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God and Race in American Politics: A Short History

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Author Mark Noll is one of the preeminent historians of religion in American history. That designation is sure to grow with his timely release of "God and Race in American Politics: A Short History."

Could there possibly be a better time for the release of this work than weeks before our nation elected its first African American President? Race, religion, and politics in American history have always alternated between great triumphs and shameful failure. Noll outlines this contradictory history and provides theological and cultural insights into the reasons.

As the sub-title suggests, Noll writes a short history (200 pages). That is not to be confused with an incomplete history. Noll moves through the issues of race, religion, and politics from the origins of American slavery, to the start of the Black Church Movement, to the Jim Crow years, through the Civil Rights years, and onto the present. In doing so, he provides a panoramic view of what he accurately describes as "spectacular liberation alongside spectacular oppression." And he does so not in a dry-as-dust historical style, but in an engaging, appealing, captivating narrative style. Surely this is one of the most important books on religion, race, and politics written to date.

Reviewer: Robert W. Kellemen, Ph.D., is the author of [[ASIN:0801068061 Beyond the Suffering: Embracing the Legacy of African American Soul Care and Spiritual Direction.

This book is an attempt to create a historical synthesis between religion and race in American history. Its a very ambitious work that tries to work its way from the religious battles over slavery to the civil rights movement to present-day politics. The author's notion of the American Civil War as a religious dispute is not new in the book. What is new is the author's attempt to expand the scope of that argument to cover a whole lot more historical ground in what amounts to a small number of pages.

I should also say that this book is in actuality less true book than a combined rehash of a lecture series Noll did a few years ago. I don't tend to like books of that format. They pretend on the surface to be serious studies of a topic but in end turn out to be far less. I would rather see a lecture series presented in book form as a lecture series as opposed to these sorts of books which display high asperations but turn out to be short and superficial. High on opinion and conclusions. Short on making a strong case.

The book's flaws are that its scope is too large, its conclusions are too broad, there is an accusatory attitude toward those he doesn't like and fawning praised heaped on those he does like. While there are some interesting ideas pursued, the author simply lacks the analytical judgement to produce a useful study. And he has a very big axe to grind that undermines everything he tries to do.

The book spends far too much time tracing the history of African-American Christianity after the civil war. While this is a worthy subject, its too much material for the size of the book. Noll makes the mistake of putting interesting material ahead of creating support for the points he wants to make.

The author often is also far too narrow in his study of America. The Southern evangelical movement is only half the story. The piece he needed to really focus on is the northern religious side of the coin. The strength and rise of the evangelicals is in some sense in proportion to the decline of certain other churches into democratic party political clubs where the bible is considered a nice book to go next to star wars on the shelf and christians brag about how they don't believe in their own religion. There are two sides the coin and the author seems to have lacked the imagination (or the courage) to offer an analysis of both sides of that coin.

The worst aspect of the book is the attempt at race-baiting modern political and religious movements based on the past. Its the usual accusation that all modern evangelical christians and by extension all political conservatives are all secret racists. And being racists, anything they think/believe/do is simply the product of racism. The inference is that all political and religious beliefs to the right of the author are not legitimate. Its an argument that is all too often made these days.

The subject matter and the theme of this book are very important. A great work still is there to be written on this topic. But the author lacked the maturity to produce such a work.

I lost much respect for Noll when he left Wheaton for Notre Dame. His early promise has given way to him becoming a one-note attack dog. And a one-note attack dog who rather curiously avoids much criticism of certain groups with their own right-wing religious political agenda.

While he will receive endless praise for this book from certain quarters, my belief is that he could have done much better than this book.