Editors’ Introduction

Frequently in European contexts, no doubt significantly because of the history of fascism, “radicalism” is associated with what is construed as the far right, whereas “radicalism” is often applied in the United States, without much aforethought, to a relatively small sector of the left end of the political spectrum. This latter emphasis is in part, like so much of today’s society, an inheritance from the 1960s and 1970s, and from the polarization of that era between the apparatus of the state on the one hand and antiwar and civil rights protestors on the other. One of the aims of our journal is to provide a venue for thinking through what one means by “radicalism” in particular political and social contexts. Our present issue is exemplary in this regard, because it raises such questions under the larger rubric of Christian radicalism.

Our lead article in this issue is Ariel Hessayon’s groundbreaking work on the Diggers movement. Hessayon demonstrates convincingly how the history of the Diggers has often been fabricated, and shows how they should be understood in historical context as authentically radical in their own right, rather than as filtered through contemporary ideological concerns. We, and our several external specialists in this field, believe this article makes a genuinely important contribution to understanding a radical religious movement in historical context. Our second article, by David Swartz, continues this emphasis on historical revisionism by looking at evangelicalism and the New Left. Swartz shows how, by objecting to unlimited economic growth, new technologies, and government ties to corporatism and education, a minority movement of theologically conservative evangelicals advocated a fundamental reconfiguration of the postwar liberal consensus. Evangelical radicals’ appropriation of Manichean language and an activistic style in support of this political critique point suggestively to the rise of the religious right a decade later and underscore the limitations of New Left historiography. And our third article in this series is Pero Dagbovie’s article on “Among the vitalizing tools of the radical intelligentsia, of course the most crucial was words” (Cedric J. Robinson): Carter G. Woodson’s “The Case of the Negro” (1921). Dagbovie’s article explores Carter Woodson’s work in a new light, showing how, seen in historical context, it is in fact radical in calling for dramatic social changes in the United States.

Whereas the first three articles exemplify historical reconstruction and reenvisioning of various kinds of radicalism, and an investigation of what radicalism means in various contexts, our next article begins a series of articles on major contemporary Christian radical movements, one that will continue into our next issue with studies of Christian Exodus, Christian Identity, and the British National Party. This first article in the series, by Tricia Jenkins and Virginia Thomas, examines how second-generation members of a radical American sect, the Worldwide Church of God (WCG), were affected when their church leadership suddenly reversed its radical foundational doctrines and adopted a mainstream, evangelical theology. What does it mean, after all, to de-radicalize a group? What are the implications for group members of such a move?

We deliberately chose these groupings of articles because of the contributions each makes to understanding different aspects of radicalism in particular historical and social contexts. The same is true of our interview with Frank Vanhecke, the controversial leader and spokesman for the Flemish secessionist movement Vlaams Belang. This conversation took place in the headquarters of Vlaams Belang, in Brussels, and represents—like our earlier conversations with prominent figures in the history of radicalism—an historical document. By the end of the interview, one begins to see the role of Catholicism and, in particular, the concept of “subsidiarity” in guiding the Flemish movement to separate Flanders from Belgium. Of course, one has to ask to what extent the bourgeois conservatism that drives Flemish separatism—or for that matter, that may well play a role in the North American secessionist movement urged on by Kirkpatrick Sale—is radical, to what extent it is reactionary, and what the difference between those two might be.

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