American Evangelicals - A History Podcast

This special bonus episode closes out Season One of American Evangelicals: A History Podcast by sharing the complete, unedited interviews behind Episode 4, “What Is an Evangelical?” Only excerpts of these conversations made it into the original episode — here, listeners get both interviews in full.First up is Cory Marsh, Professor of New Testament at Southern California Seminary, who argues that the Bebbington Quadrilateral, while valuable, is theologically incomplete without local church fellowship and theological education — what he calls the “crucial X factor” of authentic evangelical identity. Marsh also lays out his own five-fundamentals model from his book Recovering a Vintage Faith, and delivers a pointed critique of Christian celebrity culture.Second is Vincent Bacote, Professor of Theology and Director of the Center for Applied Christian Ethics at Wheaton College, who affirms the quadrilateral as a kind of “Bible-centric ecumenism” while pressing the case — following historian Timothy Larsen — for adding a fifth mark centered on the Holy Spirit. Bacote closes with a searching reflection on Black evangelicalism and how the movement's own convictions call it toward a fuller, more consistent ethic.Together, the two conversations offer a fuller picture of the theological debate that ran underneath Episode 4 — two scholars, considerable common ground, and real differences in emphasis.OUR GUESTSCory Marsh, Th.M., Ph.D., is Professor of New Testament and Director of the ThM program at Southern California Seminary, where he also directs SCS Press. He earned his Ph.D. in Biblical Theology at Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary under Andreas Köstenberger. Marsh is co-founder and host of The Pastor-Scholar Podcast and Scholar in Residence at Revolve Bible Church in San Juan Capistrano, CA. He is the author of Recovering a Vintage Faith: Five Fundamentals of Evangelical Identity (Mentor, 2026), among other works.Vincent Bacote, Ph.D., is Professor of Theology and Director of the Center for Applied Christian Ethics at Wheaton College, where he has taught since 2000. He earned his Ph.D. in Theological and Religious Studies at Drew University. Bacote is the author of Reckoning with Race and Performing the Good News: In Search of a Better Evangelical Theology (Brill, 2020), The Political Disciple: A Theology of Public Life (2015), and The Spirit in Public Theology: Appropriating the Legacy of Abraham Kuyper (Baker Academic, 2005).BOOKS MENTIONEDDavid Bebbington, Evangelicalism in Modern Britain: A History from the 1730s to the 1980s (Unwin Hyman / Routledge, 1989)Cory Marsh, Recovering a Vintage Faith: Five Fundamentals of Evangelical Identity (Mentor, 2026)Vincent Bacote, Reckoning with Race and Performing the Good News: In Search of a Better Evangelical Theology (Brill, 2020)Vincent Bacote, The Spirit in Public Theology: Appropriating the Legacy of Abraham Kuyper (Baker Academic, 2005)Katelyn Beaty, Celebrities for Jesus: How Personas, Platforms, and Profits Are Hurting the Church (Brazos Press, 2022)Thomas Kidd, Who Is an Evangelical? The History of a Movement in Crisis (Yale University Press, 2019)Carl F. H. Henry, The Uneasy Conscience of Modern Fundamentalism (Eerdmans, 1947)Timothy Larsen & Daniel J. Treier, eds PEOPLE MENTIONEDDavid Bebbington — historian; originator of the Bebbington QuadrilateralTimothy Larsen — historian at Wheaton College; proposed a fifth, pneumatological mark (the “Larsen Pentagon”)Thomas Kidd — historian; also proposed adding the Holy Spirit to definitions of evangelicalismKatelyn Beaty — author of Celebrities for Jesus; source of Marsh's “power without proximity” definition of celebrityCarl F. H. Henry — theologian; author of The Uneasy Conscience of Modern Fundamentalism, referenced in Bacote's discussion of the gospel's social entailmentsJohn Perkins — civil rights leader and evangelical minister, referenced by BacoteSam Storms — theologian cited by Bacote as an example of continuationist, charismatic evangelicalismAndreas Köstenberger — Marsh's doctoral supervisor at Midwestern Baptist Theological SeminaryJohn Wycliffe — 14th-century reformer, cited by Marsh on the supremacy of Scripture🔗 LINK to Episode Fourhttps://www.buzzsprout.com/2610661/episodes/19217337Send 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 

