HISTORY
randall balmer is John Phillips Professor in Religion and Chair of the Department of Religion at Dartmouth College.
Evangelicalism in America Randall Balmer
Evangelicalism has left its indelible mark on American history, politics, CONTENTS 1. An Altogether Conservative Spirit 2. Turning West 3. Casting Aside the Ballast of History and Tradition 4. An End to Unjust Inequality in the World 5. Thy Kingdom Come 6. A Pentecost of Politics 7. A Loftier Position 8. Re-create the Nation 9. His Own Received Him Not 10. Keep the Faith and Go the Distance 11. Dead Stones
and culture. It is also true that currents of American populism and politics have shaped the nature and character of evangelicalism. This story of evangelicalism in America is thus riddled with paradox. Despite the fact that evangelicals, perhaps more than any other religious group, have benefited from the First Amendment and the separation of church and state, several prominent evangelical leaders over the past half century have tried to abrogate the establishment clause of the First Amendment. And despite evangelicalism’s legacy of concern for the poor, for women, and for minorities, some contemporary evangelicals have repudiated their own heritage of compassion and sacrifice stemming from Jesus’ command to love the least of these. In Evangelicalism in America Randall Balmer chronicles the history of evangelicalism—its origins and development as well as its diversity and contradictions. Within this lineage Balmer explores the social
ISBN 978-1-4813-0597-6 $24.95 215 pages 5.5 x 8.5 | Cloth Christian Church/History October 1, 2016
varieties and political implications of evangelicalism’s inception as well as its present and paradoxical relationship with American culture and politics. Balmer debunks some of the cherished myths surrounding this distinctly American movement while also prophetically speaking about its future contributions to American life.
“Randall Balmer is both one of our nation’s best historians of American evangelicalism and an important advocate for the recovery of a long and profound tradition of progressive, even radical, social-justice and human-dignity evangelicalism. This book offers vintage Balmer on both fronts.” —David P. Gushee, Distinguished University Professor of Christian Ethics, Mercer University
“Randall Balmer takes us on a lively journey through the past three centuries of American evangelicalism. In the process, and as he has been doing for decades, Balmer winsomely and compellingly calls on evangelicals to remember their storied history as ‘agents for change’ in behalf of ‘those on the margins.’” —William Vance Trollinger Jr., co-author of Righting America at the Creation Museum
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