A. B. Simpson and the Making of Modern Evangelicalism by Daryn Henry: A Review
Editor’s Note: You can also listen to a podcast interview with Andrew Ballitch released in conjunction with this article.
Andrew Ballitch
This will not be a traditional book review. I imagine few will be disappointed and many will be relieved. Instead, my purpose in interacting with Henry’s book is twofold. First, I want to explain why this biography of Simpson is unique, giving a pitch for why it is important and why you might want to read it. Second, I intend to use the book to showcase how the founder of our larger movement spoke to a few of the Core Commitments of the 1:9 Alliance.
Argument and Method
Henry sees Simpson as a window into the larger religious culture of evangelicalism in the decades surrounding the turn of the twentieth century. He was born in 1843 and died in 1919, meaning his life spanned the transformation of America into an industrial world power and immigrant melting pot, and that during his half-century of active ministry the holiness movement upended Protestantism and Pentecostalism was born. Simpson was a pioneer in the former and foundational to the latter, while at the same time serving as a frontrunner in the evangelical strategy of transcending denominations for the sake of mission. Henry makes a strong case for Simpson’s embodiment and synthetization of the energetic biblical Christianity of his day by narrating the events of his life through this lens.
I trust the vast majority of those reading this are already convinced of Simpson’s significance in American and global Christianity as founder of The Christian and Missionary Alliance, the denomination most of us call home. Further, I’m confident most have some grasp of the chronology of his ministry, including his affiliations, pastorates, Great Commission vision, publications, the institutions he led, and the like. So why is this book of interest?
Henry’s is the first scholarly biography of Simpson ever written. There has been much tremendous work done on Simpson to be sure, including faithful biographical work, but nothing that would meet the criteria of an academic press or land someone a job at a research university. Who cares? These metrics come with certain expectations of both historical research breadth and depth and critical engagement with the sources which is then vetted by other experts in the field. Along these lines, Henry has done us a tremendous service.
His research is impressively broad, including denominational, university, and public archives, denominational and secular periodicals, and primary and secondary sources that cover not just Simpson and the C&MA, but sufficiently justify his claims about Simpson’s wider significance. His research is also remarkably granular, with thirty-four pages of meticulously engaged endnotes. With this backdrop, Henry paints a picture of Simpson’s private life, public ministry, and enduring legacy that is generous, yet realistic and accurately placed in historical context. In so doing, he gives voice to some of Simpson’s thoughts, accompanied by his own analysis, on several 1:9 Alliance priorities.
Biblical Authority
In Simpson’s day, the primary threat to the authority of Scripture was higher criticism, a threat he saw as internal more than external. Higher criticism analyzed books of the Bible like any other human writings and concluded that traditional Christian claims of authorship and dating, and therefore truth, were impossible. There was a dangerous tendency to drift even among conservative evangelicals, according to Simpson, specifically through the appointment of compromised faculty in theological colleges and seminaries. As early as 1889, simply “dabbling was enough to make them suspect to Simpson…regardless of the particular balance of interpretations that any professor claimed to uphold” (274). Simpson asserted “revolution is not always progress in the Christian Church and…we are approaching the troubled waters and eddying currents of a whirlpool, where the certainties of the faith will be lost sight of and the old cry of Pilate, what is truth? Will become the watchword” (275).
What troubled Simpson was not serious engagement with the Bible through what he called “sacred criticism.” For, “true, authentic scholarship—unbeclouded by antagonistic presuppositions—entailed that every discovery would ‘only confirm…the faith of the Church in its accepted Scriptures’ and would disprove blatantly ‘willful skepticism’” (275). Rather, Simpson was distressed by those who would undermine biblical authority while claiming to respect the Bible. Higher criticism was particularly insidious because, instead of a head-on assault, it “worked more subtly and deviously, Simpson thought, gradually dismantling the authority of the Bible under the guise of respect for its difference and pluriformity” (276). For Simpson, it mattered less what someone said about the Bible than how what they said upheld or undermined biblical authority.
