THE RISE OF EVANGELICALISM
The age of Edwards, Whitefield and the Wesleys
By Mark A. Noll . IVP. 316 pages. £16.99
ISBN 1 84474 001 3
This, the first of a series of five projected volumes entitled A History of Evangelicalism, covers the period from the 1730s to the 1790s. Two centuries earlier an 'evangelical' was the equivalent of 'a gospeller'. But after the Reformation evangelicals in Britain moved in different directions on some issues and it needed the Evangelical Revival to begin a new unity across denominations and across the Atlantic divide.
Dr. Noll tells the story of how this happened, with a broad sweep from Moravians down to fringe men in North America. Portraits of the main leaders are all here and more sympathetically handled than is common among university historians. As a textbook for students this work is going to be valuable for years to come although we think the material is too densely compact and too kaleidoscopic to make enthralling reading. At times, it seems to us, Dr. Noll is attributing 19th-century patterns to the 18th (i.e. 'revivalistic practices', p.129). Occasionally we doubt the author's familiarity with some of the original sources. For instance, it is said, 'Erskine was no aristocrat', but John Erskine was in the family line of Lord Cardross, owned the Cardross estates and both his mother and wife belonged to titled families. More important, it is odd to speak of 'the negligible results' of Brainerd's work (p.212n) and then later to say 'he reported surprising receptivity to the gospel message he preached' (p. 218n).
