Reforming Fundamentalism: Fuller Seminary and the New Evangelicalism »

The story of the first twenty years of Fuller Seminary, recounted in Reforming Fundamentalism, tells of how these high aspirations clashed with the realities of American cultural and intellectual life and especially with the realities of American evangelicalism. Moreover, these conflicts were refracted through the institution's intriguing personalities--often with dramatic and in a sense tragic outcomes.

Library Journal

Marsden's purpose is to show that the history of Fuller (founded 1947) clarifies the evangelical movement it was designed to serve. A risky undertaking for most authors, but Marsden convinces us that Fuller's origins in the fundamentalist-modernist debate, its movement from separatism to engagement with mainline Protestantism, and its attempt to define biblical inspiration in a critical age combine to make it a microcosm of contemporary evangelicalism. Inevitably, the focus on Fuller downplays other individuals and institutions that have ``reformed'' fundamentalism. But overall, Marsden makes his case. John R. Muether, Westminster Theological Seminary Lib., Philadelphia