Evangelical
Studies
Bulletin
The Great Awakening Revisited
Summer 2008
Issue 68
Thomas Kidd’s study, The Great Awakening, provides a comprehensive narrative
survey of evangelical revival throughout colonial America, from Georgia to Nova
Scotia. He covers the sort of ground that Joseph Tracy did in a book with the same
title published way back in 1841. But a lot has happened in the last 166 years—
even in the last 25.
Not least, of course, being Jon Butler’s 1982 argument that famously described
the whole idea of a Great Awakening as an “interpretive fiction” created after
the fact largely by Tracy himself. Butler argued that revival in eighteenth-century
America was “erratic, heterogeneous, and politically benign.” In 2002 John Kent
took a similar line on “the myth of the so-called evangelical revival” in England.
Both of these writers were concerned that the religious and political consequences
of revival in the eighteenth century have been overstated. But neither would,
I think, deny that the participants in these revivals often described their own
experience in terms of larger solidarities that were trans-regional and
trans-denominational.1
Frank Lambert took the rhetoric of the period as a starting point, arguing
that participants in eighteenth-century revivals (rather than nineteenth-century
historians) “invented” the Great Awakening in the twofold contemporary sense of
that term, whereby “invented” could mean both “discovered” and “constructed.”
He pushed the “invention” of revival back into the eighteenth century itself.
Letter-writing, print media and the periodical press were crucial for this “invention,” since it was in these rhetorical spaces that an interconnected sense of revival
as one “work” of God was reified. Indeed, Michael Crawford made a similar
point in his study of revival, noting that the word “work” (singular) was the most
common term used to describe the aggregation of revival, as clusters of conversion seemed to appear in more concentrated periods of time and yet with farther
geographic extension in space.2
The conceit of the Great Awakening as a literary fiction or rhetorical invention
has provoked a robust response, and it is high time that historians “put paid to”
the simplistic notion that someone in the nineteenth century simply “made up”
the idea of a Great Awakening out of his own head. Such a simplistic notion is,
of course, a caricature of Butler’s nuanced argument, but unfortunately the subtle
scholar is often followed by the terrible simplifiers. This is now inexcusable,
however, given the number of richly textured studies of interconnected,
international revival in the eighteenth century. These studies make very clear that
evangelical religion, in its various forms, was a massive North Atlantic religious
phenomenon that appeared at the outset of the modern period, the dimensions of
which we are only beginning to appreciate.
In this issue:
The Great Awakening
Revisited. . . . . . . . . . . . 1
Notices . . . . . . . . . . .
.
6
Recent Dissertations,
Articles, Books . . . . . . 8
Thomas S. Kidd, The Great Awakening: The Roots of Evangelical
Christianity in Colonial America, New Haven: Yale, 2007.
416 pp., $35.00.
Institute for the Study of American Evangelicals
The most learned of recent studies is W. R. Ward’s
The Protestant Evangelical Awakening (1992). The last
sentence of this book comes with a certain amount of
bathos, given the density of the previous 354 pages:
“However ruthlessly cut down to size, the Great Awakening is not to be dismissed by critics as ‘invention’ or
‘interpretative fiction.’”3 So much for historical constructivism. You can almost hear the harrumph at the end of
that sentence. Ward’s account, though erudite, is difficult
even for specialists, but that is no matter. Mark Noll’s
The Rise of Evangelicalism (2004) takes Ward on board,
along with the best of the rest, and provides a masterful
and clear account of the international movement in the
eighteenth century.
Given this
accumulation of
scholarship, the
time is ripe for
Kidd’s fresh narrative survey of the
Great Awakening,
covering the same
territory, more or
less, as Tracy, but
with a judiciousness and scholarly discrimination
that was lacking in
Tracy’s filiopietistic account. Kidd
is also able to take
advantage of, and
to integrate into his
account, the many regional studies, biographies, critical
editions and new sources that have appeared in the last
number of years. Kidd is not really interested in a theorydriven or rhetorically based analysis of revival as something constructed in language and taking shape in print
media. He is interested in reports of what happened in
Ipswich, Hanover, and Sandy Creek. If his account seems
to have an unrelieved attention to detail, as the chapters
rack up a detailed succession of small town revivals and
personal networks of preachers, this is the sort of
thoroughness that is perhaps required to answer the
revisionist scholarship of the last number of years. This
attention to detail leaves less room for analysis, but it
does make this book valuable as a reference volume, as
well as a narrative text.
2
Kidd does, however, advance a definite claim about
the Great Awakening. Just as historians often stretch
the eighteenth-century in their political periodization to
speak of a “long eighteenth century,” so Kidd argues for
a “long Great Awakening.” It is not just New England,
the events of 1740-43, and the paradigm of the
“surprising work” which constitute a great spiritual
awakening, but rather the longue durée of revival from
early in the century right through the revolutionary
period. Throughout these years “persistent desires for
revival, widespread individual conversions, and the
outpouring of the Holy Spirit distinguished the new
evangelicals” (xix). He concludes his book by
emphasizing this point again: “There was, indeed, a
First Great Awakening, but it was a long Great
Awakening and produced a new variation of Protestant
Christianity: evangelicalism” (322). This might claim
a little too much for the American experience alone in
the eighteenth century, but if we take this to include the
wider North Atlantic spiritual awakening, then I think
Kidd is surely right. Herein lies the real significance of the
movement: “The Great Awakening can be acknowledged
as ‘great’ because it produced the evangelical
movement” (323).
