Turning Points in the History of American Evangelicalism

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