Episode 8 of American Evangelicals only had room for excerpts of our conversation with historian of science Ted Davis. This bonus episode gives you the entire, unedited interview. Davis, a leading historian of science and religion, traces the relationship between American Christianity and scientific thought from the early republic through the Scopes trial and into the twenty-first century — challenging some common assumptions about evangelicals and science along the way. If you've already heard our episode on evangelicals and science, think of this as the director's cut: every story, historical detail, and insight that didn't make the final cut. Host John Fea conducted the full interview with Ted Davis. ABOUT OUR GUESTEdward B. “Ted” Davis is Professor Emeritus of the History of Science at Messiah University, where he was a longtime colleague of host John Fea, and a Fellow of the International Society for Science & Religion. He is co-editor, with Michael Hunter, of The Works of Robert Boyle. His most recent book, Protestant Modernist Pamphlets: Science and Religion in the Scopes Era (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2024), is a critical edition of ten rare pamphlets on science and religion published around the 1925 Scopes trial.PEOPLE, BOOKS & TERMS MENTIONEDFrancis Bacon — English philosopher; The Advancement of Learning (1605) articulated the “two books” framework of scripture and nature.Robert Boyle — 17th-century chemist; his The Christian Virtuoso (1690/91) argued science strengthens rather than threatens Christian faith.Cotton Mather — brought Enlightenment science to America; author of The Christian Philosopher (1721), modeled on Boyle.Samuel Miller — New York Presbyterian minister and later Princeton Seminary professor; A Brief Retrospect of the Eighteenth Century (c. 1803) attacked “infidel philosophy.”Asa Gray — Harvard botanist, correspondent of Charles Darwin, and traditional Christian who reviewed On the Origin of Species favorably in 1860.William Jennings Bryan — prosecutor in the 1925 Scopes trial; opposed evolution and, especially, theistic evolution.Vernon Kellogg — Stanford biologist and pacifist; Headquarters Nights (1917) linked evolution to German militarism and influenced Bryan.Bernard Ramm — Baptist theologian; The Christian View of Science and Scripture (1954) urged evangelicals to be open to science.John C. Whitcomb Jr. and Henry Morris — The Genesis Flood (1961), written partly in response to Ramm, launched the modern young-earth creationist movement.Francis Collins — geneticist who led the Human Genome Project to completion; prominent evangelical voice on faith and science.American Scientific Affiliation — an organization of evangelical scientists founded just before Pearl Harbor, which grew rapidly after World War II.Society of Catholic Scientists — founded by astrophysicist Stephen Barr as a Catholic counterpart to the American Scientific Affiliation.🔗 LINK to episode 8https://www.buzzsprout.com/2610661/episodes/19367017Send 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 

In the finale of Season One, John Fea, Dan Hummel, and Maggie Capra step out of their usual narrative format to reflect directly on the series and on the state of the field they study. They open by sharing what listener feedback has taught them about the value of a historian's “dispassionate” approach to a subject most people experience personally rather than academically.From there, the conversation turns to future casting — always, they admit, a risky exercise for historians. The hosts trace the demographic rise of religious “nones” and “nonverts,” debate whether “evangelical” and “evangelicalism” remain useful words, and revisit the Bebbington Quadrilateral, Timothy Smith's kaleidoscope theory, and the historiographical legacy of David Bebbington, George Marsden, Joel Carpenter, and Mark Noll.The back half of the episode moves through evangelicals and political power, the rise of dominionism and reconstructionist thought, the uncertain future of Christian higher education, and the migration of evangelical debate onto podcasts, Substack, and YouTube. They close with a shared case for why a historical — rather than theological or political — lens on evangelicalism still matters, closing out the season with thanks to listeners and a tribute to historian Gordon Wood, who died the week of recording.PEOPLE & BOOKS MENTIONEDStephen Bullivant, Nonverts: The Making of Ex-Christian America (Oxford University Press, 2022)Molly Worthen, Apostles of Reason: The Crisis of Authority in American Evangelicalism (Oxford University Press, 2013)Mark Noll, The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind (Eerdmans, 1994)A.J.A. Woods, The Cultural Marxism Conspiracy: Why the Right Blames the Frankfurt School for the Decline of the West (Verso, 2026)Henry F. May, “The Recovery of American Religious History,” American Historical Review 70 (October 1964)David Bebbington — historian; the “Bebbington Quadrilateral” framework for defining evangelicalismGeorge Marsden and Joel Carpenter — historians discussed their role in establishing evangelicalism as a coherent historiographical categoryNathan Hatch — historian referenced on the “democratization” of American ChristianityTimothy L. Smith — historian referenced for his “kaleidoscope theory” of evangelicalismVincent Bacote — theologian, Wheaton College, cited as an example of evangelical political-theology scholarship; the hosts recall him as a guest earlier in the season (Episode 4)R.J. Rushdoony — referenced in the discussion of Christian reconstructionismPaul Weyrich — referenced as a Christian-right organizer connected to the New Congress FoundationLyndon LaRouche — referenced in the discussion of the “cultural Marxism” conspiracy theory's originsTim Mackie — co-founder of The Bible Project, referenced on patron-funded models of Christian contentGavin Ortlund — pastor and YouTube creator, cited as an example of digital-first evangelical ministryGordon Wood — historian of the American Revolution, was remembered by the hosts following his death at 92 in June 2026🔗 LINK to our button formhttps://www.surveymonkey.com/r/AmerEvanPodButtonsSend 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 

