Book Reviews

On the other hand, however, readers may wonder why the official denomina-
tional recognition of the social gospel "was one of the outstanding achievements
of social Christianity during the Progressive Era" (p. 339). Gorrell argues that the
accomplishments of unheralded bureaucrats were equal to those of the well-
known leaders of the social gospel. He asserts that Protestant communions had a
much greater influence on American society through the interdenominational
organizations they created than they could have had through the combined effect
of their individual ministries. The question Gorrell's study rarely answers, how-
ever, is what practical results did the social action programs of these various
ecumenical organizations and denominations produce. What ministries were
created? What social changes occurred? Did these social action agencies motivate
ministers to preach or pray differently or to work for social reforms? Did these
agencies help lay people to apply biblical principles to their vocations, their
political involvement, their commercial transactions, and their family and recre-
ational life? Granted, these are difficult questions for historians to answer. More-
over, Gorrell explains a few practical results achieved by these various
institutional ministries for social action such as some programs they established to
assist local congregations and the activities of Charles Stelzle's Labor Church in
New York City. Only near the end of the book, however, does Gorrell even note
that "the romantic idealism of social-gospel thinking" sometimes "failed to dis-
tinguish rhetoric from reality" (p. 296). Unless these agencies did more to amelio-
rate social problems, improve institutional structures and help individuals
practice Christian social teachings than Gorrell suggests (and they may have) it is
hard to agree that their development was an outstanding achievement.
Despite overstating the accomplishments of his subjects and ignoring their
failure to deal much with other important social problems of the Progressive years
such as the treatment of blacks, women and other minorities, protection of the
environment and assistance to the poor, Gorrell's positive assessment of the
agenda and achievements of social Christianity and of ecumenical cooperation
during this period is an outstanding contribution to the literature about the social
gospel. He helps us to understand much more clearly how and why social action
agencies and programs developed and how the ideological debate over the basis
and purposes of social action was waged within mainline Protestantism during
the years from 1900 and 1920.

HAROLD MAH, The End of Philosophy, the Origin of "Ideology": Karl Marx and
the Crisis of the Young Hegelians, Los Angeles: University of California Press,
1987. Pp. ix + 305.
Reviewed by Michael E. De Golyer, Whitworth College.

