Evangelicals: Who They Have Been, Are Now, and Could Be

by Mark Noll; David Bebbington; George Marsden

Publisher:

Eerdmans

, 2019

Overview

The past, present, and future of a movement in crisis.

What exactly do we mean when we say “evangelical”? How should we understand this many-sided world religious phenomenon? How do recent American politics change that understanding?

Three scholars have been vital to our understanding of evangelicalism for the last forty years: Mark Noll, whose Scandal of the Evangelical Mind identified an earlier crisis point for American evangelicals; David Bebbington, whose “Bebbington Quadrilateral” remains the standard characterization of evangelicals used worldwide; and George Marsden, author of the groundbreaking Fundamentalism and American Culture: The Shaping of Twentieth-Century Evangelicalism. Now, in Evangelicals, they combine key earlier material concerning the history of evangelicalism with their own new contributions about present controversies and also with fresh insights from other scholars. The result begins as a survey of how evangelicalism has been evaluated, but then leads into a discussion of the movement’s perils and promise today.

Evangelicals provides an illuminating look at who evangelicals are, how evangelicalism has changed over time, and how evangelicalism continues to develop in sometimes surprising ways.

Key Features

• Includes contributions from a wide variety of influential evangelicals
• Discusses the movement’s perils and promise today
• Addresses present evangelical controversies

Contents

Part I: The History of “Evangelical History”

• The Evangelical Denomination - George Marsden
• The Nature of Evangelical Religion - David Bebbington
• The Essential Evangelicalism Dialectic: The Historiography of the Early Neo-Evangelical Movement and the Observer-Participant Dilemma - Douglas A. Sweeney
• Evangelical Constituencies in North America and the World - Mark Noll
• The Evangelical Discovery of History David W. Bebbington
• Roundtable: Re-examining David Bebbington’s “Quadrilateral Thesis” - Charlie Phillips, Kelly Cross Elliott, Thomas S. Kidd, Amanda Porterfield, Darren Dochuk, Mark A. Noll, Molly Worthen, and David W. Bebbington
• Evangelicals and Unevangelicals: The Contested History of a Word - Linford D. Fisher

Part II: The Current Crisis: Looking Back

• A Strange Love? Or: How White Evangelicals Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Donald - Michael S. Hamilton
• Live by the Polls, Die by the Polls - D. G. Hart
• Donald Trump and Militant Evangelical Masculinity - Kristin Kobes Du Mez
• The "Weird" Fringe Is the Biggest Part of White Evangelicalism - Fred Clark

Part III: The Current Crisis: Assessment

• Is the Term “Evangelical” Redeemable? - Thomas S. Kidd
• Can Evangelicalism Survive Donald Trump? - Timothy Keller
• How to Escape from Roy Moore’s Evangelicalism - Molly Worthen
• Are Black Christians Evangelicals? - Jemar Tisby
• To Be or Not to Be an Evangelical - Brian C. Stiller

Part IV: Historians Seeking Perspective

• On Not Mistaking One Part for the Whole: The Future of American Evangelicalism in a Global Perspective - George Marsden
• Evangelicals and Recent Politics in Britain - David Bebbington
• World Cup or World Series? - Mark Noll

Top Highlights

“This is the fact: the very high level of evangelical support for Donald Trump is like nothing seen in America’s recent religious-political history—except for the even higher percentage that since the 1960s Democrats have received from Bible-believing, born-again African Americans.” (Page 3)

“‘evangelical’ is in trouble. For much of postwar American polling, George Gallup identified ‘evangelicals’ as those who said they were born again or who had undergone a born-again experience. Yet if significant numbers of African Americans have been born again and have been voting for Democrats—in even higher proportions and over a longer period of time than white evangelicals have voted for Republicans—how can anyone speak responsibly about ‘evangelical support’ for Donald Trump without serious qualifications?” (Page 3)

“First is the broad usage in which ‘evangelicalism’ designates simply a conceptual unity” (Page 22)

“Black Christians, responding to a cultural experience dominated by oppression, have developed their own varieties of most of the major American traditions especially the Baptist, Methodist, and Pentecostal. Not only do these and other evangelical denominations vary widely, but almost every one has carefully guarded its distinctiveness, usually avoiding deep contact with many other groups.⁶ Viewed in this light, evangelicalism indeed appears as disorganized as a kaleidoscope. One might wonder why evangelicalism is ever regarded as a unified entity at all.” (Pages 21–22)

“The rise of Billy Graham to national prominence after 1949 gave wide visibility to this movement. By the 1960s, it was common for insiders in a large network of loosely connected revivalist-oriented Protestants to call themselves ‘evangelical’” (Page 17)

Product Details

• Title: Evangelicals: Who They Have Been, Are Now, and Could Be
• Editors: Mark A. Noll, David W. Bebbington, and George M. Marsden
• Publisher: Eerdmans
• Publication Date: 2019
• Pages: 288
• Resource Type: Collected Essays
• Topic: Modern Christianity

About the Editors

Mark A. Noll is Francis A. McAnaney Professor Emeritus of History at the University of Notre Dame. His other books include America’s God: From Jonathan Edwards to Abraham Lincoln and Turning Points: Decisive Moments in the History of Christianity.

David W. Bebbington has taught at the University of Stirling since 1976. In 2016 he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh. His publications include Evangelicalism in Modern Britain; and, as editor, Evangelicalism and Fundamentalism in the United Kingdom during the Twentieth Century.

George M. Marsden is also Francis A. McAnaney Profess Emeritus of History at the University of Notre Dame. Among his many books is Jonathan Edwards: A Life, named one of ten “Books of the Year” for 2003 by Atlantic Monthly and winner of the prestigious Bancroft Prize in history (2004) and the Grawemeyer Award in religion (2005).

Sample Pages from Evangelicals: Who They Have Been, Are Now, and Could Be