Kidd’s book may be divided roughly into thirds.
The first six chapters trace the roots of colonial
revivalism from North to South, and then the next six
chapters analyze the revival in New England in the 1740s
and its aftermath, examining the debates over the
legitimacy of revival and the development of radicalism
into a more permanent separatist tradition. The last
third of the book deals with revival in the South, the
recurrence of revival in the 1760s and in the New Light
Stir of 1776-83, with individual chapters devoted to the
discrete themes of Amerindian mission, African American
evangelicalism, and the relationship of evangelical
religion to the American Revolution.
Whereas many accounts of the Great Awakening have
seen revival in America through the lens of the career of
George Whitefield, the Great Itinerant, and have used
Whitefield’s Journals as a kind of backbone for their
narrative, Kidd is able partially to submerge this Whitefieldian narrative and to privilege instead the indigenous
accounts of regional actors. We see that revival activity
often preceded Whitefield’s arrival or existed and spread
apart from his influence. The influence of Frelinghuysen
and the Tennent dynasty in northeast Pennsylvania and
east New Jersey in the 1720s and 30s is fully narrated
Evangelical Studies Bulletin
before introducing Whitefield to the story there.
“Evangelicalism had begun to take shape locally in North
America,” says Kidd, “without Whitefield” (38). In the
South, Whitefield came and went, but figures such as
Josiah Smith in Charleston were left to manage affairs on
the ground. Again Kidd points out that the narratives of
the Ipswich stir of 1763 in Massachusetts and the Easthampton revival on Long Island in 1764 barely
mention Whitefield’s preaching, though he himself
recorded his visits to these places, saying, “There is really
a great awakening in those parts” (272) and that “a sweet
influence hath attended the word” (277).
To be sure, Whitefield was the key inter-colonial
figure uniting and symbolizing evangelical revival in
eighteenth-century America, especially in the media, but
by drawing on regional studies, Kidd is able to offer a
much more polycentric account of the Great Awakening
than has been typical.
Kidd’s focus is not, however, on discontinuity (the
“surprising work”) and the appearance of evangelical
religion in the eighteenth century as something novel
that requires explanation. He dispatches the question of
why the Great Awakening occurred with two succinct
paragraphs in his introduction, and then goes on in his
book instead to document how it did really happen and
to characterize it. Often, I think, historians are interested
in questions of causation: Why did this happen when and
where it did? What were the factors that account for the
rise of this phenomenon? But it is equally important to
ask question of characterization: How is it best to
classify and portray this phenomenon? This is where
Kidd’s book sustains a useful heuristic throughout his
narrative, namely, that attitudes toward revival vary over
time but may be plotted typically on a continuum with
three points: radical, moderate, and anti-revivalist (xiv).
This continuum is one that a reader might expect if
familiar with Jonathan Edwards’s analysis of revival. But
just as Kidd is able to shift Whitefield from the center of
the stage (to use an apt metaphor for Whitefield), so also
he is able to nudge Jonathan Edwards a little to one side
as well. Edwards did much in his series of revival
narratives to present the moderate version of revival as
normative, and to play down the salience of radical,
socially subversive forms of revivalism. Thomas Prince
and the revival magazines gave much the same impression. “Moderate evangelicals,” Kidd reminds the reader,
“were trying to squeeze [the] mystical, censorious, and
populist tendencies out of the movement” (143).
Institute for the Study of American Evangelicals
Kidd seeks to redress this imbalance. Indeed, he
shows how debate about the work of the Holy Spirit,
ecstatic phenomena, and the nature of assurance were
central to the evangelical movement. Not only does he
take the religion of radicals such as James Davenport
seriously, but he also documents just how extensive and
recrudescent such radical forms of revivalism were, and
he details the social implications of radicalism, context
by context, for race and gender relations, social and
political order and attitudes toward wealth and
consumption. Moreover, “the radicals,” Kidd says,
“remained a serious alternative presence in the long First
Great Awakening” (155). He traces the genealogy of
radicalism from the New England Separates to the
explosive growth of Baptists in the southern backcountry
at the end of the century.
‘Moderate evangelicals,’
Kidd reminds the reader, ‘were
trying to squeeze [the] mystical,
censorious, and populist
tendencies out of the movement.
In the epilogue, Kidd suggests the long-term
significance of this eighteenth-century radicalism when
he writes that the division of moderates and radicals over
manifestations of the Spirit “hinted toward the contemporary global evangelical expansion that remains split
between Pentecostal and noncharismatic believers” (323).