Biblical Interpretation
When Simpson interpreted the Bible, he tried to arrive at the plain meaning of the text. The simpler the exegesis, the better. He wanted to avoid the manipulation of systems, the accretions of culture, and sinful bias. Healing and premillennialism, two tenants of Simpson’s fourfold gospel, owe their priority of place to his hermeneutic.
In the providential events surrounding Simpson’s own healing in 1881 at Old Orchard, he observed the ministry of Charles Cullis, a physician and proponent of faith healing. The testimonies of people who claimed to have been healed shook Simpson’s Presbyterian cessationism, so he decided to take a fresh look at the topic in the Scriptures. When he did, he found that the plain and simple meaning of the key texts and apostolic narrative taught that healing “was part of Christ’s glorious Gospel for a sinful and suffering world, for all who would believe and receive His Word” (152).
Simpson’s transition to premillennialism was also motivated by his plain reading of Scripture. In 1885 he recollected that he came to see, “that the idea of the growth of a spiritual millennium was unscriptural; the world was becoming worse and worse” (204). While Simpson did adhere to the dispensationalism that was becoming so popular at the time, of premillennialism in general, Henry quotes him saying, “this is all very plain if we are willing to believe our Bibles as they read” (205). This literal view of the millennium had the added benefit of motivating holiness, evangelism, and missions, on top of being true. Simpson claimed, “if this be not a literal coming…and millennium, then we do not know what our Bibles mean.” For Simpson,
Scripture’s plain meaning transcended systems and experience, even the overwhelming consensus of the day.
Women and Church Leadership
Early in his ministry, Simpson went on record saying, “woman is the world’s greatest blessing or the world’s most withering blight, according as she fills or overflows her true sphere” (115). He understood the female sphere to be primarily domestic, according to both nature and Scripture. This, of course, emphasized the home as the primary place for women to flourish, a position Simpson would relax as he sought to mobilize women for missions. A woman’s sphere in the church could not include being “a public teacher of religion in mixed assemblies,” Simpson argued, which was reserved for ordained ministers in his Presbyterian circles at the time (115). This too was tempered as Simpson transitioned out of those circles and focused his attention on the movement that came to be known as the C&MA.
As the urgency of missions called women to pursue ministry outside the home (which was defended with biblical precedent), whether raising funds to send missionaries or going oversees themselves, questions regarding their proper role in the sphere of the church naturally came to the fore. Simpson’s answers to such questions, Henry concludes, were not entirely satisfactory. Women became “equal partners,” but while they took up positions in leadership, teaching in mixed gatherings, preaching during Sunday services, and beyond, Simpson did not think their ministry could be formalized in the “pastoral office and the official ministry of the Christian church” (288). In short, they could not be ordained as pastors, elders, or overseers. An argument can be made from Simpson’s practice toward the end of his career that he left the question of formal office up to local branches, though without an internal mechanism for ordination, conclusions drawn from this evidence ought to be tentative. Simpson wanted to honor Scripture, mobilize women, and focus on mission. As far as was possible in his context, he seems to have been successful, even if he fell short of the clarity that many would desire.
Conclusion
Every generation must defend biblical authority. Simpson is an example of resolute faithfulness. Every generation must fight for a biblical hermeneutic. Simpson’s default to a literal one is a great place to start. Every generation must wrestle with God’s design for gender roles. Simpson’s inclination to prioritize scripture and mobilize women is worthy of emulation. This book is a welcome contribution to the history of the early C&MA and its founder, and, therefore, not coincidentally, a helpful resource for the stewards of this legacy as they are called upon to engage perennial Christian concerns.
Andrew Ballitch - Westwood Alliance Church - Mansfield, Ohio
A.B. Simpson and the Making of Modern Evangelicalism by Daryn Henry. McGill-Queens University Press, 2019. 403 pages.