Neil Postman and the Evangelicals

Abstract American evangelicalism finds its roots in the Great Awakening of the 18th century, a movement that has proven to be both multifaceted and populist. The early half of the 20th century saw evangelicalism marginalized from cultural powerbrokers, only to resurface again in the later 20th century as a political force. Nevertheless, evangelicals today as a whole still mirror the same entrepreneurial, individualistic, and pragmatic values that have been part and parcel of American enterprise, a bustle now gone hyperconsumer. Not all evangelicals are oblivious to the reshaping of Old World Protestant sensibilities by mass culture forces. Confessionalists, as named in this article, are fully aware of how media forms can shape cultural institutions like the Church. Neil Postman’s ideas have been useful to evangelicals who understand that the Christian faith, like the Jewish faith, is logocentric. Although Postman’s Enlightenment values sometimes clash with the values of those who lay claim to the Protestant Reformation, both have much in common.