Far then from being an “interpretive fiction” of passing
historical significance, the Great Awakening of the
eighteenth century anticipates a seismic shift in
Christianity as it will be practiced in the modern period.
Kidd has chosen to refract colonial religion in the
eighteenth century into a kind of dispersion pattern
using the effective prism of “attitude toward revival.”
This works in part because of the continuous debate
throughout the century over the nature and validity of
revival, and the large cache of printed revival narratives
extant from the period. There may, however, be things
that this heuristic misses, simply because selectivity is
3
invariably a feature of the tools we use. I think there is
a necessary limitation when we focus on the literature
of debate in religious history, since this will yield, more
often than not, a sense (even if unintended) that partisan
alignment is the whole of religion.
Moreover, to focus upon revival is necessarily
to focus upon declension, since there is no revival of
religion without a presumptive decay before and after. To
focus on revival as central to evangelical experience in the
eighteenth century is necessarily, therefore, to skew the
account away from expressions of evangelical piety that
perdure and remain more or less constant, such as, for
example, attitudes toward Scripture or the atonement or
the ‘spirituality of the law’ or even the continuing
experience of individual conversion (rather than
communal awakening). So, though revival is one
effective prism through which to look at evangelicals in
early America, there may be other ways of seeing too.
...A different set of sources might
lead to a different way of seeing
[the Awakening]....How would
the period look if we focused not
on the literature of debate, but
on psalms and hymn-singing?
One of the groups among evangelicals that doesn’t
much figure on the “attitudes toward revival” continuum
in Kidd’s book is the Moravians, even though their work
in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, and in Winston-Salem,
North Carolina, was an influential form of evangelical
renewal in early America that has been extensively
documented and studied. The Moravian work also
provides several points of comparison with other groups
that Kidd studies in matters ranging from the evangelization of native Americans to gender relations to attitudes
toward Whitefield. But because the Moravians are not
easily located in terms of debates about revival, they only
appear on the margins of the story.
4
What then if we were to pursue other heuristics that
may sift the data differently, or illuminate evangelical
religion in the period in other ways? Even just a different
set of sources might lead to a different way of seeing. For
example, how would the period look if we focused not on
the literature of debate, but on psalms and hymn-singing?
(Or even just attitudes towards Isaac Watts?) What were
those songs that Davenport’s followers sang on the streets
in New London? How did these differ from the songs
sung by Edwards’s parishioners, or by Moravians in their
quarter-hour services? How would this illuminate both
spiritual aspiration and continuities or discontinuities
between groups, and tell us more about the internal
dynamics of their faith? There may be other paths yet
through evangelical religion in colonial America.
Likewise, comparative analysis may open up fresh
angles of vision. Kidd concedes in his introduction that he
did not set out in this book to trace all the North Atlantic
connections that would place the Great Awakening in
America in an international and comparative perspective.
Fair enough. Even so, he does introduce some transatlantic correspondents here and there, such as William
McCulloch in Glasgow or Isaac Watts in London, and he
is aware of the importance of London and Glasgow as
audiences for American writers. Still, one could wish for
more. At many points Kidd’s well-researched narrative
could be enriched even further by comparison to evangelical experience elsewhere. For example, many of the issues
he traces in the context of early America in, say
1741-2, had their almost exact parallel at Cambuslang
and Kilsyth in Scotland. The same sort of range of
reactions to revival—to push revival to extremes, to
moderate and reform it, or to oppose it—can be traced
among Scottish leaders in the pamphlet literature. So also
with revival in 1762, which had its parallels in London,
Newcastle, and Llangeitho. Kidd has done more than
enough work for one day, certainly, and it must seem
greedy to ask for more, but I think international
comparisons would yield much fruit analytically.
Indeed, the differences with Britain also point up the
extent to which America was exceptional. Not only
with respect to the effect of the frontier and the role of
religious establishments, but also with regard to the
centrality of the phenomenon of revival itself as a
community experience of mass conversion. At least in
its Methodist form, evangelical growth in England was
Evangelical Studies Bulletin
experienced not principally through the convulsion of
American-style revivals, but through the ingathering of
marginal outsiders and the building up of a network of
devotional cells up and down the country. As John Walsh
has argued, there were episodic “torrents” of grace, but
also a steady quiet growth of recruits.4
Moreover, the hegemonic ascendancy of the Church
of England as a Volkskirchen meant that any ambitious
reform movement must operate at least nominally under
its auspices if it were to become a “great” spiritual awakening. And so it did in England. David Hempton has argued, in the case of Methodism at the end of the century,
that evangelical religion caught a ride, so to speak, on the
back of Anglicanism in the expansion of Anglicana overseas in its colonies, like a parasite that nourishes itself on
its host organism until it is viable enough to go it on its
own.5 This helps to explain the success of Methodism in
some regions and not others, and it opens up scope for
comparative analysis of the relationship between evangelical religion and religious establishments more generally.
