The American Evangelical Story: A History of the Movement

The American Evangelical Story: A History of the Movement

The American Evangelical Story surveys the role American evangelicalism has had in the shaping of global evangelical history. Author Douglas Sweeney begins with a brief outline of the key features that define evangelicals and then explores the roots of the movement in English Pietism and the Great Awakening of the eighteenth century. He goes on to consider the importance of missions in the development of evangelicalism and the continuing emphasis placed on evangelism. Sweeney next examines the different subgroups of American evangelicals and the current challenges faced by the movement, concluding with reflections on the future of evangelicalism. Combining a narrative style with historical detail and insight, this accessible, illustrated book will appeal to readers interested in the history of the movement, as well as students of church history. Modern evangelicalism, the biggest thing in Protestantism since the Reformation, has influenced all Protestant denominations--indeed, it has generated most of them. Sweeney depicts it as a child of English Puritanism and German Pietism, born in the Great Awakening, which, inspired by the ideas of Massachusetts' Jonathan Edwards (1703-58), first broke out in John Wesley's England. Almost immediately, England dispatched the great George Whitefield (1714-70) to ensure that North America awoke, too. From then to the present, Sweeney traces evangelicalism's American lineage, proceeding chronologically. He treats each successive principal development: institution building, missionary endeavors, dealing with the infamous U.S. color line, the impacts of the late-nineteenth-century holiness and Pentecostal movements, and the twentieth-century emergence of fundamentalism and neoevangelicalism (it may surprise some to learn that evangelicalism and fundamentalism aren't synonymous). Definitions are made, distinctions drawn, and major figures sketched--all in nimble, unmannered, jargon-free prose that makes this the ideal book to read after, before, or in tandem with Wendy Murray Zoba's Beliefnet Guide to Evangelical Christianity (2005). Ray Olson Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved ? Douglas A. Sweeney (PhD, Vanderbilt University) is dean and professor of divinity at Beeson Divinity School, Samford University, in Birmingham, Alabama. He is the author or editor of more than twenty books on the history of Christian doctrine, early modern Protestant history, American church history, Christology, and global evangelicalism and is a highly respected Jonathan Edwards scholar.