I have a half-baked theory that evangelicalism was a much greater spiritual force about a hundred years ago. I’m not a historian or sociologist, and I don’t have a lot of interest in figuring out exactly what went wrong between our time and the golden age. It’s enough to know that sometime around the first quarter of the twentieth century, somebody obviously spent the family fortune, and later generations of evangelicals have been born poorer (in terms of spirituality, confidence, historical sense, academic heft, biblical literacy, ecumenical credibility, cultural impact, theological orientation, and clues). There are plenty of fine moments and good books from 20th century evangelicals, but if you just leap over the whole sorry century and land back at the end of the nineteenth, you come into contact with a stream of spiritual power that does not feel familiar - - it feels better. Evangelical theology and spirituality one hundred years ago were palpably better.

Now and then I check my half-baked theory by opening the oven door and sticking a toothpick in it. Minus the tortured culinary metaphor, here’s how I actually do that. I read a few pages from The King’s Business, the monthly magazine that Biola published beginning in 1910. The first decade of the magazine is available online here. Help yourself!

Once you learn how to learn from these old founders of fundamentalism, almost any page will do. Here’s the trick: You’re not just looking for somebody who was writing in 1910; instead you’re trying to get a sense of the atmosphere they were living in, the things they were reading, and the things they took for granted as belonging to them.
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