Another area in which international comparisons
would be useful would be concerning the extent to which
North Atlantic revival was a young people’s movement or
Jungendreligion.6 I was impressed on page after page of
Kidd’s narrative that this or that revival began among the
young people of the town. Early in the century Samuel
Danforth’s covenant renewal in Taunton in 1705 led to
a revival that made an especial impression on the young
people, and the “harvests” under Solomon Stoddard
seemed to make the youth of Northampton particularly concerned about their salvation. In 1733 and 1741
Jonathan Edwards singled out the same spiritual sensitivity as notable again especially among the young. And so
the story continues, as local revivals at Elizabethtown,
Boston, Bridgewater, Lyme, New Concord, Philadelphia,
Ipswich, Woodstock, Easthampton and other places each
seemed to begin with, or especially affect the youth of the
community. This bears comparison with the uprising of
the children in Silesia in central Europe in 1708, or the
role of the praying children at Herrnhut in early Moravian history, or the role of young people’s societies among
Dissenters in England, such as at John Collett Ryland’s
Baptist Church in Northampton in the Midlands. And
this raises questions about the relationship of evangelical
religion to the expanding importance of adolescence as a
transition to adulthood in the early modern world.
Institute for the Study of American Evangelicals
But the fact that this book raises such questions
about alternative heuristics and comparative analysis is
testimony not to any shortcomings on Kidd’s part. On the
contrary, it is testimony to his achievement, namely, that
he has let us see the Great Awakening afresh and he has
let us see it whole.
Bruce Hindmarsh
James M. Houston Professor of Spiritual Theology
Regent College
Footnotes
Jon Butler, “Enthusiasm Described and Decried: The
Great Awakening as Interpretive Fiction,” Journal of
American History 69 (1982), 305-25; John Kent,
Wesley and the Wesleyans (Cambridge, England:
Cambridge University Press, 2002).
1
Frank Lambert, Inventing The “Great Awakening”
(Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1999);
Michael J. Crawford, Seasons of Grace : Colonial New
England’s Revival Tradition in Its British Context
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991).
2
W. R. Ward’s The Protestant Evangelical Awakening
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), 355.
3
John Walsh, “‘Methodism’ and the Origins of EnglishSpeaking Evangelicalism,” in Evangelicalism: Comparative Studies of Popular Protestantism in North America,
the British Isles, and Beyond, 1700-1990, ed. Mark Noll,
George Rawlyk and David Bebbington (New York:
Oxford University Press, 1994), 19-37.
4
David Hempton, Methodism: Empire of the Spirit (New
Haven: Yale University Press, 2005).
5
Walsh, “‘Methodism’ and the Origins,” 23.
6
5
Notices
Conference on Faith and History:
Biennial Conference, Sept. 18-20, 2008
The 22nd Biennial fall meeting of the Conference on
Faith and History (CFH) is being held September
18-20 at Bluffton University in Bluffton, Ohio. Meeting
in conjunction with a special CFH-sponsored undergraduate conference on September 17-18, the theme of
the 22nd Biennial Conference will be “World History
and History that Changed the World.” CFH meetings
are intentionally couched in broad terms to attract as
many scholars as possible. In that spirit, “World History”
should be understood to encompass all geographical
areas, historical periods, and paper topics that in some
way touch on global and cross-cultural themes. Session
proposals are especially encouraged, but the organization
will also consider individual paper proposals that will be
organized into sessions wherever possible. The deadlines
for proposals for both conferences have been moved to
April 30, 2008. Proposals should be 1-2 pages, double
spaced and submitted to: [email protected].
ISAE Volume on the Role of Confessional
Christian Traditions on its Way!
Since the ISAE’s founding back in 1982, the Institute has
been responsible for the appearance of over two dozen
books related to its conferences and projects. We are
happy to report that a new volume--stemming from our
Lilly Endowment-funded project on “Confessional Traditions in American Religious History”--is in the midst of
its publication journey at University Press of America and
should be here by this fall. Holding On to the Faith:
Confessional Traditions in America, edited by Charles
Hambrick-Stowe of Northern Seminary and Douglas
Sweeney of Trinity Evangelical Divinity School, is an
interpretive look at the manner in which European-based
traditions such as the Anglican and Lutheran churches
have navigated the free-market religious and cultural
atmosphere in America—so friendly to evangelicalism—
since the nation’s founding. Contributing scholars include
James Bratt, James Juhnke, James Moorhead, Bruce
6
Mullin, Christopher Shannon, Mary Todd, and the late
Peter D’Agostino. We are quite pleased with the way this
volume has turned out and believe it chimes in with
some new ways of understanding the development of
Christianity in the United States. More specific
information on availability (and maybe even a special
deal…) will be forthcoming in the pages of the ESB.
Fifth International Conference on Baptist
Studies To be held July 2009 at Whitley
College, Melbourne, Australia
Another in a line of International Conferences on Baptist
Studies (ICOBS), following meetings at Oxford (1997),
Wake Forest (2000), Prague (2003), and Acadia (2006),
has been scheduled for Whitley College in Melbourne,
Australia, from Wednesday, July 15th to Saturday July
18th, 2009. While the conference takes Baptists as its
subject matter, it is not restricted to Baptists as speakers
or attendees. The theme for the 2009 meeting is
‘Interfaces: Baptists and Others’, which includes relations
with other Christians, other faiths and other movements
such as the Enlightenment. What has been the Baptist
experience of engaging with different groups and
developments? The theme will be explored by means of
case studies, some of which will be very specific in time
and place while others will cover long periods and more
than one country.
