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

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.

Contents

Acknowledgments

Introduction: One Word but Three Crises Mark A. Noll

Part I: The History of “Evangelical History”

1. The Evangelical Denomination George Marsden

2. The Nature of Evangelical Religion David Bebbington

3. The Essential Evangelicalism Dialectic: The Historiography of the Early Neo-Evangelical Movement and the Observer-ParticipantDilemma Douglas A. Sweeney

4. Evangelical Constituencies in North America and the World Mark Noll

5. The Evangelical Discovery of History David W. Bebbington

6. Roundtable: Re-examining David Bebbington’s “Quadrilateral Thesis” Charlie Phillips, Kelly Cross Elliott, Thomas S. Kidd, AmandaPorterfield, Darren Dochuk, Mark A. Noll, Molly Worthen, and David W. Bebbington

7. Evangelicals and Unevangelicals: The Contested History of a Word Linford D. Fisher

Part II: The Current Crisis: Looking Back

8. A Strange Love? Or: How White Evangelicals Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Donald Michael S. Hamilton

9. Live by the Polls, Die by the Polls D. G. Hart

10. Donald Trump and Militant Evangelical Masculinity Kristin Kobes Du Mez

11. The “Weird” Fringe Is the Biggest Part of White Evangelicalism Fred Clark

Part III: The Current Crisis: Assessment

12. Is the Term “Evangelical” Redeemable? Thomas S. Kidd

13. Can Evangelicalism Survive Donald Trump? Timothy Keller

14. How to Escape from Roy Moore’s Evangelicalism Molly Worthen

15. Are Black Christians Evangelicals? Jemar Tisby

16. To Be or Not to Be an Evangelical Brian C. Stiller

Part IV: Historians Seeking Perspective

17. On Not Mistaking One Part for the Whole: The Future of American Evangelicalism in a Global PerspectiveGeorge Marsden

18. Evangelicals and Recent Politics in Britain David Bebbington

19. World Cup or World Series? Mark Noll