September (Web-only) 2002

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Given the chance to survey evangelicalism's growth and development through the twentieth century, Steve Rabey and Monte Unger did what any of us might have done. In preparing their new book, Milestones: 50 Events of the 20th Century that Shaped Evangelicals in America (Broadman and Holman), Rabey and Unger spent over 50 percent of their time looking at the '50s, '60s, and '70s—over 40 percent in the latter two decades alone.

It seems clear from this book that the middle decades were, indeed, where the action was really at in 20th-century evangelicalism. From Billy Graham and the rise of mass evangelism in the 1950s to the ascension of evangelicals like Colson and Carter to political power in the 1970s, the movement again and again asserted itself—and reinvented itself—across many cultural arenas.

Don't get me wrong. This is no exercise in antiquarianism. Out of their historical material the authors have built an up-to-the-minute composite portrait of the movement. Their avowed guiding question was "What things, for better or worse, have had the greatest impact on making evangelicals who they are today?"

In choosing to survey the century just ended, Rabey and Unger do fall heir to the peculiar difficulties of doing near-contemporary history: When we look back over a period mere decades past, it's often hard to sort out the trivial from the lasting.

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Another advantage of the book's focus on the middle decades is that this is truly unknown territory for many readers who came to the movement either relatively late in their lives (I fit that category, having converted in 1984 at age 21) or late in the movement (anyone who's a teenager or young adult now). It's always instructive to see what put a fire in the bones of those whose ...