A number of main speakers will address aspects of
the subject, but offers of short papers to last no more
than 25 minutes in delivery are welcome. They should
relate in some way to the theme of “Baptists and Others”.
Send your title, a short description, and an abbreviated
vita to Professor D. W. Bebbington, Department of
History, University of Stirling, Stirling FK9 4TB,
Scotland, United Kingdom (e-mail: d.w.bebbington@
stir.ac.uk). A volume containing some of the conference
papers is planned to appear in the series of Studies in
Baptist History and Thought published by Paternoster
Press. Papers from the first conference have appeared
in that series as The Gospel in the World: International
Baptist Studies, edited by David Bebbington, and volumes
representing the subsequent conferences are also being
published. Full board over three days will be provided by
the college, and charges will be kept low. Programs and
application forms will be available later.
Evangelical Studies Bulletin
The ISAE Announces New Part-Time
Professional Position
In conjunction with its recently-awarded grant from the
Lilly Endowment centering on a century’s change in the
American Protestant missionary crusade, the ISAE is
pleased to announce that it is seeking someone to serve in
the role of part-time Project Coordinator. The main
duties of the new position will focus upon the
organization, management, and hosting of various
project-related events, including four regional seminars
to be held at selected regional Protestant seminaries in
the summer and fall of 2009, as well as a major academic
conference to be held in the spring of 2010. The position
requires a good background in American religion, strong
organizational abilities, and an understanding of basic
office and computer skills. Knowledge of HTML and web
design experience would be highly desirable. The
prospective candidate for this position should have in
hand a master’s degree by the end of the present (‘07-‘08)
academic year; the job would be ideally suited for an
ABD doctoral student with a strong research interest in
the 19th or 20th century American missionary movement.
The position of Project Coordinator would combine a
very competitive part-time salary situation with a flexible
24-hour per week work load conducive to the pursuit of
academic research and writing, with the additional bonus
of convenient access to the archival and library
collections of Wheaton College as well as other Chicagoarea research centers. Acceptance of the position would,
of course, entail relocation to the Wheaton area and
would require availability to travel to supervise and manage project-related events. The position is designed as a
two-year commitment beginning in September 2008 and
ending in August 2010. For further information, contact
the ISAE at 630-752-5937, or, by e-mail at:
[email protected]. To begin the application process, send
a cover letter, a complete, up-to-date vita, and two (2)
letters of recommendation to: Dr. Edith L. Blumhofer,
Director, ISAE, Wheaton College, Wheaton, IL 60187
no later than June 30th, 2008. The faculty and staff of
Wheaton College affirm a Statement of Faith and adhere
to lifestyle expectations. The College complies with
federal and state guidelines for nondiscrimination in
employment, and women and minority candidates are
encouraged to apply.
Institute for the Study of American Evangelicals
New Collections Available at the
Billy Graham Center Archives
The Billy Graham Center Archives at Wheaton College
announced the opening of several new collections in
early 2008. Among the newly available materials is a
new “Ephemera of the ‘Auca’ Incident” Collection (599)
which includes an assortment of documents, articles,
recordings, and filmstrips related to the famed 1956
murder of five American missionaries in the Ecuadorean
jungle. Other new collections include videotape and an
oral history interview with Nigerian evangelist Felix O.
W. Erondu (Collection 564), new oral history interview
transcripts, and additions to the recently-opened
collection of materials (Collection 624) related to the
1941 German sinking of the Egyptian liner, the Zamzam,
which carried more than one hundred American
missionaries and their family members. Guides to these
and most other collections can be found online at
http://www.wheaton.edu/bgc/archives/archhp1/html; for
further information contact the BGC Archives at
[email protected], or call 630-752-5910.
Henry Ward Beecher.
Courtesy of the Billy Graham Center Museum
7
Recent
Dissertations
Antracoli, Alexis A. “‘Mighty in the Scriptures’: The
Bible in Colonial Massachusetts, 1630–1776.” Brandeis
University, 2006.
Balik, Shelby. “The Religious Frontier: Church, State,
and Settlement in Northern New England, 1780-1830.”
University of Wisconsin, 2007.
Berggen, D. Jason. “’I Had a Different Way of
Governing’: The Evangelical Presidential Style of Jimmy
Carter and his Mission for Middle Eastern Peace.”
Florida International University, 2007.
Branstetter, Christopher J. “Purity, Power, and
Pentecostal Light’: The Revivalist Doctrine and Means of
Aaron Merritt Mills.” Drew University, 2006.
Cooney, Jonathan D., “Methodist Preaching in New
England, c. 1790–1850: The Arminian Message on
Calvinist Soil” Boston University, 2007.
