American Evangelicals - A History Podcast

SL Brown Foundation
  • 4.7 (3)
  • HISTORY

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

  1. 5D AGO

    Theology, History, and the Question of Identity

    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 two centuries. In Episode 4, hosts John Fea, Dan Hummel, and Maggie Capra invite two theologians into the conversation — scholars who have spent their careers thinking carefully about what evangelicalism actually is, not just what it has historically looked like. Their perspectives challenge, sharpen, and enrich the historical framework the hosts have relied on since Episode 1: the Bebbington Quadrilateral. The result is a wide-ranging, genuinely probing conversation about definition, identity, behavior, celebrity, race, and the limits of both history and theology as disciplines. What emerges is not a tidy answer — but a more honest picture of why this question matters and why it resists easy resolution. ABOUT OUR GUESTS Vincent Bacote has been a professor of theology at Wheaton College in Illinois since 2000, where he also serves as director of the Center for Applied Christian Ethics. His scholarship lives at the intersection of Christian conviction and public life, with published work on the Holy Spirit, Abraham Kuyper, and the relationship between race and the evangelical tradition. Cory Marsh is a professor of New Testament and director of the Master of Theology program at Southern California Seminary (SCS), a small, confessional institution committed to dispensational theology and the authority of Scripture. He holds four degrees from SCS and a Ph.D. in Biblical Theology from Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary. He co-hosts The Pastor-Scholar Podcast and serves as scholar-in-residence at Revolved Bible Church in San Juan Capistrano. The Bebbington Quadrilateral Revisited The episode opens with host John Fea reminding listeners of the framework that has structured the podcast since its first episode: the Bebbington Quadrilateral, proposed by British historian David Bebbington in his landmark 1989 study of evangelicalism. Both guests affirm the Quadrilateral as a helpful foundation — but both also push beyond it. What Bacote Adds: The Holy Spirit and a "Bible-Centric Ecumenism" Bacote frames his definition of evangelicalism as a "conservative Protestant ecumenism" — people from different denominational backgrounds united by a shared commitment to scripture. He endorses a fifth element to the Quadrilateral: something explicitly addressing the work of the Holy Spirit. As global Pentecostal and charismatic Christianity grows, he argues, pneumatology (the doctrine of the Spirit) can no longer be assumed as a background feature — it must be named. Bacote also raises a deeper challenge. For Black evangelicals, the entailments of the Quadrilateral go further than many White evangelicals have been willing to follow. If biblicism is genuine, it demands engagement with the full scope of scripture's social vision — including the radical claim of Revelation 5:9, that Christ purchased a people from every tribe and tongue. Survival, Bacote argues, has always required Black evangelicals to take that seriously in a way that comfort has sometimes allowed others to avoid. What Marsh Adds: The "Vintage Faith" Quintilateral Marsh builds on and extends the Bebbington Quadrilateral, arguing that evangelicalism must be defined not only by beliefs but also by the behaviors those beliefs produce. His model — which he calls "vintage faith" — consists of five pillars: Supremacy of Scripture — The Bible as the inerrant, final authority for faith and practiceExclusivity of Jesus — Salvation found only through faith in Christ's substitutionary death and resurrectionZealous Evangelism — A Spirit-empowered mandate to proclaim the gospel and make disciples, rooted in the conviction that personal redemption is the true catalyst for social changeTheological Education — A commitment to growing in knowledge of God and Scripture through formal and informal studyLocal Church Fellowship — Consistent physical assembly