Consuming Jesus - Fundamentalism & "trickle down social ethics"

In chapter 1 of Consuming Jesus, Metzger traces some of the history of the evangelical church in the U.S., it's racial divisions, and it's consumer culture mentality. It takes us back to the turn of the century with D.L. Moody and his evangelistic revivalism. Moody, described as the "forefather" of fundamentalism, shifted during his season of ministry to a singular emphasis on evangelism. Though early in his ministry he had walked in the Evangelical tradition of social concern he began to see social reform as a distraction of the primary concern, evangelism.

According to Metzger, Moody and his followers did not necessarily lack compassion, they just believed that evangelism was the most effective way to address social concerns. Metzger calls this "trickle down social ethics", that as people enter into a right relationship with God that there life will improve and they will be able to "pull themselves up by their own bootstraps". Metzger rightly points out that this belief overlooks the reality of systematic injustice that takes away the bootstraps of those who are to pull themselves up by them.

In my next installment of this book review I will try to summarize Metzger's argument of how the premillenialist eschatology of Fundamentalism furthered this disengagement with the social concerns and injustices of the day.