Mother of Modern Evangelicalism

August 24, 2020
Migliazzo (Teaching as an Act of Faith), professor emeritus of history at Whitworth University, argues persuasively that Sunday school teacher and publisher Henrietta Mears (1890–1963) was an influence on famous 20th-century American evangelical leaders including Billy Graham and Bill Bright. According to Migliazzo, Mears’s conviction that “religious beliefs and the pursuit of knowledge should complement each other” and her attention to pedagogical and psychological techniques when working to convert people to Christianity set her apart from fundamentalists of the period and presaged the popular midcentury evangelicalism Graham and Bright exemplified. Mears rose to prominence as the director of First Presbyterian Church of Hollywood in Los Angeles, and her popular Sunday school programs led to her founding the National Sunday School Foundation and formed the core of bestselling What the Bible is All About, published posthumously in 1966. Migliazzo provides an insightful account of Mears’s youth, education, and early questioning of her vocation, drawing on extensive research to support descriptions of Mears’s charismatic leadership. Unfortunately, the narrative also suffers from Migliazzo’s decision to confine discussion of Mears’s shortcomings, particularly her complicity in racial stereotyping, to one chapter towards the end. While lay readers may struggle with the exhaustive detail, Migliazzo’s biography will be of interest to scholars working in 20th-century evangelicalism.

October 9, 2020

Migliazzo (history, Whitworth Univ.; Teaching as an Act of Faith) introduces Henrietta Mears (1890-1963), an influential but largely unknown figure in American Evangelicalism. Spanning the birth of fundamentalism in the 1920s to the neo-Evangelical movement in the mid-20th century, the life of Mears covers the arc that brings Evangelicalism to its current form. The outline of Mears's family history and early years are engaging. Her mother was a pious, studious Baptist with a social conscious, while her father was a boundless entrepreneur. These characteristics exemplify Mears's personality, starting with her early years as an active churchgoer and a progressive, innovative high school chemistry teacher. Her move to California as the director of religious education at First Presbyterian of Hollywood was where her influence became clear, including the establishment of a Sunday School curriculum, the use of Christian Education as a means of evangelism, the founding of Gospel Light Press, and the Forest Home Conference Center. Migliazzo's list of those Mears influenced include Bill Bright and Billy Graham and reads like an Evangelical who's who. VERDICT Mears herself almost disappears from view under all her accomplishments in this work that is clearly aimed at those immersed in the Evangelical ethos and may be difficult for nonreligious readers to grasp fully her influence on the character and culture of Evangelicalism.--James Wetherbee, Wingate Univ. Libs., NC

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