Defining the American Evangelical Movement: Born Again (Episode 1)

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 CoveredThe 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 MentionedNathan 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 MailHosts:JOHN FEA - Visiting Fellow in History, Lumen Center; Distinguished Professor of History, Messiah UniversityMAGGIE CAPRA - Visiting Instructor in American History, Beloit CollegeDAN HUMMEL - Director of the Lumen Center; Honorary Research Fellow, University of Wisconsin-MadisonThis 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 ConourEdited by Dave Conour