Further Reading and Research

General works on Christianity and evangelicalism in North America:

  • Brekus, Catherine A. and W. Clark Gilpin, eds. American Christianities: A History of Dominance and Diversity (North Carolina, 2011).
  • Butler, John, Grant Wacker and Randall Balmer. Religion in American Life: A Short History (Oxford, 2008).
  • Finke, Roger and Rodney Starke. The Churching of America, 1776-1990: Winners and Losers in Our Religious Economy (Rutgers, 1992).
  • Larsen, Timothy, ed. Biographical Dictionary of Evangelicalism (InterVarsity, 2003).
  • Noll, Mark A. A History of Christianity in the United States and Canada (Eerdmans, 1992).
  • Sweeney, Douglas A.  The American Evangelical Story: A History of the Movement (Baker, 2005). 

The origins and growth of evangelicalism in 18th and early 19th-century America, and studies of key figures in this period:

  • Hambrick-Stowe, Charles. Charles G. Finney and the Spirit of American Evangelicalism (Eerdmans, 1996).
  • Hatch, Nathan O. The Democratization of American Christianity (Yale, 1989).
  • Heyrman, Christine Leigh. Southern Cross: The Beginnings of the Bible Belt (Knopf, 1997).
  • Kidd, Thomas. The Great Awakening: The Roots of Christianity in Colonial America (Yale, 2008).
  • Marsden, George M. Jonathan Edwards: A Life (Yale, 2003).
  • Noll, Mark A. America’s God: From Jonathan Edwards to Abraham Lincoln (Oxford, 2002)
  • _____. The Rise of Evangelicalism: The Age of Edwards, Whitefield and the Wesleys (InterVarsity, 2003).
  • Raboteau, Albert. Slave Religion: The “Invisible Institution” in the Antebellum South (Oxford, 1978).
  • Smith, Timothy S. Revivalism & Social Reform: American Protestantism on the Eve of the Civil War (Harper & Bro., 1957).
  • Stout, Harry S. The Divine Dramatist: George Whitefield and the Rise of Modern Evangelicalism (Eerdmans, 1992).
  • Wolffe, John. The Expansion of Evangelicalism (InterVarsity, 2007).

Evangelicalism and the American religious scene in the period from the Civil War to the First World War:

  • Bebbington, David W. The Dominance of Evangelicalism: The Age of Spurgeon and Moody (InterVarsity, 2005).
  • Blumhofer, Edith. Her Heart Can See: The Life and Hymns of Fanny J. Crosby (Eerdmans, 2005).
  • Dorsett, Lyle. Billy Sunday and the Redemption of Urban America (Eerdmans, 1991).
  • Findlay, James R. Dwight L. Moody, American Evangelist: 1838-1899 (Chicago, 1969).
  • Frank, Douglas. Less Than Conquerors: How Evangelicals Entered the Twentieth Century (Eerdmans, 1986).
  • Hutchison, William R. The Modernist Impulse in American Protestantism (Harvard, 1976).
  • Montgomery, William E. Under Their Own Vine and Fig Tree: The African-American Church in the South, 1865-1900 (LSU, 1993).
  • Moore, James R. The Post-Darwinian Controversies: A Study in the Protestant Struggle to Come to Terms With Darwin in Great Britain and America, 1870-1900 (Cambridge, 1979).
  • Ownby, Ted. Subduing Satan: Religion, Recreation, and Manhood in the Rural South, 1865-1920 (North Carolina, 1990).

The origins and nature of the fundamentalist movement, as well as some of its major personages:

  • Bendroth, Margaret Lamberts. Fundamentalism and Gender, 1875 to the Present (Yale 1993).
  • Carpenter, Joel A. Revive Us Again: The Reawaening of American Fundamentalism: 1925-1950 (Oxford, 1997).
  • Hankins, Barry. Jesus and Gin: Evangelicalism, the Roaring Twenties and Today’s Culture Wars (Palgrave Macmillan, 2010).
  • Harris, Harriet. Fundamentalism and Evangelicals (Oxford, 1998).
  • Hart, D.G. Defending the Faith: J. Gresham Machen and the Crisis of Conservative Protestantism in America (Johns Hopkins, 1994).
  • Larson, Edward J. Summer For the God’s: The Scopes Trial and America’s Continuing Debate Over Science and Religion (Harvard, 1997).
  • Marsden, George M. Fundamentalism and American Culture: The Shaping of Twentieth-Century Evangelicalism, 1870-1925, Second ed. (Oxford, 2006).
  • Russell, C. Allyn. Voices of American Fundamentalism: Seven Biographical Studies (Westminster, 1976).
  • Trollinger, William Vance, Jr. God’s Empire: William Bell Riley and Midwestern Fundamentalism (Wisconsin, 1990).

