Digital Logos Edition
David Bebbington is well known for his characterization of the Evangelical movement in terms of the four leading emphases of Bible, cross, conversion, and activism. This quadrilateral was expounded in his classic 1989 book Evangelicalism in Modern Britain: A History from the 1730s to the 1980s. Bebbington developed many of the themes in that book in articles published from the 1980s to the present, but until now most of those articles have remained little known. The present collection of thirty-two essays makes readily available these important explorations of key aspects in the history of Evangelicalism.
The Evangelical movement arose in the eighteenth century in Britain and America as a revitalization of Protestantism. Sharing much with the Puritans who preceded them, the Evangelicals nevertheless adopted a fresh stance by making revival rather than reformation their priority. Coming from diverse denominations, they formed a zealous united front. Over subsequent centuries they grew in number and carried their message throughout the world, giving rise to many of the churches in the global South that have come to the forefront in world Christianity. The essays in this work deal chiefly with Britain, though a few place the British movement in a world setting. Because Evangelicals on both sides of the Atlantic interacted, reading much of the same literature and visiting each other, there was a great deal of common ground between the British and American movements. Hence many of the topics covered here relate to developments mirrored in the American churches over the last three centuries.
Volume 1, Characterizing the British Gospel Movement, begins with an overview of the nature of the movement. The essays cover such representative areas as the affinity of early Evangelicalism with the Enlightenment, the impact of Americans Jonathan Edwards and Dwight L. Moody, the advent hope and the experience of conversion as key doctrines of Evangelicalism, the growth of academic historical studies of and by Evangelicals, Evangelical attitudes to science, and widespread trends in the movement and its shifting patterns of public worship in the twenty-first century. The first volume also provides detail on many of the main features that British Evangelicals displayed in common.
David Bebbington’s important scholarship has shaped an entire field. I am delighted to see his classic essays gathered in one place and made readily available to a new generation. Eminently readable and always insightful, these essays represent Bebbington at his best. They belong on the shelf of every serious scholar of evangelical history.
—Dana L. Robert, Truman Collins Professor of World Christianity and History of Mission, Boston University
In this superb collection, Professor Bebbington, one of our foremost historians of modern Christianity, investigates the history, character, outreach, and diversification of British Evangelicalism from the eighteenth century to the present. He shows that far from being opposed to our modernising world, British Evangelicalism has been dynamic, socially concerned, and often progressive—and very much engaged with broader cultural movements, including the Enlightenment, Romanticism, and Modernism. Beautifully written and thoroughly researched, Bebbington’s essays explore Evangelical identity in its widest sense, and will be savoured by all those with interests in the history of Christianity in Britain, and the larger world.
—Stewart J. Brown, Professor of Ecclesiastical History, University of Edinburgh