American Evangelicals - A History Podcast
American Evangelicals blends storytelling and free-flowing conversation to explore the varieties, similarities, and significance of evangelical Christians in American history.
Spanning the religious revivals of the 18th century to the cultural and political conflicts of the 21st, each episode is a conversation based on the historical research of its hosts, the deep scholarship on American evangelicals, and the lives of real figures who shaped the movement.
Hosted by three historians of American evangelicalism, discover how evangelicals have shaped and been shaped by the challenges of not just theology and belief, but by the same forces that have contributed to American society, from immigration to war, race, and economics.
Episodes
13 episodes
Looking Back, Looking Ahead: Evangelicalism, History, and What Comes Next (Episode 12)
In the finale of Season One, John Fea, Dan Hummel, and Maggie Capra step out of their usual narrative format to reflect directly on the series and on the state of the field they study. They open by sharing what listener feedback has taught them...
Accidental Diplomats: Missionaries, Money, and the World (Episode 11)
It's easy to imagine American evangelicalism as a story that happens entirely inside the United States. In this episode, John Fea, Dan Hummel, and Maggie Capra push past that bubble to explore evangelicals' long, tangled relationship with the r...
The Bible: A People of the Book (Episode 10)
For many evangelicals, no object is more central to faith and practice than the Bible—preached, memorized, carried, gifted, and treated as the ultimate authority. But how did it come to occupy that place, and what happens when readers of the sa...
"Can a Woman Preach?": Rethinking Gender in Evangelical History (Episode 9)
When we tell the story of evangelicalism, we usually reach for famous pastors, theologians, and institutions. But what happens when we turn our attention to the women who taught, organized, wrote, fundraised, evangelized, and sustained evangeli...
More Complicated Than the Scopes Trial: A History of Evangelicals and Science (Episode 8)
When most people imagine evangelical Christianity and science in America, they picture conflict: the Scopes Trial, school-board fights over evolution, faith retreating before modern science. But that picture is largely a product of the twentiet...
God, the Pink Cadillac, and Commerce: Evangelicals connection with Business & Consumerism (Episode 7)
From the iconic pink Cadillac of Mary Kay Ash to the aisles of the Christian bookstore, this episode traces one of the most tangled relationships in American religious history: the bond between evangelical faith and the marketplace. Hosts John ...
The Politics of Reaction: Evangelicals and the American Nation (Episode 6)
In the late 1790s, a respected minister convinced much of evangelical America that a secret society called the Bavarian Illuminati was conspiring with Thomas Jefferson's allies to destroy Christianity and topple the government. The conspiracy w...
Faith and Race: Whose Story Gets Told? (Episode 5)
One of the most complex and contested questions in the study of American religion is the relationship between evangelicalism and race. Episode 5 of American Evangelicals: A History Podcast takes up that question through an unexpected doorway: t...
Theology, History, and the Question of Identity (Episode 4)
It is the summer of 1976. A Gallup poll asks Americans a deceptively simple question: "Have you been born again?" Thirty-four percent say yes. Overnight, a single survey question gives a name to a movement that has existed in America for over t...
Defining the American Evangelical Movement: Doctrine and Denominations (Episode 3)
In January 1953, the Reverend Donald Gray Barnhouse published a striking New Year's resolution in his magazine Eternity. After 25 years of building a ministerial empire — through Bible conferences, books, a widely syndicated radio broa...
Defining the American Evangelical Movement: Spirituality and Practice (Episode 2)
In Episode 1, we explored what it means to become an evangelical — the new birth, the conversion experience that George Whitefield and the First Great Awakening placed at the center of Protestant identity. But Episode 2 presses deeper. Conversi...
Defining the American Evangelical Movement: Born Again (Episode 1)
We begin where history often does — with a story. It’s October 23, 1740, and Connecticut farmer Nathan Cole has just heard urgent news: the famous preacher George Whitefield will be in Middletown in a matter of hours. Cole drops his tools, sadd...
Introducing American Evangelicals - A History Podcast
AMERICAN EVANGELICALS blends storytelling and free-flowing conversation to explore the varieties, similarities, and significance of evangelical Christians in American history.Spanning the religious revivals of the 18th century to the cul...