with other believers for worship, accountability, mutual encouragement, and faithful exposition of Scripture Marsh introduces what he calls the "crucial X factor": local church fellowship as a non-negotiable fundamental. He argues that without physical accountability structures — elders, deacons, community — evangelical identity becomes unmoored. This shapes his sharp critique of Christian celebrityism. On Christian Celebrityism One of the most pointed exchanges in the episode involves the question of celebrity culture within evangelicalism. Marsh draws a clear distinction between the two categories: Christian Celebrity: Social power without proximity. Influence exercised at a remove, without genuine accountability, grounded in platform rather than person.Public Minister: Social influence within proximity. A minister whose wide reach is rooted in the local church — accountable to elders, known in community, not merely a persona. Marsh draws on Katelyn Beaty's definition of Christian celebrity from her book Celebrities for Jesus (Brazos Press, 2022) — "social power without proximity" — to name what he sees as one of evangelicalism's most corrosive tendencies. When platform substitutes for accountability, he argues, moral failure becomes structurally predictable. His prescription is blunt: "We need to kill Christian celebrityism." The hosts engage this critique with some complexity. Dan Hummel notes that historically, evangelicalism has often cohered through major personalities — Whitfield, Moody, Billy Graham, Falwell — and that celebrity and structural necessity have been harder to separate than Marsh's framework suggests. Historians and Theologians: Different Questions, Different Methods After the guest interviews, the hosts reflect on the methodological tensions the conversations exposed. The discussion turns on a key distinction: Historians tend to ask: What IS evangelicalism — who has claimed the label, what did they believe, what did they do? Definitions are drawn from the data.Theologians tend to ask: What OUGHT evangelicalism to be — what core convictions define it, what behaviors must flow from those convictions? Definitions are normative. Dan Hummel observes that Bebbington's Quadrilateral appeals to theologians precisely because it is "trans-historical" — it describes categories that feel eternal rather than historically contingent. Historians, trained to situate ideas in time and place, find this both useful and insufficient. The hosts also raise a third category — orthopathy, or "right affection" — alongside orthodoxy (right belief) and orthopraxy (right practice). How an evangelical feels toward neighbors, enemies, and fellow believers rarely appears in formal definitions, and yet it keeps surfacing in contemporary debates about evangelical public life. BOOKS AND RESOURCES MENTIONED David Bebbington, Evangelicalism in Modern Britain (Unwin Hyman, 1989)Vincent Bacote, Reckoning with Race and Performing the Good News (2020)Cory Marsh, Recovering a Vintage Faith: Five Fundamentals of Evangelical Identity (Mentor, 2026)Katelyn Beaty, Celebrities for Jesus (Brazos Press, 2022)Thomas Kidd, Who Is an Evangelical? The History of a Movement in Crisis (Yale University Press, 2019)John Fea, Was America Founded as a Christian Nation? (Westminster John Knox Press, 2011)Isaac Sharp [referenced in discussion of self-identifying evangelicals]Carl F. H. Henry, The Uneasy Conscience of Modern Fundamentalism (Eerdmans, 1947)Tim Larson [Wheaton College colleague of Bacote, advocate for adding the Holy Spirit to the Quadrilateral]Send us Fan Mail Hosts: JOHN FEA - Visiting Fellow in History, Lumen Center; Distinguished Professor of History, Messiah University MAGGIE CAPRA - Visiting Instructor in American History, Beloit College DAN HUMMEL - Director of the Lumen Center; Honorary Research Fellow, University of Wisconsin-Madison This podcast is brought to you by the Lumen Center and STUDIO, both initiatives of the SL Brown Foundation.  Find out more about our work: slbf.org/lumen-centerslbf.org/studioProduced by Daniel Johnson and Dave Conour Edited by Dave Conour

