Shards of Identity

This book is an exploration of the origins of the American evangelical movement in the United States during the Cold War, specifically between 1945 and 1981. Amongst numerous other theories that already exist regarding the emergence of this religious and social movement, the text carries out this exploration through the theory of the sociologist Zygmunt Bauman. Bauman maintains that religious fundamentalisms emerge in the context of problems and questions of identity and its formation in the contemporary world. In Bauman’s estimation, the contemporary age militates against the formation of a personal identity and that fundamentalist religious systems have emerged to fill this void. In order to historically explore Bauman’s ideas, to see how his hypothesis might manifest itself, as well as drawing insight from conceptual history, gender studies, and cultural history, the text breaks up its inquiry thematically, examining vital aspects of identity: speech, ideology, the faculty of action, contemporary religious forms, and human relations. This study gives, among other things, special attention to the questions of evangelicalism and its involvement in American politics during the Cold War. It shows that the social and cultural separatism that is said to have characterized the evangelical movement is no longer tenable. And, finally, it demonstrates a marked reorientation within American evangelicalism: a turning away from the eternal and toward the world.