Genovese on Noll

Eugene Genovese has a typically pungent and pugnacious review of Mark Noll’s America’s God in the current issue of The New Republic . He commends Noll’s scholarship, research, erudition, and calls him one of the best of contemporary American historians. He spends most of the review, however, taking Noll to task for his dismissive and occasionally distorted treatment of Southern theologians who defended the biblical permissibility of slavery. And he claims that Noll is far too easy on antiCalvinists and liberals, especially those who abandoned the doctrines of total depravity and original sin. Noll’s kid-glove treatment of these theologians is ironic, Genovese points out, because they played a central role in the transformation of Christianity into moralism, which is one of the central themes of Noll’s book. And, Genovese takes a moment to put in a plug for J. Gresham Machen. A superb review.