    1h 25m

  2. MAY 14

    Defining the American Evangelical Movement: Doctrine and Denominations

    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 broadcast, and a national magazine — Barnhouse confessed that he had fallen short in one significant area: unity. Long known for his willingness to call out anyone he disagreed with, even on minor points, Barnhouse declared that he wanted to widen his "circle of Christian fellowship" — defined not by doctrinal alignment, but by a simple question: Is this person going to be in heaven with me? It was a remarkable resolution for a man forged in the fires of the fundamentalist-modernist controversy. And as historians Maggie Capra, Dan Hummel, and John Fea discuss, it offers a revealing window into the dynamics of American fundamentalism — a movement defined as much by its internal fractures as by its battles with modernism. This episode dives deep into one of the most defining and contested threads in American evangelical history: fundamentalism. What does it actually mean to be a fundamentalist? Where did the term come from? How did the movement evolve — and fracture — across the twentieth century? And what does it have to do with debates still raging today? The conversation traces fundamentalism from its origins in The Fundamentals pamphlets of the early twentieth century, through the cultural watershed of the Scopes Trial, to its complex relationship with the neo-evangelical movement and Billy Graham. Along the way, the historians examine: The three core characteristics of fundamentalism: Protestant militancy, doctrinal orthodoxy, and a deep sense of certaintyWhy fundamentalism was originally a Northern movement centered in Baptist and Presbyterian denominations — not the Southern, rural phenomenon it later became associated with in popular memoryThe crucial divide between premillennialist and amillennialist eschatology, and how it fractured the movement and gave rise to rival institutions like Dallas Theological Seminary and Westminster SeminaryThe Scopes Trial of 1925 — what it actually meant, how it was misrepresented by journalists like H.L. Mencken and later by films like Inherit the Wind, and why the fear about children and Nietzschean philosophy was central to William Jennings Bryan's caseHow fundamentalists didn't disappear after Scopes, but built a thriving parallel subculture of Bible institutes, radio broadcasts, Christian schools, and media empiresThe surprising ways fundamentalism was thoroughly modern — embracing new technology, print culture, and a rationalist, inductive approach to Scripture — even while opposing certain hallmarks of modernityThe relationship between fundamentalism and politics, from Frank Norris's anti-Catholic crusade to Karl McIntyre's anti-communism to the emergence of the Christian RightThe episode closes by reflecting on what fundamentalism teaches us about evangelicalism more broadly: that the movement's most significant tensions have often been internal, and that to understand fundamentalists, we must take seriously their own sense of what they were doing — and why. Send us Fan Mail Hosts: JOHN FEA - Visiting Fellow in History, Lumen Center; Distinguished Professor of History, Messiah University MAGGIE CAPRA - Visiting Instructor in American History, Beloit College DAN HUMMEL - Director of the Lumen Center; Honorary Research Fellow, University of Wisconsin-Madison This podcast is brought to you by the Lumen Center and STUDIO, both initiatives of the SL Brown Foundation.  Find out more about our work: slbf.org/lumen-centerslbf.org/studioProduced by Daniel Johnson and Dave Conour Edited by Dave Conour

