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In the World But Not of It: One Family’s Militant Faith and the History of Fundamentalism in America

by Brett Grainger

The term “fundamentalist,” with its inevitable connotations of religious extremism and even terrorism, has become a veritable pejorative in the North American lexicon. With his first book, In the World But Not of It, former Torontonian Brett Grainger reveals to us a kindler, gentler view of evangelical Christian fundamentalism.

Grainger’s exploration of American fundamentalist history begins right here in Canada with the story of his grandparents, who were devout members of a little-known Christian sect called the Plymouth Brethren. In his attempt to define exactly what it means to be a fundamentalist in the 21st century, Grainger turns his attention to his own upbringing in – and later his defection from – a small community of very devout believers who considered themselves to be “separate” from the modern world, though certainly not divorced from it.

The book examines a number of the issues that both define Christian fundamentalism and divide it. Grainger asserts that fundamentalism is not monolithic, despite the growing membership of major denominations such as the Southern Baptist Convention. The literal interpretation of scripture, creationism, belief in the Rapture, and the personal experience of salvation are, according to Grainger, open to interpretation among believers within a movement that essentially “has no center of authority beyond the Bible.”

Grainger does well to combine the personal memoir with academic research. Considering how vast and complex a topic he tackles, readers might have easily suffered fatigue from countless competing theological arguments and historical details. Instead, Grainger introduces us to a host of interesting characters, and there is a certain pleasure in discovering some of the very real people behind the curtain of one of the lesser understood “isms.”

 

Reviewer: Sarah Jessop

Publisher: Walker & Company/Raincoast

DETAILS

Price: $24.95

Page Count: pp

Format: Cloth

ISBN: 978-0-8027-1559-3

Released: April

Issue Date: 2008-6

Categories: Children and YA Non-fiction, Memoir & Biography

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