English, Bertis Deon. “Civil Wars and Civil Beings:
Violence, Religion, Race, Politics, Education, Culture and
Agrarianism in Perry County, Alabama, 1860-1875.”
Auburn University, 2007.
Fein, Gene F. “For Christ and Country: The Christian
Front in New York City, 1938-1951.” CUNY, 2007.
Hochstetler, Laurie, “Sacred Rites: Religious Rituals and
the Transformation of American Puritanism” University
of Virginia, 2007.
Jo, Michael. “Spiritual Capitalism: Christianity,
Commerce and Conservatism in Industrial America,
1900-1950.” Yale University, 2007.
Moore, Robert G. “Separatism in Decline: How Political
Involvement has Moderated the Religious Right.”
Michigan State University, 2007.
Moorhead, Jonathan. “Jesus is Coming: The Life and
Work of William E. Blackstone (1841-1935).” Dallas
Theological Seminary, 2008.
8
Pettegrew, Justin H. “Onward Christian Soldiers: The
Transformation of Religion, Masculinity, and Class in
Chicago YMCA, 1857-1930.” Loyola-Chicago, 2007.
Ramirez, Daniel. “Migrating Faiths: A Social and
Cultural History of Pentecostalism in the U.S.-Mexico
Borderlands.” Duke University, 2005.
Ruckel, Ryan. “‘A kind Providence’ and ‘the right to
self preservation’: How Andrew Jackson, Emersonian
Whiggery, and Frontier Calvinism Shaped the Course
of American Political Culture.” Louisiana State
University, 2006.
Sivertsen, Karen. “’A Country without a Society of Our
Order’: Religion and Community Formation in Dutch
Manhattan.” Duke University, 2007.
Weaver, Elton Hal. “’Mark the Perfect Man and Behold
the Upright’: Bishop C.H. Mason and the Church of God
in Christ in Memphis, Tennessee.” Memphis State
University, 2007.
Welch, Kristen Doyle. “Oklahoma Women Preachers,
Pioneers, and Pentecostals: An Analysis of the Elements
of Collective and Individual Ethos Within the Selected
Writing of Women Preachers of the International
Pentecostal Holiness Church.” University of
Arizona, 2007.
Winner, Lauren Frances. “Material Culture and Household Religious Practice in Colonial Virginia.” Columbia
University, 2006.
Recent
Articles
Adamczyk, Amy and Jacob Felson. “Fetal Positions:
Unraveling the Influence of Religion on Premarital
Pregnancy Resolution,” Social Science Quarterly (March
2008), pp. 17-38.
Albanese, Catherine L., W. Clark Gilpin, Leigh A.
Schmidt, and Thomas A. Tweed, “Forum: How the
Graduate Study of Religion and American Culture Has
Changed in the Past Decade.” Religion and American
Culture 17:1(Winter 2007), pp. 1-26.
Evangelical Studies Bulletin
Banks, Adelle M. “Moderate Baptists Test Unity in
Diversity (‘Celebration of a New Baptist Covenant’
meeting),” Christian Century 125:4(February 26, 2008),
pp. 14-15.
Bonham, Chad. “In the Name of the Father (Michael
Landon, Jr.),” Charisma (January 2008), p. 73.
Byassee, Jason. “Dinosaurs in the Garden: A Visit to the
Creation Museum,” Christian Century 125:3 (February
12, 2008), pp. 22-26.
Clemmons, Linda M., “‘Leagued together’: Adapting
Traditional Forms of Resistance to Protest ABCFM Missionaries and the Treaty of 1837,” South Dakota History,
37 (Summer 2007), pp. 95–124.
Crouch, Andy. “Unexpected Global Lessons (Short-term
Missions),” Christianity Today (December 2007), 30-33.
Dobbs, Ricky Floyd, “Continuities in American
Anti-Catholicism: The Texas Baptist Standard and the
Coming of the 1960 Election,” Baptist History &
Heritage, 42 (Winter 2007), pp. 85–93.
Lindsey, William. “Huckabee’s Baptism,” Religion in the
News 10:3 (Winter 2008), pp. 8-10, 27.
McDermott, Gerald. “Jonathan Edwards and
Justification—More Protestant or Catholic?” Pro Ecclesia
17:1 (Winter 2007), pp. 92-111.
Powers, Bob and Laurel MacLeod. “Year in Review:
2007,” (Broadcasting & Federal Government), NRB 40:2
(February/March 2008), pp. 44-50.
Roof, Wade Clark, “Pluralism as a Culture: Religion and
Civility in Southern California,” Annals of the American
Academy of Political and Social Science, 612 (July 2007),
pp. 82–99.
Smith, Erin A., “‘Jesus, My Pal’: Reading and Religion in
Middlebrow America,” Canadian Review of American
Studies/Revue canadienne d’études américaines (Ottawa),
37 (no. 2, 2007), 147–81.
Stapleford, John E. “A Torturous Journey: The Condition of Black America,” Christian Scholar’s Review 37:2
(Winter 2008), pp. 231-251.
