians since 1965.

Protestantism began with Martin Luther's insistence that the Bible is the only source of Christian authority, not tradition or church hierarchies, so that each individual had the duty to study a personal Bible translated into the common language (at the time, Catholic Bibles were available in Latin only).

Individual interpretation led to the Protestant curse of endless splintering, as Catholics fairly point out, especially in the United States, which never had an established church. Though the splits are innumerable, Balmer and Winner say there's one overarching divide, between biblical liberals and biblical conservatives.

Their book pits the rather liberal, ecumenically minded "mainline" Protestants against the conservative "evangelicals," and gives the latter the edge at every turn.

Evangelicalism is assessed as "the major force" and "the most durable strain" in American Protestantism and, more than that, "the most influential social and religious movement in American history."

Writing on his own, the prolific Balmer further explores the crannies of this fascinating movement in his concise Encyclopedia of Evangelicalism (Westminster John Knox), a more readable -- and amusing -- volume than its "encyclopedia" label might suggest.

The evangelical movement encompasses conservative denominations and hosts of independent congregations, but also vigorous evangelical minorities within the chief "mainline" groups (Episcopal, Presbyterian, United Methodist).

Balmer and Winner suggest that Protestantism sometimes seems weaker than it is because journalists and academicians often tend to identify the faith with the weakening mainline-liberal wing and downplay the evangelical party.

They depict a "mainline mirage." By that they mean that the evangelicals dominated in the 18th and 19th centuries and soared back to their traditional public prominence again by the 1980s, while the reign of more liberal Protestants in the mid-20th century was an aberration.

The authors further contend that the mainliners built their strategy around ecumenism, while "the most successful religious movements in American history have been exclusive, not inclusive." While their churches were minimizing differences, "Americans were looking for theological definition."

Basically, Evangelicals' momentum stems from the centrality of the Bible, which makes them the most Protestant of Protestants.

In the late 19th century, liberal notions about the Scriptures infiltrated U.S. Protestantism from Europe, igniting fierce battles that continue in the 21st century.

As the authors define it, the liberals held a "somewhat less exalted view of the Bible," proposed an "attenuated" view of its authority and tended to see its tenets as "timebound."

The Evangelicals, by contrast, insisted that "the simplest, most obvious reading of the Bible was the correct one." They "take the Bible seriously -- many of them to the point of interpreting it literally" on matters such as the beginning of time and the end times.

Balmer and Winner conclude by claiming that evangelicalism is helping spark a "Christian intellectual renaissance." That's debatable. But they do raise this interesting question: Is it possible any longer for liberal Christianity to foster "a robust intellectual tradition"?