Crawford Gribben
Crawford Gribben
is an historian and something of an entrepreneur in his discipline. He is
interested in religion of a kind that will be missed by many an historian
because it is of no interest to themselves, and, perhaps, they think it is of no interest to their
readers. For example, they have little patience for people who are interested
in the likely occurrence of the Rapture amongst believers, because they could not conceivably be interested
in the Rapture themselves. There is something of a partiality, a bias, at work
in this, when it comes to writing
histories of history. Their history
would not have any slots about the people who had beliefs in the Rapture, and
how the believers in it articulate it. The historian’s fishing net does not
catch the Rapture, and so it is expunged from the record. Academic history is of
course a humanism, but that manifests and is shaped by the current interests of
historians. The history of belief in the Rapture does not settle down in the
historical record as anything that anyone was interested in, not even to the
reaction of bewilderment, or what it was like in 2021 to be a believer in the
Rapture.
Not the Rapture,
then, but it is a fact that interest in politics is had by more people than the
Rapture. Professor Gribben in this latest book, Survival and Resistance in Evangelical America: Christian
Reconstruction in the Pacific Northwest (Oxford University Press, 2021), The idea that people with no interest in the
Rapture nonetheless involve themselves in politics, so why not research a book
on the politics of the Rapture had by those who believe in it, and the culture
they produce, books and journals in particular, that are being written by its followers.That is a good idea
It is not only the
Rapture, but several other convictions The
result is – I think – that Crawford has an author’s ingenuity and works hard.
For the book does not feature the Rapture alone - that was my way of this
review getting going. But better, on the cultural setting of those who have among
the people for whom the Rapture is an active belief. But it is an exercise in ‘Reconstruction’,
another novel word, that is, a serious exercise in attempting a new cultural
setting for the faith of men and women
to grow. That is nearer what historians may be interested in, for it denotes
the re-siting of human groups in order to arrange a novel culture. The
importance of reconstruction us given in the title of the first chapter,
‘Migration’.
Migration is a
feature of Protestantism, when medieval Christian groups transferred to new urban
centres, such as Geneva, and other Swiss cities, Strasburg, and Zurich, then London,
Edinburgh, Utrecht. and so on. The writer of the letter to the Hebrews
celebrates the migration of the Israelites (ch.11) and made it characteristic
of Christians in chapter 12. In this short
review the reader is introduced to the last twenty years of activity in which
Christian people have striven to
survive, and to resist the prevailing culture, through the era of President
Trump. Other current ventures in the writing of thinkers, for example, Rod
Dreher, in his The Benedict Option, and
the activity of the Reformed pastor Douglas Wilson, ‘one of the most erudite
and controversial of the evangelical of
the theorists of American cultural decline,
and one of the most and one of
the most important of religious migration, and of other familial, ecclesiastical
and cultural strategies for survival , resistance and reconstruction’. (11) Those
who came and to join his congregation in Moscow, Idaho, the crucial part of the ‘’Redoubt’, an enclave
in the North-West of the United States including Idaho and the adjoining states of
Montana , Wyoming, eastern Oregon and eastern Washington, in which a new
community of religious conservatism could derive and resist an impending crisis
in American culture’s “Impending crisis’ which has to do with abortion and the
growth of the size and reach of the federal government, including state
education. Education is important, and there are Christian schools and also a the
writing of Rousas Rushdoony also among the
Reformed constituency, and his son-in-law Gary North. Rushdoony’s books, such
as Intellectual Schizophrenia (1961) The
messianic character of American education
(1963), The politics of guilt and pity (1970) and the Journal of Christian Reconstruction edited by Gary North, were one
of the means that ideals and proposals that
were a part of the mix during this period, and through the influence of who
many families migrated in numbers, and bought land and houses and businesses in
the area. The change had an important strand of eschatology, though this has
seemed to have weakened over the years. Other
literary influences were the novels of J.W.Rawles, which have had a broad
reach, novels such as….. and Hal Lindsay’s The
Late Great Planet Earth (1970), which sold 28 million copies. And Douglas Wilson has been the editor of periodical Credenda Agenda since 1995.
The above details have
been taken from chapter one. There are
other chapters titled ’Eschatology’, `Government,’ ‘Education’,
and ‘Media’, and copious bibliographies covering Crawford Gribben’ s
researches. They give an idea of the many-sided of this new Christian culture. It
must be stressed that this is an academic book, writing about what is the case,
rather than what the author ought to be rather is. It is a work in the history.
The prose is clear but condensed and
detailed. In the book there are several references to the Reformed character of
this development, but it struck me that originally the Reformed did not occupy
emptiness at first but to the cities of Europe in the sixteenth and seventeenth
centuries, Geneva, Zurich, Strasbourg, Utrecht, London, Edinburgh. In contrast,
the author seems to think that their model might have in common with the
Mormons, who predominate in Southern Idaho, who have grown from the 26 settlers of 1855 to 456,495 currently
residing (19). (Gribben is strong on figures, and on noting the sources of his
every claim he makes, reminding us all the while that this book is the work of
a professional historian.) Such settling in Idaho was helped by the work of James
Wesley Rawles, his novels and other writings. These writings joined those of
Rod Dreher, of how to live as Christians in an increasingly anti-christian culture.
Gribben has put all this together this by hard work: visiting
Idaho, conducting interviews, reading house magazines, indulging some philosophy,
the details of eschatology, (on which has written previously) apologetics, and
institutional growth in the Christian faith in Moscow, Idaho and its trends in
education, particularly home education, In putting these together he has moulded a
body of data which is foundational in the history of this culture. The upshot is greater than its
parts. Like archaeological find. serious and intrigued, where other historians
are typically disparaging. There is not only a Christian church, but also in
the formation of schools, and a college,
St Andrews.
This review does
not do justice to the sweep and the detail into a book of modest
proportions. I have said nothing of eschatology about which Gribben has dealt
in other books, nor about homeschooling which is how Christians in the UK would
come closest to the busyness of this venture in Idaho and its motivations. Perhaps there should be other blogs on it.