Fisher, Cameron. “Crying From the Wilderness (Jentezen
Franklin),” Charisma (January 2008), pp. 34-43.
Strang, Stephen. “Bomb Shelters For Israel (Operation
Lifeshield),” Charisma 33:* (March 2008), p. 98.
Gaines, Adrienne S. “The Black Church and the 21stCentury,” Charisma (February 2008), pp. 32-43.
Stiveri, Dan R. “A Word About . . . Evangelicals on the
Left,” Review & Expositor (Fall 2007), pp. 715-720.
Guiness, Os. “Fathers and Sons: On Francis Schaeffer,
Frank Schaeffer, and Crazy for God,” Books and Culture
14:2 (March/April 2008), pp. 32-33.
Sutton, Matthew Avery. “Oral Surgery (Roberts Family
and ORU),” Religion in the News 10:3 (Winter 2008),
pp. 15-17, 25
Gundlach, Bradley J., “‘Wicked Caste’: B. B.
Warfield, Biblical Authority, and Jim Crow,” Journal of
Presbyterian History, 85 (Spring–Summer 2007),
pp. 28–47.
Taylor, Kimberly Hayes. “Healing the Soul of the Motor
City,” Charisma (February 2008), pp. 44-50, 81.
Harrison, Douglas. “Why Southern Gospel Music
Matters,” Religion and American Culture 18:1 (Winter
2008), pp. 27-58.
Henneberger, Melinda. “Think Evangelicals Vote in
Lockstep? Meet the Routhe Family.” Politics (April 1,
2008), pp. 26-28.
Hiemstra, Rick. “Evangelicals and the Canadian Census,”
Church & Faith Trends 1:2 (February 2008), pp. 12-24.
Watt, David Harrington. “The Meaning and End of
Fundamentalism,” Religious Studies Review (October
2007), pp. 269-274.
Wilhelm, Mark O., Patrick M. Rooney, and Eugene R.
Tempel, “Changes in Religious Giving Reflect Changes in
Involvement,” Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion
46:2 (June 2007), pp. 217-232.
Worthen, Molly. “Not Your Father’s L’Abri” (ministry
to disaffected evangelicals), Christianity Today (March
2008), pp. 60-65.
Lantzer, Jason S. “The Origin of Indiana’s Dry Leader:
The Reverend Edward S. Shumaker and Midwestern Dry
Culture,” Journal of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era
6:1 (January 2007), pp. 71-98.
Institute for the Study of American Evangelicals
9
New
Books
Anderson, Emma. The Betrayal of Faith: The Tragic
Journey of a Colonial Native Convert. Cambridge:
Harvard University Press, 2007. 318 pp., $45.00.
Balmer, Randall. God in the White House: A History.
New York: HarperOne, 2008. 256 pp., $24.95.
Billingsley, Scott C. It’s a New Day: Race and Gender
in the Modern Charismatic Movement. Tuscaloosa:
University of Alabama Press, forthcoming.
240 pp., $34.50.
Bowler, Peter J. Monkey Trials and Gorilla Sermons:
Evolution and Christianity from Darwin to Intelligent
Design. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2008. 272
pp., $24.95.
Cherok, Richard J. Debating for God: Alexander
Campbell’s Challenge to Skepticism in Antebellum
America. Abilene, TX: ACU Press, 2008. 256 pp.,
$22.95, $34.95.
D’Elia, John A. A Place at the Table: George Eldon Ladd
and the Rehabilitation of Evangelical Scholarship in
America. New York: Oxford University Press,
forthcoming. 304 pp., $45.00.
Gifford, Carolyn DeSwarte, and Amy R. Slagell, eds. Let
Something Good Be Said: Speeches and Writings of
Frances E. Willard. Urbana: University of Illinois Press,
2007. 312 pp., $45.00.
Groening, Matt. Flanders’ Book of Faith: The Simpsons’
Library of Wisdom. New York: Harper Paperbacks,
2008. 96 pp., $9.95.
Hall, Amy Laura. Conceiving Parenthood: American
Protestantism and the Spirit of Reproduction. Grand
Rapids: Eerdmans, 2008. 460 pp., $32.00.
Hankins, Barry G. American Evangelicals: A Contemporary History of a Mainstream Religious Movement.
Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2008. 224 pp.,
$39.95, $24.95.
Harvey, Paul and Philip Goff, eds. The Columbia
Documentary History of Religion in America Since 1945.
584 pp., $78.00, $27.50.
Hulsether, Mark. Religion, Culture, and Politics in the
Twentieth-Century United States. New York: Columbia
University Press, 2007. 192 pp., $74.50, $24.50.
Irons, Charles F. The Origins of Proslavery Christianity:
White and Black Evangelicals in Colonial and
Antebellum Virginia. Chapel Hill: University of North
Carolina Press, forthcoming. 352 pp., $59.95.
Jenkins, Philip. God’s Continent: Christianity, Islam, and
Europe’s Religious Crisis. New York: Oxford University
Press, 2007. 352 pp., $28.00.