    1h 17m

  3. MAY 7

    Defining the American Evangelical Movement: Spirituality and Practice

    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. Conversion is the beginning, not the destination. So what happens next? What does it actually look like to live the Christian life — to become holy, to grow in faith, to be transformed from the inside out? To get at that, the hosts dive into a fascinating 19th-century story: the meteoric rise — and spectacular fall — of Robert Piersall Smith and Hannah Whitall Smith, a husband-and-wife duo from Pennsylvania who became transatlantic religious celebrities in the 1870s by promoting what they called the Higher Christian Life. Their story takes us from an elegant estate in Hampshire, England to the inaugural Keswick Convention, from packed revival halls in Paris and Berlin to a private room, a locked door, and the scandal that would end Robert's ministry overnight. Hannah's story is even more interesting than her husband's. A Quaker by background who has been called both an "orthodox heretic" and a "rational mystic," she became one of the most widely-read religious writers of the 19th century. Her book, The Christian Secret of a Happy Life (1875), became an international bestseller — and its influence reaches all the way to Sarah Young's Jesus Calling, the best-selling nonfiction book of the 21st century. The Smiths' ideas outlasted their reputations by more than a century. But this episode is about much more than one couple. Using the Smiths as a lens, John Fea, Dan Hummel, and Maggie Capra open up a series of genuinely contested questions about American evangelicalism: What is the real relationship between the Calvinist and Wesleyan traditions? The dominant historiography traces evangelicalism through Reformed theology — Princeton, Warfield, Machen — but historians like Donald Dayton argue that the Wesleyan holiness movement has been systematically underweighted. What role have women played in evangelical life and leadership? The holiness movement created more room for women teachers than most evangelical traditions — not because it was egalitarian, but because charisma and gifts were not, in Wesleyan theology, coded by gender. Yet nearly all these women ministered in the shadow of their husbands. When Robert's scandal broke, Hannah's platform collapsed with it. Why does evangelicalism seem so susceptible to scandal? The hosts identify the structural vulnerabilities: the celebrity preacher model, itinerant ministry far from local accountability, high moral rhetoric, and deep decentralization. And perhaps most intriguingly: how did evangelical spirituality shade into what we now call the self-help genre? Dan Hummel traces the surprising overlap between Higher Life teaching and the positive thought tradition running from Emerson through Dale Carnegie to Oprah. This is a rich, wide-ranging conversation that reshapes how you might think about evangelical history — and about the millions of people who, across nearly two centuries, have been trying to figure out what it means, in practice, to live a holy life. Send us Fan Mail Hosts: JOHN FEA - Visiting Fellow in History, Lumen Center; Distinguished Professor of History, Messiah University MAGGIE CAPRA - Visiting Instructor in American History, Beloit College DAN HUMMEL - Director of the Lumen Center; Honorary Research Fellow, University of Wisconsin-Madison This podcast is brought to you by the Lumen Center and STUDIO, both initiatives of the SL Brown Foundation.  Find out more about our work: slbf.org/lumen-centerslbf.org/studioProduced by Daniel Johnson and Dave Conour Edited by Dave Conour

    1h 10m

  4. APR 30

    Defining the American Evangelical Movement: Born Again

    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, saddles his horse, and races twelve miles through a cloud of dust kicked up by thousands of others doing the same. What he experiences that day — and over the two years that follow — opens a window into one of the most important and contested movements in American history: evangelicalism. Hosts John Fea, Dan Hummel, and Maggie Capra use Cole’s diary as a launching point for exploring the deceptively simple question at the heart of this series: What is an evangelical? Topics Covered The story of Nathan Cole and his encounter with George Whitefield at Middletown, CT (1740)George Whitefield as the first true celebrity of British AmericaThe Bebbington Quadrilateral — the four theological markers historians use to define evangelicalism: Conversionism, Biblicism, Crucicentrism, and ActivismWhy the “New Birth” is the most distinctive feature of evangelical identityThe 1976 Gallup poll and Jimmy Carter’s influence on how “born again” entered mainstream American vocabularyThe trans-denominational character of early evangelicalism — and why Whitefield crossed church lines freelyThe First Great Awakening as a largely Reformed/Calvinist phenomenon, and the difference between “New Lights” and “Old Lights”Whitefield’s theatrical preaching style and the role of celebrity in evangelicalism, then and nowThe “parachurch” dimension of evangelicalism — how much of the action happens outside formal church structuresThe question of whether the First Great Awakening contributed to the American Revolution (Alan Heimert’s 1966 thesis and its critics)Nathan Hatch’s The Democratization of American Christianity and evangelicalism’s relationship to popular democracyHow historians have debated whether evangelicalism is the “center” of American religious historyKey People & Works Mentioned Nathan Cole — Connecticut farmer; his diary is held at the Connecticut Historical Society in HartfordGeorge Whitefield — Anglican itinerant preacher; subject of Harry Stout’s biography The Divine DramatistJonathan Edwards — Theologian, pastor at Northampton, MAGilbert Tennant — New Jersey revivalist preacher, trained at the Log CollegeDavid Bebbington — Evangelicalism in Modern Britain: A History from the 1730s to the 1980s (Taylor & Francis, 1988)D. Bruce Hindmarsh — The Evangelical Conversion Narrative: Spiritual Autobiography in Early Modern England (Oxford University Press, 2005)Mark Noll — The Rise of Evangelicalism: The Age of Edwards, Whitefield and the Wesleys (IVP Academic, 2003)Nathan Hatch — The Democratization of American Christianity (Yale University Press, 1989)Alan Heimert — Religion and the American Mind: From the Great Awakening to the Revolution (Harvard University Press, 1966)Harry Stout — The Divine Dramatist: George Whitefield and the Rise of Modern Evangelicalism (Wm. B. Eerdmans, 1991)Frank Lambert — Pedlar in Divinity: George Whitefield and the Transatlantic Revivals, 1737–1770 (Princeton University Press, 1993)John Butler — Historian and critic of evangelical-centered narrativesHenry May — “The Recovery of American Religious History” (1964, American Historical Review)Send us Fan Mail Hosts: JOHN FEA - Visiting Fellow in History, Lumen Center; Distinguished Professor of History, Messiah University MAGGIE CAPRA - Visiting Instructor in American History, Beloit College DAN HUMMEL - Director of the Lumen Center; Honorary Research Fellow, University of Wisconsin-Madison This podcast is brought to you by the Lumen Center and STUDIO, both initiatives of the SL Brown Foundation.  Find out more about our work: slbf.org/lumen-centerslbf.org/studioProduced by Daniel Johnson and Dave Conour Edited by Dave Conour

