Less Than Conquerors: How Evangelicals Entered the Twentieth Century

by Doug Frank

Book Overview

Although evangelicals enjoyed repect and leadership in American society in the decades before the Civil War, their fortunes declined precipitately in the wake of the industrialism, modernism, and... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0802802281
• ISBN13: 9780802802286
• Release Date: January 1986
• Publisher: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company
• Length: 336 Pages
• Weight: 1.00 lbs.

Customer Reviews

Losers in a Round Room

Losers in a culture war find themselves in a round room, with a mandate to sit in the corner. Dysfunctional coping mechanisms appear when the old maps of life are shredded. The alcoholic reservation Indian is one example. A more poignant imagee of cultural demoralization is closer at hand in the Bible belt. Douglas Frank's book Less than Conquerors: How Evangelicals Entered the 20th Century provides insight to thoughtful readers within and outside of the sub-culture described, American fundamentalism. In the second half of the nineteenth century, Frank explains, the dominant position of the conservative Protestant in American culture succumbed to a number of social forces. For example, Charles Darwin made it possible for the man in the street to view the universe as an artifact without an artisan. Around the turn of the century, fundamentalists awoke to realize that the world had passed them by. It was in this period of self-doubt and redefinition, says Douglas Frank, that dysfunctional coping mechanisms took malignant root in the evangelical subculture. Like the fortune teller's fatalistic customers, fundamentalists who had lost faith in their ability to shape the future began trying instead to divine the future. "Prophecy teaching" flourished, the speculative attempt to read current events into holy writ. Lurid pulp literature anointed one candidate after another as Antichrist. "I may be a loser now," the prophecy enthusiast could say, hugging his latest charts and paperbacks for security, "but soon, any day now, you're going to be an even bigger loser! So there!" Others coped with external frustrations by turning their focus inward. The "victorious life" movement offered a subjective "spiritual power" to anxious, impotent seekers. By following self-hypnotic techniques, the seeker could acquire the longed-for nirvana. "I might look like a loser," the victorious believer could say, "but on the inside, where you can't see it or disprove it, I'm winning!" Frank's most pointed analysis deals with the one cultural battle the fundamentalists won, prohibition. Using the metaphor of the lynch mob, Frank draws upon the career and writings of Billy Sunday to support his point. A demoralized, defeated people demonize some token of their impotent rage, some entity that can be safely, righteously hated. The frustrations of the mob are summed up, focused, and laid upon the designated victim, whose sacrifice symbolically lays that floating anxiety to rest. Like today's "Operation Rescuers," Billy Sunday's mobs were known to break things and hurt people in their righteous rampages against "demon rum." It was more than conviction that shut down all the saloons in Rochester, NY during a Sunday "crusade." The growth of organized crime, and of widespread contempt for the law, made prohibition a Phyrric victory. At the moment, though, it looked like a good idea to people too bewildered to look beyond the moment. As the old preacher's maxim goes, a text witho