The Message Is Seen

Chapter 4 moves from France to England, where the growth of fervent evangelical Protestantism and a massive publishing industry resulted in an exponential increase in the reproduction and adaptation of Doré’s imagery. At the heart of this chapter are the monumental religious works produced for the Doré Gallery, established in London in 1868. By relying on consistent compositional structure and highly legible narratives, Doré’s biblical paintings cohere to evangelical principles and functioned counterdiscursively to the visual cultures of spectacle that shaped much of Victorian experience. While French audiences derided Doré’s efforts at painting, British viewers eagerly consumed these works, which were offered in the heart of the commercial art district and provided wholesome entertainment that counterbalanced the more suspect spectacles of nearby neighborhoods. This was a context in which commercialism and religious experience overlapped and which became, as one commentator put it, “where the godly take their children.”

Louisa Mariah Woosely

Chapter 5 describes the life and evangelist work of Louisa Woosley. Following an exploration of The Great Awakening, Evangelical Protestantism, and religious institutionalism, this chapter places Woosley within the context of the female preaching debate and the question of whether women should have the authority to preach. Although ordained by the Cumberland Presbyterian Church, Woosely continued to face institutional resistance throughout her life. This chapter argues that her use of the authority of scripture and biblical interpretation aided her in constructing her call narrative and claiming her call to preach. Finally, this chapter analyzes her prophetic rhetoric as recorded in Shall Women Preach? Or, The Question Answered as evidence of the definitive affirmation she utilized in presenting a compelling case for the ordination of women.

Advancing the Evangelical Mind: Melvin Grove Kyle, J. Gresham Machen, and the League of Evangelical Students

This article seeks to analyze Melvin Grove Kyle and the growth of the League of Evangelical Students (LES) founded by J. Gresham Machen and Princeton Seminary students in 1925. Both Kyle and Machen were scholarly leaders in the LES and served on the organization’s board together. This paper will establish the importance of Melvin Grove Kyle as a leading evangelical scholar and biblical archaeologist. It will also explain the origins and growth of the LES and how various Presbyterians influenced the organization and sought to advance a broader evangelical Protestant intellectual life in the difficult period of the 1920s and 1930s. Machen’s role will be highlighted, and the thinking of various evangelical scholars associated with the LES will be analyzed. This study is important because it helps us grasp how evangelical Protestantism rehabilitated and advanced itself intellectually in a period when the movement faced educational marginalization in the wider culture.

The way worship works in mission: Proposing an alternative to the standard account

This article examines the relationship of worship to mission in the life of the church. How does worship shape the Christian for mission and the work of God’s justice in the world? The article sketches what the author contends to be “the standard account” of how worship works within North American mainstream evangelical Protestantism, drawing on several authors who write on spiritual formation, liturgy, and cultural engagement. Exemplary of this standard account is the influential theology of church and culture found within neo-Calvinism. By parsing the social architecture of these authors, this article reveals its strengths and weaknesses—an analysis that can be applied more widely to Protestantism as a whole in North America. Then, the article moves on to propose an alternative account for the relationship of worship to mission that overcomes the weaknesses of the standard account. This alternative approach is labeled “faithful presence,” an approach which has affinities with an Anabaptist approach to worship and mission.

Introduction

The introduction sketches out the theological, diplomatic, and political commitments of ecumenical and evangelical Protestantism in twentieth century America. It likewise discusses the twentieth-century origins of Christian nationalism and Christian globalism in American Protestant thought, surveying in particular how the two world wars and onset of the Cold War both activated and refined these competing theologies of global engagement. Beyond the American context, it outlines the German Protestant pushback to American efforts to reconstruct Germany on an American basis. Wrestling with the legacy of their own nationalist theologies, German Protestants drew on the devastation of the Second World War to outline a new “third way” theology that positioned Protestant churches as global mediators within the intense ideological landscape of the Cold War. When a growing number of American Protestants found themselves converted to this line of thought, it became clear that their efforts to remake Europe had in fact begun to remake them.

In Search of Ancient Roots. The Christian past and the evangelical identity crisis

SummaryIn view of the fact that some North-American evangelical theologians have converted to supposedly more traditional Christian churches, Stewart calls on evangelical Christians to rediscover their historical roots and to overcome the historical oblivion. He proclaims: ‘Evangelical Protestantism is not the problem; evangelical Protestantism that has severed its roots in early Christianity is a problem.’RésuméConstatant que bien des théologiens évangéliques nordaméricains se tournent vers des Églises chrétiennes soidisant plus traditionnelles, à cause de leurs doutes sur l’identité évangélique, Stewart appelle les chrétiens évangéliques à redécouvrir leurs racines. Il soutient la thèse selon laquelle « le protestantisme évangélique n’est pas le problème ; le vrai problème réside dans le fait que le protestantisme évangélique a rompu avec le christianisme primitif ».ZusammenfassungAngesichts von Konversionen nordamerikanischer Evangelikaler zu vermeintlich traditionsreicheren christlichen Kirchen sowie von Zweifeln an der evangelikalen Identität zeigt Stewart hier facettenreich das Verhältnis des Evangelikalismus zur, vor allem frühchristlichen, Geschichte auf. Er fordert die Evangelikalen dazu auf, die eigene Geschichtsvergessenheit zu überwinden.

The Challenges for an American Greek Orthodoxy

This chapter draws attention to Ligonier, a small town in western Pennsylvania with a population of about fifteen hundred that served as an unlikely site for where the future of Greek Orthodoxy in America would be decided. It describes Ligonier as a home to the Antiochian Village and Conference Center, which is administered by the Antiochian Orthodox Christian Archdiocese of America. The chapter discusses the Antiochian Church, which had begun its existence in America under the auspices of the Russian Orthodox Church and had suffered internal divisions similar to those that Greek Orthodoxy faced in the 1920s. It investigates how the Antiochian Church was unified under the jurisdiction of the Greek Orthodox Church of Antioch based in Damascus, Syria. It also highlights the Arab Orthodox immigrants that were members of the Antiochian Church and explains how they admitted a number of converts from evangelical Protestantism in the 1980s.

A Double Whammy for the History of Evangelical Protestantism

Most histories fail to convincingly explain why 81 percent of American white evangelical voters supported Trump in the 2016 election. Many scholars, like political pundits, hold an idealized vision of the evangelical past, which leads them to assume that “real” evangelicals are actually not so enthusiastic about the deeply anti-intellectual, frankly authoritarian, materialistic, and sexually promiscuous media personality who won the White House. The history of evangelical thought and action after all includes many examples of sensible, humane, and intellectually creative work. How could such a wholesome religious tradition as evangelical Protestantism possibly share responsibility for the political success of Donald Trump?