    1h 6m

  5. TRAILER

    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 cultural and political conflicts of the 21st, each episode is a conversation grounded in the historical research of its hosts, 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. This twelve-episode podcast mini-series offers a historical viewpoint of American evangelicals on issues like race, economics, politics, celebrity, science, and many more. In the end, we try to define what an American evangelical is and how we got here. HOSTS JOHN FEA is a historian who taught for 23 years at Messiah College in central Pennsylvania, where he was Professor of American History. He is currently a Visiting Fellow in History at the Lumen Center, an initiative of the SL Brown Foundation. He is the author of multiple books on American religion and politics, including Was America Founded as a Christian Nation? and Believe Me: The Evangelical Road to Donald Trump. John is a widely cited voice on the history of evangelicalism and its relationship to American politics, and his work has appeared in publications ranging from The Washington Post to Christianity Today. DAN HUMMEL is the Director of the Lumen Center, an initiative of the SL Brown Foundation. He's a historian of American religion, focusing on theology, foreign relations, and evangelical culture. He is the author of Covenant Brothers: Evangelicals, Jews, and U.S.-Israeli Relations and The Rise and Fall of Dispensationalism: How the Evangelical Battle over the End Times Shaped a Nation. Dan brings to the podcast a particular interest in the intellectual and theological life of evangelicals and their international connections. MAGGIE CAPRA is a visiting instructor in American history at Beloit College. Her research centers on the theological dynamics within evangelical and holiness communities, with a particular focus on questions of marriage, family, divorce, and gender in the 20th century. Her work recovers the stories of lesser-known figures whose lives illuminate the intellectual and spiritual history of the movement — including those marginalized or overlooked in the standard historical record. Maggie brings to the podcast a talent for narrative history and a commitment to telling the full complexity of the evangelical story. Send us Fan Mail Hosts: JOHN FEA - Visiting Fellow in History, Lumen Center; Distinguished Professor of History, Messiah University MAGGIE CAPRA - Visiting Instructor in American History, Beloit College DAN HUMMEL - Director of the Lumen Center; Honorary Research Fellow, University of Wisconsin-Madison This podcast is brought to you by the Lumen Center and STUDIO, both initiatives of the SL Brown Foundation.  Find out more about our work: slbf.org/lumen-centerslbf.org/studioProduced by Daniel Johnson and Dave Conour Edited by Dave Conour

    2 min

Trailer

Ratings & Reviews

4.7
out of 5
3 Ratings

About

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.

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