Dorsett, Lyle. A Passion for God: The Spiritual
Journey of A.W. Tozer. Chicago: Moody Press, 2008.
192 pp, $14.99.
Jones, Larry. Keep Walking: One Man’s Journey to Feed
the World One Child at a Time. New York: Doubleday,
2007. 304 pp., $23.95.
Duriez, Colin. Francis Schaeffer: An Authentic Life.
Westchester, IL: Crossway Books, 2008. 288 pp., $24.99.
Kalu, Ogbu. African Pentecostalism: An Introduction.
New York: Oxford University Press, 2008. 352 pp.,
$24.95.
Encyclopedia of Christianity, Volume 5 (Si-Z). Grand
Rapids: Eerdmans, 2008. 896 pp., $100.00.
Fea, John. The Way of Improvement Leads Home: Philip
Vickers Fithian and the Rural Enlightenment in Early
America. Philadelphia: Penn Press, 2008.
280 pp., $39.95.
Freston, Paul, ed. Evangelical Christianity and
Democracy in Latin America. New York: Oxford
University Press, 2008. 272 pp., $24.95.
10
Kyle, I. Francis, III. An Uncommon Christian: James
Brainerd Taylor. Lanham, MD: University Press of
America, 2008. 255 pp., $35.00.
Lambert, Frank. Religion in American Politics: A Short
History. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2008. 304
pp., $24.95.
Lutz, Jessie Gregory. Opening China: Karl F.A. Gutzlaff
and Sino-Western Relations, 1827-1852. Grand Rapids:
Eerdmans, forthcoming. 384 pp., $45.00.
Evangelical Studies Bulletin
Marks, John. Reasons to Believe: One Man’s Journey
among the Evangelicals and the Faith He Left Behind.
San Francisco: HarperCollins, 2008. 384 pp., $26.95.
Rosenthal, Michele. American Protestants and TV in the
1950s: Responses to a New Medium. New York: Palgrave-Macmillan, 2007. 192 pp., $69.95.
Marley, David John. Pat Robertson: An American Life.
Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2007. 312 pp.,
$26.95.
Simpson, James. Burning to Read: English
Fundamentalism and its Reformation Opponents.
Cambridge: Belknap Press, 2007. 368 pp., $27.95.
McKenna, George. The Puritan Origins of American
Patriotism. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2007. 448
pp., $35.00.
Stephens, Randall J. The Fire Spreads: Holiness and
Pentecostalism in the American South. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2007. 416 pp., $27.95.
Mead, Walter Russell. God and Gold: Britain, America,
and the Making of the Modern World. New York: Alfred
A. Knopf, 2007. 464 pp., $27.95.
Svelmoe, William Lawrence. A New Vision for Missions:
William Cameron Townsend, the Wycliffe Bible
Translators, and the Culture of Early Evangelical Faith
Missions, 1917-1945. Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama
Press, forthcoming. 400 pp., $46.00.
Roberts, Michael. Evangelicals and Science
(Greenwood Guides to Science and Religion). Westport,
CT: Greenwood Press, 2008. 320 pp., $65.00.
Robinson, Edward J. Show Us How You Do It: Marshall
Keeble and the Rise of Black Churches of Christ in the
United States, 1914-1968. Tuscaloosa: University of
Alabama Press, forthcoming. 272 pp., $39.95.
Turner, John G. Bill Bright & Campus Crusade for
Christ: The Renewal of Evangelicalism in Postwar
America. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press,
2008. 304 pp., $59.95, $19.95.
Tyson, John R. Assist Me to Proclaim: The Life and
Hymns of Charles Wesley. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans,
2008. 368 pp., $22.00.
American ‘Doughboys’ cluster around for Salvation Army donuts,
France, 1918.
Courtesy of the Billy Graham Center Museum
Institute for the Study of American Evangelicals
11
Institute for the Study of
American Evangelicals
The Institute for the Study of American Evangelicals seeks to encourage and support the study
of evangelical Christianity in North America. It aims to deepen evangelicals’ understanding
of themselves and enrich others’ assessment of evangelicals’ historical significance and
contemporary role. The Evangelical Studies Bulletin (ISSN 0890-703X) is published four times
a year. The cost is $7.50/year. Send change of address to ISAE, Wheaton College, Wheaton, IL
60187. Tel. 630/752-5437; Fax: 630/752-5516. Email: [email protected].
Website: www.wheaton.edu/isae.
Institute Director: Edith Blumhofer Designer: Sarah Parisi
Bulletin Editor: Larry Eskridge
Research Assistant: Elizabeth Wanee
Interested in finding more information
about ISAE and its resources?
Visit www.wheaton.edu/isae for articles and links on evangelicalism.
Wheaton College complies with federal and state requirements for nondiscrimination on the
basis of handicap, sex, race, color, national and ethnic origin in admission and access to its
programs and activities.
Institute for the Study of American Evangelicals
Wheaton College
Wheaton, IL 60187-5593
Non-Profit Org.
U.S. POSTAGE
PAID
Wheaton, IL
Return Service Requested
Permit No. 392