Customer Reviews

Surprising Work of God, The: Harold John Ockenga, Billy Graham, and the Rebirth of Evangelicalism

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There two kinds of history books: ones that inform and ones that both inform and shape. Rosell's book falls into the second category.

Surprising Work of God is a thoroughly researched and systematically structured book. Rosell makes a great effort to provide the highest level of sourcing and bibliographic information. As such, despite his closeness to figures that he writes about, his opinions are always reinforced by facts and others who have expressed similar sentiments.

Beyond the academic rigor of the book, there is a passion from Rosell that comes through the page that is difficult to quantify. You can tell that Rosell cares deeply about the subject and the figures that he writes about. You cannot help but become engrossed in the life of Harold John Ockenga and the other evangelists that impacted an entire world for more than a generation.

This book is a must read for those who study the patterns of revival, particularly those who are seeking for it today.

I took Rosell's Church History course at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary several years ago. He was a warm and interesting lecturer who seemed to be more interested in seeing God through the history than the bare facts of history itself.

Fast forward ten years. I've become recently very interested in what it takes to have a real revival in America, since we're in moral free fall. Knowing Rosell from school, that the revival of the 50s was the last significant national revival, and that Ockenga was a very significant in it, though generally unstudied, drew me to this book like a magnet.

I was not disappointed. It is written to be a historical record that historians will respect with all proper footnotes. However, the significance is clearly to bring the revival of the 40s and 50s to life, and Rosell does this quite well. I wanted to know answers to questions like "What role did intellectual leadership (of Ockega) play in the long term success of the revival?" and "What are the ingredients for a revival in contemporary culture?" Rosell did not disappoint. I was awakened to a vision of how the elements of reform and revival come together to shift the nation and stirred to be a part of it myself.

If more history was recounted with the story-telling abilities and love of subject matter displayed by Dr. Garth M. Rosell in his The Surprising Work of God fewer students would find history classes mundane. It tells the story of American Evangelicalism in the 1930s, 40s and 50s. It is a compelling, personal, and erudite history of the birth of the modern Evangelical movement in the United States.

Tracing its roots to Jonathan Edwards and the First Great Awakening, Rosell offers a five-point schema of what defines evangelicals that serves as a structural device for the rest of the work. "United by a shared theological focus (the cross), a shared authority (the Bible), a shared experience (conversion), a shared mission (worldwide evangelization), and a shared vision (the spiritual renewal of the church and society), the burgeoning evangelical movement set out to recapture the culture for Christ." (13) The book gives much attention to Harold John Ockenga, a pivotal individual in the awakening that swept through America and the world in the 1950s.

Ockenga (1905-1985) was a well-educated pastor who held advanced degrees from Westminster Theological Seminary (he was among the first graduates of the seminary) and the University of Pittsburgh. He served as pastor of Park Street Church, Boston from 1936-1969, founded the National Association of Evangelicals, helped Billy Graham get his start and served as founding president of both Fuller and Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminaries. No other individual did more to create the Evangelical movement of the last century that Ockenga. Thanks to Rosell his story is now told.

Besides the story of Ockenga the book covers some of the major events of Billy Graham and other major players in the revival of the 1950s. It recounts the creation of Christianity Today magazine, the founding of Fuller Theological Seminary, worldwide meetings of evangelicals, some of the works of Carl Henry, and other topics. The book's greatest strength is the story of Ockenga told via extensive knowledge of primary documents. But one gets the sense that the power behind the story has more to do with Rosell's unique position than just with his superb academic skills. As the son of Merv Rosell, an evangelist during the era, and a close personal friend of Ockenga, Rosell is able to combine academic skill with personal affection for the individuals whose stories are unfolded within to tell a remarkable story with literary skill.

In the acknowledgements section Rosell admits that he expects criticism on his coverage of his father within the text, thinking that scholars will think his bias led him to give too much credit to Merv Rosell. Quite to the contrary, this writer thinks the book's largest weakness was the lack of information about Merv Rosell. One can see the tension Dr. Rosell experienced in writing as an academic about his own father. One hopes he will publish an article or some shorter work about Rosell and the other evangelists less well-known than Billy Graham.

This book showed this child of a fundamentalist church that there was another side of orthodox Christianity. It showed the National Association of Evangelical as a continuation of the Great Awakenings. Therefore it returns briefly to them to define them. It shows the revival of the late 40's and 50's both North America and worldwide were the same kind.

To do this, the focus is on two men: Billy Graham and Harold John Ockenga. Ockenga's life is written more about than Graham's.

The great thing is the documentation. There are many footnotes, large bibliography and an index.