Review by Choice Review
Roberts (University of Wisconsin--Stevens Point) sets out to provide "a comprehensive analytical overview of the public dialogue that occurred among 19th-century American Protestant intellectuals who grappled with the theory of organic evolution." Taking issue with historians such as Cynthia E. Russett (Darwin in America, CH, Oct '76) and James R. Moore (The Post-Darwinian Controversies, CH, Jan '80), Roberts argues that Protestants who accepted the evolutionary hypothesis did not abandon natural theology, and that Protestants who rejected the theory did not do so because it failed to fit their theology. From 1859 to 1876, Protestant intellectuals insisted that the theory lacked scientific merit. After 1875, when an increasing number of scientists, clergy, and theologians endorsed the idea, Protestant writers shifted to a discussion of evolution's meaning for theology. Roberts presents extensive primary evidence for the thinking of mainstream Protestants and those who remained firmly opposed to evolution. He finds it ironic that Protestants escaped the authority of Rome only to allow science to become the new locus of cultural authority and to drain much of the force from Christian theology. Some of Roberts's evidence is repetitive, and his Protestant intellectuals often seem disconnected from their era of vast social, racial, and economic change. The work would have had a livelier general appeal had it included some of the practical effects on his commentators of "reform Darwinism" or racial thinking. Upper-division undergraduates and above. -J. P. Felt, University of Vermont
Copyright American Library Association, used with permission.
Review by Choice Review
