Turning Points in the History of American Evangelicalism - Paperback

by Heath W. Carter (Author), Laura Porter (Author)

Lucid, authoritative overview of a major movement in American history

The history of American evangelicalism is perhaps best understood by examining its turning points--those moments when it took on a new scope, challenge, or influence. The Great Awakening, the rise of fundamentalism and Pentecostalism, the emergence of Billy Graham--all these developments and many more have given shape to one of the most dynamic movements in American religious history. Taken together, these turning points serve as a clear and helpful roadmap for understanding how evangelicalism has become what it is today.

Each chapter in this book has been written by one of the world's top experts in American religious history, and together they form a single narrative of evangelicalism's remarkable development. Here is an engaging, balanced, coherent history of American evangelicalism from its origins as a small movement to its status as a central player in the American religious story.

Contributors & Topics

Harry S. Stout on the Great Awakening
Catherine A. Brekus on the evangelical encounter with the Enlightenment
Jon Butler on disestablishment
Richard Carwardine on antebellum reform
Marguerite Van Die on the rise of the domestic ideal
Luke E. Harlow on the Civil War and conservative American evangelicalism
George M. Marsden on the rise of fundamentalism
Edith Blumhofer on urban Pentecostalism
Dennis C. Dickerson on the Great Migration
Mark Hutchinson on the global turn in American evangelicalism
Grant Wacker on Billy Graham's 1949 Los Angeles revival
Darren Dochuk on American evangelicalism's Latin turn

Author Biography

Heath W. Carter is associate professor of American Christianity at Princeton Theological Seminary. Prior to coming to Princeton, he taught at Valparaiso University from 2012-2019. His writing has been featured in publications such as The New Republic, Comment, Christianity Today, The Christian Century, and Sojourners. He is the author of Union Made: Working People and the Rise of Social Christianity in Chicago.

Laura Rominger Porter holds a PhD in history from the University of Notre Dame and is an independent scholar based in Des Moines, Iowa.