Susan Harding, a cultural anthropologist by trade and practicing ethnographer, makes an attempt in this book to apply her craft to the “culture” of American Christian Fundamentalism. In light of the astonishing resurgence of Fundamentalism in the 1980’s, Harding sets out to examine the special vernacular used within this cultural segment of society. Each of the ten chapters looks at a different facet, figure, or event connected with Falwell. Harding dissects his many “sermons, speeches, pamphlets, journals, books, direct mail, videos, television broadcasts, meetings, conferences, and other verbal, visual, and performed texts” in order to get a glimpse into not only Falwell’s outward messages but also the underlying tensions that shaped those messages. She ultimately aims to lead the reader through the process by which Falwell revived, organized, franchised, and mobilized Fundamentalism.
In the introduction, Harding describes Falwell and other fundamentalist preachers as men who “stand in the gap,” meaning that they interpret the words of the Bible for a modern culture. The language these men crafted to reach their audiences is itself a sort of cultural vernacular, and in Part I she explores the language of witnessing and the roots of fundamentalist narrative language in the Scopes trial. She demonstrates the former by relating (verbatim) an actual witnessing testimony by Reverend Melvin Campbell. Her deconstruction of this witnessing speech is fascinating, though not a little strained and imaginative at times. It is difficult to determine if Harding is being genuinely receptive or merely humoring her host, but I suspect the latter is more accurate.
Her recounting of the Scopes trial focuses on how that event was a “moment of narrative encapsulation” for fundamentalists. This is a helpful comment that puts the exile, revival, and internal self-awareness of Fundamentalism into perspective. The question she ultimately hopes to answer is how the trial produced this narrative effect. Her answer is quite keen: the media’s portrayal shaped not only the wider public’s view of fundamentalists as country bumpkins, but also shaped fundamentalists’ view of themselves as the persecuted opponents of modernity. It is odd, however, that in this analysis she skips over much of the twentieth century and jumps straight to the 1970’s and 80’s. By doing so she misses much of the important foundational work done by conservative evangelicals to keep Fundamentalism alive (thankfully Carpenter covers this period in Revive Us Again).
Part II is substantially longer (eight chapters) and covers a wide range of topics, most of them revolving around Jerry Falwell. There are two chapters (3 and 7) that deal specifically with Falwell’s rhetoric in both his testimony, “A Look Inside the Cup,” and in his pro-life book, If I Should Die Before I Wake. While Harding’s breakdown of the language in these chapters is quite brilliant and probably carries much truth, it ultimately appears to be little more than a feminist deconstruction diatribe dressed up as a modest ethnographic case study. Both chapters have all the signs of deconstruction—exposure of an implicit hierarchy and the internal inconsistencies by which Falwell sets himself up as an anti-feminist male authority figure vying for power. Harding’s analysis is nonetheless fascinating, however, especially as she moves the reader through his personal Jacob-like “prankster” testimony, and then the hero subtext in If I Should Die. There is undoubtedly a latent tension in his confessions and his controversies, but Harding provides compelling theories for why these problems miraculously sustained—even fueled—his followers’ loyalty and the success of his ministries.
The other chapters focus mostly on the more popular facets of fundamentalism’s public notoriety: success in fundraising (or “Sacrificial Giving”), political activism (the creation of the Moral Majority), televangelism scandals, the creation/evolution debate, and end-times rhetoric. The former two aspects are the more important chapters since in them, more than the other chapters, Harding truly returns to her query of how Fundamentalism made such a powerful comeback in the 1980’s. The answer in these chapters lies in Falwell’s leadership (though she does not use this word) in bringing together the otherwise separatist fundamentalists, uniting them on common issues of concern, and mobilizing them for cultural engagement. Falwell’s speeches (or “stump sermons”), according to Harding, were more like rites of passage (a term she greatly overuses) for his Christian audiences. Here she again emphasizes the male-centeredness of his message and the movement as a whole, and the reader should not be drawn in (I certainly am not) by this line of argumentation. Harding may want readers to believe that women have no real place in authentic Fundamentalism, but her manipulation of the metanarrative is, again, strained. She zeroes in on an aspect of Falwell’s stock political sermon—his mention of the problem of divorce—and spends half a dozen pages deconstructing his exclusionary jargon. According to Harding, the family only figures obliquely in all of this, which she dubiously claims is proof that his outward concern for family is only a ploy (167). This all seems incredibly incidental to the sermon; it is certainly not the central or underlying substance of Falwell’s (admittedly tired) political rhetoric that she tries to make it out to be. Apparently she could not resist inserting her own exasperated loathing for Falwell’s political message and rhetorical method (165–66).
Nevertheless, Harding’s exploration of the very fabric of Falwell’s born-again vernacular is extremely compelling. Minus what occasionally appears to be a subtle attempt to portray him and other fundamentalists as sexist, power-hungry doctrinaires (these are my words, not hers—she’s much too tactful to say these things outright), she is undoubtedly skilled in the art of ethnography—exposing the various unique devices which facilitate and ultimately shape a culture or subculture. Applied to Fundamentalism, these skills are helpful in guiding believers in some of the helpful, and also some of the deceitful, ways born-again Christians often go about pushing their agendas. Indeed, these agendas should not always be confused with the gospel.
ISBN-13:
978-0691089584
ISBN-10:
0691089582
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