Superchurch: The Rhetoric and Politics of American Fundamentalism by Jonathan J. Edwards (review)

As I was writing this review, Kim Davis was taking a stand in Kentucky. A committed Christian and the duly elected clerk of Rowan County, Davis was refusing to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples, despite the U.S. Supreme Court’s recent ruling. In her vocal refusals to issue the licenses, Davis enacted a stance that was at once marginal and universal. It was marginal in that Christianity was under assault by a few unelected judges and by supporters of the gay, liberal agenda. It was universal in that she operated in the light of universal truth, beholden to a Power that no court could nullify.

In adopting this marginal–universal stance, Davis was acting as part of a fundamentalist counterpublic—a combative religiopolitical tradition that Jonathan Edwards takes up in Superchurch: The Rhetoric and Politics of American Fundamentalism. Though the details of fundamentalist combat have changed over the years, explains Edwards, fundamentalism writ large “has been and remains a part of this messy, contentious political process, calling for true believers to gather in defense of its speech and ideals and in offense against its enemies” (182). It was this call Kim Davis heeded in her opposition to same-sex marriage. For many of us academics, it may be tempting to dismiss Davis and her supporters as fundamentalist fanatics. But Superchurch cautions us against such a dismissal, telling the story of a disruptive, complex, and successful counterpublic that demands scholarly understanding. Carefully researched, expertly argued, and richly detailed, Edwards’s book provides an insightful account of a mode of political engagement that has long shaped and will continue to shape American public culture.

Superchurch develops across six chapters, in addition to a substantive introduction and conclusion. Chapter 1, “The Public and Its Fundamentalists,” establishes a critical framework for understanding fundamentalist discourse. Edwards makes the case for considering fundamentalism as a counterpublic social movement—one that continually rearticulates “the boundaries of marginalization and resistance through discursive constructions of public exclusion and oppression” (9), all the while professing “a common hope and expectation that the true church will win in the end” (17). Chapter 2, “The Fundamentals of Revival,” explores this dynamic of resistance and hope as it appeared in the work of Charles Fınney. Fınney, Edwards shows, based his revivalism on a sense of agency that called for a reformation of sin and society. In so doing, he “opened the possibility of revivalism as a site for collective action, and he categorized the promotion of revivals within those demands that God could legitimately make on the believing community” (38). Chapter 3, “Countersymbols and Confederacy,” shows how fundamentalists in the early twentieth century created organizations to stem the tide of theological, social, and political liberalism. Chief among these organizations was the World’s Christian Fundamentals Association, which, though short-lived, shifted attention away from sinful individuals and toward “organized associations of belief and practice whose goals were not merely to distract true believers, but to destroy true belief and the system supporting it” (50).

Chapter 4, “The Superchurch Revealed,” vivifıes the threat to the “true church” by exploring a series of apocalyptic fılms, beginning with 1972’s A Thief in the Night. For Edwards, these fılms dramatize “Fundamentalist escape to the next world” while providing “an allegorical account of Fundamentalist resistance in this world, one in which a true church grows from dispersed individuals” (97). Chapter 5, “The Superchurch Reimagined,” shows the results of church growth from dispersed individuals. In the late 1970s and throughout the 1980s, fundamentalist groups like the Moral Majority gained national prominence and influence, which potentially threatened fundamentalism’s marginal, oppositional identity. However, through an adroit reading of Jerry Falwell’s leadership of Thomas Road Baptist Church, Edwards shows how fundamentalists depicted their victories as local while still struggling against national, liberal, secular culture. Fundamentalism thus remained on the offensive, performing a “superag-gressive, [End Page 694...