The rise of ‘evangelicalism’ and the period since World War II:

  • Ammerman, Nancy. Baptist Battles: Social Change and Religious Conflict in the Southern Baptist Convention (Rutgers, 1990).
  • Balmer, Randall. Mine Eyes Have Seen the Glory: A Journey Into the Evangelical Subculture in America, Fourth Edition (Oxford, 2006).
  • Colson, Charles with Richard John Neuhaus, eds. Evangelicals and Catholics Together: Toward a Common Mission (Word, 1995).
  • Dochuk, Darren J. From Bible Belt to Sunbelt: Plain-Folk Religion, Grassroots Politics, and the Rise of Evangelical Conservatism (W.W. Norton, 2011).
  • Graham, Billy. Just As I Am: The Autobiography (HarperCollins, 1997).
  • Henry, Carl F. H. The Uneasy Conscience of Modern Fundamentalism (Eerdmans, 1946).
  • Lindsell, Harold. The Battle For the Bible (Zondervan, 1976).
  • Martin, William. A Prophet With Honor: The Billy Graham Story (William Morrow, 1991).
  • Marsden, George. Reforming Fundamentalism: Fuller Seminary and the New Evangelicalism (Eerdmans, 1987).
  • McGrath, Alister. Evangelicalism and the Future of Christianity (InterVarsity, 1995).
  • Noll, Mark A. The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind (Eerdmans, 1994).
  • Turner, John G. Bill Bright and Campus Crusade for Christ: The Renewal of Evangelicalism in Postwar America. (University of North Carolina Press, 2008).

Aspects of the post-war separatistic fundamentalist movement:

  • Dalhouse, Mark Taylor. An Island in the Lake of Fire: Bob Jones University, Fundamentalism & The Separatist Movement (Georgia, 1996).
  • Dollar, George W. A History of Fundamentalism in America (Bob Jones, 1973).
  • Himes, Andrew. The Sword of the Lord: The Roots of Fundamentalism in an American Family (Chiara, 2010).

The origins, development and spread of the Pentecostal and Charismatic movements:

  • Anderson, Robert Mapes. Vision of the Disinherited: The Making of American Pentecostalism (Oxford, 1979).
  • Blumhofer, Edith W. Restoring the Faith: The Assemblies of God, Pentecostalism, and American Culture (Illinois, 1993).
  • _____. Aimee Semple McPherson: Everybody’s Sister (Eerdmans, 1992).
  • Burgess, Stanley M., Gary B. McGee, and Patrick H. Alexander, eds. Dictionary of Pentecostal and Charismatic Movements. (Zondervan, 1988).
  • DiSabatino, David. The Jesus People Movement: An Annotated Bibliography and General Resource (Greenwood, 1999).
  • Harrell, David Edwin. All Things Are Possible: The Healing and Charismatic Revivals in Modern America (Indiana, 1975).
  • _____. Oral Roberts: An American Life (Indiana, 1985).
  • Jacobsen, Douglas G. Thinking in the Spirit: Theologies of the Early Pentecostal Movement (Indiana University, 2003).
  • Martin, David. Pentecostalism: The World Their Parish (Willey-Blackwell, 2008).
  • Miller, Donald. Reinventing American Protestantism: Christianity and the New Millennium (California, 1997).
  • Synan, Vinson. The Holiness-Pentecostal Movement in the United States (Eerdmans, 1971).
  • Wacker, Grant. Heaven Below: Early Pentecostals and American Culture (Harvard, 2001).

Recent evolution of evangelicals’ place within American culture, involvement in politics, and a sampling of evangelical political and cultural analysis:

  • Benson, Bruce Ellis and Peter G. Heltzel, eds. Evangelicals and Empire: Christian Alternative to the Political Status Quo (Brazos, 2008).
  • Brint, Steve and Jean Reith Schroedel, eds. Evangelicals and Democracy in America, 2 vols. (Russell Sage, 2009).
  • Bruce, Steven. The Rise and Fall of the New Christian Right: Conservative Politics in America, 1978-1988. (Oxford, 1988).
  • Colson, Charles W. God and Government, Revised ed. (Zondervan, 2007).
  • Hatfield, Mark. Between a Rock and a Hard Place (Word, 1976).
  • Henry, Paul B. Politics For Evangelicals (Judson, 1974).
  • Hunter, James Davison. Culture Wars: The Struggle to Define America (Basic Books, 1991).
  • Lienesch, Michael. Redeeming America: Piety & Politics in the New Christian Right (North Carolina, 1993).
  • Lindsay, Michael. Faith in the Halls of Power: How Evangelicals Joined the American Elite (Oxford, 2007).
  • Reed, Ralph. Active Faith: How Christians Are Changing the Soul of American Politics (Free Press, 1996).
  • Schaeffer, Francis A. A Christian Manifesto (Crossway, 1981).
  • Sider, Ronald J. Rich Christians in an Age of Hunger: Moving From Affluence to Generosity, Fifth Edition (Thomas Nelson, 2005). 
  • Smith, Christian. Christian America? What Evangelicals Really Want (California, 2000).
  • Wallis, Jim. Agenda for Biblical People (Harper & Row, 1976).
  • _____. God’s Politics: Why the Right Gets It Wrong and the Left Doesn’t Get It (HarperOne, 2006).

Contemporary sociological data on evangelicals:

There are any number of articles and various compilations of survey data that have looked into various dimensions of this issue. For a general overview of questions about numbers, demographics, and the relationship to evangelicals’ political involvement and preferences, see the following:

  • Green, John, Lyman Kellstedt, and Corwin Smidt. Religion and the Culture Wars: Dispatches From the Front (Rowman & Littlefield, 1996).
  • Emerson, Michael O. and Christian Smith. Divided by Faith: Evangelical Religion and the Problem of Race in America (Oxford, 2000).
  • Gallagher, Sally K. Evangelical Identity & Gendered Family Life (Rutgers University Press, 2003).
  • Lindsay, D. Michael.  Faith in the Halls of Power: How Evangelicals Joined the American Elite (Oxford, 2007). 
  • Smith, Christian. American Evangelicalism: Embattled and Thriving (Chicago, 1998).
  • Smith, Christian and Michael O. Emerson. Passing the Plate: Why American Christians Don’t Give Away More Money (Oxford, 2008).
  • Wuthnow, Robert. The Restructuring of American Religion: Society and Faith Since World War II (Princeton, 1988).

Evangelicals’ use of the media to reach the masses:

  • Hadden, Jeffrey K. and Anson Shupe. Televangelism: Power & Politics On God’s Frontier (Henry Holt, 1988).
  • Hangen, Tona J. Redeeming the Dial: Radio, Religion and Popular Culture in America (North Carolina, 2001).
  • Hendershot, Heather. Shaking the World for Jesus: Media and Conservative Evangelical Culture (Chicago, 2004).
  • Howard, Jay R. and John M. Streck. Apostles of Rock: The Splintered World of Contemporary Christian Music (Kentucky, 1999).
  • Lee, Shayne and Phillip Luke Sinitiere.  Holy Mavericks: Evangelical Innovators and the Spiritual Marketplace (NYU, 2009). 
  • Schultze, Quentin J., ed. American Evangelicals and the Mass Media (Zondervan, 1990).
  • _____. Televangelism and American Culture: The Business of Popular Religion (Baker, 1991).
  • Sweet, Leonard I., ed. Communication and Change in American Religious History (Eerdmans, 1993).
  • Ward, Mark, Sr. Air of Salvation: The Story of Christian Broadcasting [National Religious Broadcasters] (Baker, 1994).
  • Wosh, Peter J. Spreading the Word: The Bible Business in Nineteeth-Century America (Cornell, 1994).

Evangelical views on prophecy and the end times:

  • Boyer, Paul. When Time Shall Be No More: Prophecy Belief in American Culture (Harvard, 1992).
  • Burge, Gary. Jesus and the Land: The New Testament Challenge to “Holy Land” Theology (Baker, 2010).
  • Davis, John Jefferson. Christ’s Victorious Kingdom: Postmillennialism Reconsidered (Baker Books, 1986).
  • Gaustad, Edwin S., ed. The Rise of Adventism: Religion and Society in Mid- Nineteenth-Century America (Harper & Row, 1974).
  • Ladd, George Eldon. The Blessed Hope (Eerdmans, 1956).
  • Lindsey, Hal. The Late, Great Planet Earth (Zondervan, 1970).
  • Ryrie, Charles C. Dispensationalism (Moody Press, 1996).
  • Weber, Timothy P. On the Road to Armageddon: How Evangelicals Became Israel’s Best Friend (Baker, 2004). 
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