The Many Faces of American Evangelicalism

• Published in: Magazine of history Vol. 22; no. 1; pp. 38 - 42
• Main Author: Hall, Timothy D.
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Bloomington Organization of American Historians 01.01.2008
• Subjects: African Americans; American history; Antebellum period; Beliefs; Bible; Christian history; Christianity; Civil rights; Clergy; Criticism; Crosses; Cultural Context; Evangelicalism; Fundamentalism; Leaders; Lecture Method; National Standards; Politics; Preachers; Primary Sources; Religion; Religious organizations; Source criticism; Teachers; Teaching Strategy; United States History; Units of study; Websites; Worksheets
• ISSN: 0882-228X; 1938-2340
• DOI: 10.1093/maghis/22.1.38

[...] historian Mark Noll observes that evangelicalism's conversionism, biblicism, activism, and focus on the cross have never produced "easily definable, well-coordinated, or clearly demarcated groups of Christians" (2). Evangelicalism shaped the white nineteenthcentury urban middle class even as African Americans seized on its implicit egalitarianism, adapting its powerful message to sustain them through slavery and Jim Crow and nourish their struggle for civil rights. Background This lesson will help students understand one of the most influential strands of religious belief and practice in American history since the eighteenth century. The lecture should include a definition of evangelicalism, a timeline showing its origins in the First and second Great Awakenings (1735-1745 and 1800:830), continuation through the antebellum period, the Civil War, D.L. Mood/s Gilded Age revivals, the Fundamentalist-Modernist controversy of the 19205, and its resurgence under Billy Graham (beginning ca. 1950).