Mart's book is no mere reworking of David McLellan's The Young Hegelians

and Karl Marx, for twenty years the standard text in the field. Though many of the
persons examined are the same, he sought not to explain the influences on Marx,
as did McLellan. Mah's book focused on three leaders of the Prussian wing of the
radical Young Hegelians who between 1831 and 1845 made the transition from the
abstract idealistic philosophy of Hegel which justified the status quo of Prussia as
 Book Reviews
the epitome of the historical spirit working out its way in the world to more
critical stances. Bruno Bauer and Arnold Ruge implicitly and Karl Marx explicitly
portrayed philosophy as in truth an "ideological" justification or reflection of
material reality. These three, Bauer first in religion. Ruge second in politics, and
Marx lastly in what would now be called sociology reacted to a series of events in
Prussia which forced them to reevaluate their original smug certainty of the
rationality and absoluteness of the Hegelian idealistic philosophical system.
The distinction of Mali's work lies in his impressively documented, carefully
formulated argument that the theory of ideology originated in the discordances
experienced by the Prussian wing of the Young Hegelians as Prussia was torn
between the burgeoning market forces unleashed by incipient modernization and
the entrenched regressiveness of the social and political institutions so staunchly
defended by the Prussian autocracy. In Prussia, religious tests determined citizen
rights, social privileges, and financial security. Hegel's theory of the absolute
freedom and rationality of spirit, supposedly most manifest in Prussia's form of
unified church, state, and society, ran head on after his death in 1831 into the very
real pressures exercised by the state on intellectuals and scholars to produce
servile academic works within stipulated, and enforced, bounds. Developing an
increasingly radical theoretical criticism of scripture in his Biblical studies, and
thereby sparking collaterally intensifying opposition, Bauer finally rejected first
the inspiration of scripture and then the institution of the state as an act of God.
When he found his academic career imperiled, then wrecked by the forces of
repression, his certainty of Prussia as exemplified rationality withered along with
his faith. Yet, though he showed in his religious studies that scripture reflected
human, historical conditions, and thus could not be characterized as divine, Mah
argued, Bauer never abandoned his quest for an absolute idealistic system which
would unify freedom, religious uniformity, and a certain form of state "ratio-
nality." He remained Hegelian in spirit and method.
Arnold Ruge, a promising Prussian politician until his internment for six
years for participating in a youthful conspiracy to democratize Prussia, renounced
his earlier radicalism only to return to it after the death of his wife by cholera in
1833. His four volume memoirs exemplify the struggle of the Young Hegelians to
make sense of obvious irrationality in the actions of a state they had characterized
in absolute terms as the height of rationality and the completion of the "world
historical process." Yet Ruge also never really gave up his hopes of making sense
m
126 Hegelian terms of Prussia's history and politics.
According to Mah, only Marx came to clearly, systematically abandon "phi-
losophy," the young Hegelian's term for the idealistic rationalizations of Hegel.
Marx also successfully developed a theory of ideology which allowed him to
critique philosophy, religion, and politics by methods and in terms other than
their own. Mah concluded that for Marx, the state, like religion, was an opiate
masking the pain of material suffering, and nothing but material improvement
would cure the craving for the pain-killing drugs.
In response to Karl Mannheim's classic critique of theories of ideology as
themselves ideological, Mah proposes an argument that in effect makes Marx's
Book Reviews
position a distinctly non-ideological one. An ideologue makes the argument,
when confronted with an event, such as plague, that God or the gods sent it or fate
decreed it. Therefore one must accept it placidly. In contrast, Marx's focus on
material processes and human welfare spark efforts not to justify events, but to
change, direct, or even resist them. Ideology justifies and does nothing else.
Marx's approach analyzes, investigates, and acts to cure the causes of suffering. A
faith healer is an ideologue; a surgeon is a scientist. Bauer and Ruge kept the faith.
Marx sought the surgical knife to remove the social pain.
Mah's work examines the context of events in the Germany which witnessed
the beginning of radical biblical criticism,firstwith David Strauss' The Life of Jesus
Critically Examined and finally with Marx's famous formulations. Despite its
insistence on looking at historical contexts, and occasional comments about Prus-
sian modernization, the book's greatest weakness lies in its complete neglect of
any hard data about economic development and dislocation in Prussia. For a
work and an author who defends Marx's own wrestling with "material reality,"
this weakness unnecessarily mars a very fine work heavily based on primary
sources which sheds genuinely new light on the origins of many modern currents
in biblical, political, and social criticism.

JOSEPH W. ESHERICK, The Origins of the Boxer Uprising, Berkeley: University of

California Press, 1987. Pp. xix + 451.
Reviewed by Kathleen L. Lodwick, Southwest Missouri State University.

"It is easy to ride a tiger, it is difficult to dismount." This Chinese proverb is

mentioned several times by Joseph Esherick in his suberb study. The Origins of the
Boxer Uprising. Not only has Esherick successfully ridden his tiger, he has de-
scribed the pattern of his stripes, examined his idiosyncrasies, and finally dis-
mounted, with extreme grace, taming his tiger in the process. Calling his work
microscopic history, the author has drawn heavily on Chinese sources, partic-
ularly the oral histories done in Shantung province with elderly persons who
could remember the Boxers. Dating of events by oral history is often difficult, but
the 1898 flood of the Yellow River figures in many of these accounts and
strengthens their authenticity.
The author clearly demonstrates that the Boxer Uprising was not a rebellion,
but rather the violent manifestation of humans caught in natural and man-made
occurrences about which they could do nothing. The story is extremely complex, 127
involving eccentricities of Chinese geography (parts of counties completely sur-
rounded by neighboring provinces) and borders "interlocking like a dog's teeth"
(p. 138) making control of lawless elements by local officials extremely difficult.
Add to this, extremely dense population and the precarious existence of life where
land only a few feet in elevation might enable a family to survive a flood while
close neighbors on the lower land were forced to become refugees. Every Chinese
peasant knew that floods could be blamed on government officials who failed to
maintain the dikes, but droughts could only be blamed on the gods. The major
drought of the late 1890s, the peasants reasoned, was caused by the presence of
 ^ s
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