It's easy to imagine American evangelicalism as a story that happens entirely inside the United States. In this episode, John Fea, Dan Hummel, and Maggie Capra push past that bubble to explore evangelicals' long, tangled relationship with the rest of the world.The episode opens with two stories drawn from recent scholarship. The first, from David Swartz's Facing West, complicates the founding myth of World Vision: American evangelist Bob Pierce is remembered as the organization's sole founder, but the humanitarian network he built on was already running under Korean pastor Kyung Chik Han. The second, from Philip Dow's Accidental Diplomats, follows Daniel Arap Moi from a ten-year-old convert at a Kenyan mission station to Kenya's second president, guided for decades by his missionary mentor and confidant, Earl Anderson.From there, the hosts trace how American evangelicals have understood missions, humanitarianism, and their own place in the world across two centuries: the shift from cultural superiority to contextualized missiology, the 1974 Lausanne Congress and its Global South critiques of Western evangelicalism, the astonishing 20th-century demographic shift of Christianity from the global North to the global South, and the increasingly contested question of what — if anything — the word "white" is still doing in front of "evangelical." They close by reckoning honestly with the missionary movement's mixed legacy: real colonial entanglements alongside real cross-cultural courage, and a complicated set of missionary heroes evangelicals still look to for inspiration.PEOPLE & TERMS MENTIONEDBob Pierce: Evangelist and founder of World Vision (1950), following a 1947 trip to China that inspired his humanitarian ministry.Kyung Chik Han: Korean pastor and refugee relief leader who built the orphanage and humanitarian network in Seoul that became the operational core of World Vision.Daniel Arap Moi: Kenya's second president (1978–2002), mentored in his youth by American missionary Earl Anderson.Earl Anderson: American missionary and government school inspector in colonial Kenya; longtime mentor and confidant to Daniel Arap Moi.René Padilla & Samuel Escobar: Latin American evangelical theologians whose critiques of Western missions at the 1974 Lausanne Congress challenged American evangelical assumptions.John Stott: British evangelical leader who helped mediate the global-north/global-south tensions at the Lausanne Congress.William Ernest Hocking: Harvard philosopher who chaired the 1932 “Re-Thinking Missions” laymen's inquiry, questioning the traditional conversion-focused model of missions.Bebbington's Quadrilateral: Historian David Bebbington's four-part definition of evangelicalism: conversionism, biblicism, crucicentrism, and activism.1040 Window: Cold War-era missions term for the band of the globe (10° to 40° north latitude) considered least reached by Christianity.Carl McIntire: Fundamentalist radio preacher associated with balloon-borne Bible airdrops into communist territory during the Cold War.Paul Hiebert: Missiologist (Fuller Theological Seminary, later Trinity Evangelical Divinity School) known for bringing anthropological method into evangelical missions training.Walter Kim: President of the National Association of Evangelicals, cited as an example of the organization's non-white leadership.New Apostolic Reformation: Term used to describe an influential, loosely organized network of independent charismatic and Pentecostal leaders.BOOKS MENTIONEDDavid R. Swartz, Facing West: American Evangelicals in an Age of World Christianity (Oxford University Press, 2020).Philip Dow, Accidental Diplomats: American Missionaries and the Cold War in Africa (William Carey Publishing, 2024).David P. King, God's Internationalists: World Vision and the Age of Evangelical Humanitarianism (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2019).David A. Hollinger, Protestants Abroad: How Missionaries Tried to Change the World but Changed America (Princeton University Press, 2017).Gina A. Zurlo, How Many Evangelicals in the World? A New Assessment from the World Christian Database, Review of Religious Research (open access).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 

For many evangelicals, no object is more central to faith and practice than the Bible—preached, memorized, carried, gifted, and treated as the ultimate authority. But how did it come to occupy that place, and what happens when readers of the same text reach opposite conclusions?In this episode, historians John Fea, Dan Hummel, and Maggie Capra trace the Bible across American evangelical history: from the founding of the American Bible Society in 1816 and its mission to put a Bible in every hand, through common-sense interpretation, study Bibles, and an enormous publishing and translation industry, to the political uses of Scripture, the slavery debates, and the 20th-century battles over biblical inerrancy.IN THIS EPISODE“The Bible is doing its work.” Two American Bible Society Record stories—a young Catholic convert named Mary and a college skeptic—frame the belief that Scripture, “without note or comment,” could convert readers on its own.Sola scriptura and a people of the book. Why a commitment to Scripture as supreme (or sole) authority made evangelicals Protestants—and shaped a distinctly anti-Catholic, anti-traditional posture.Common-sense reading and its tools. Concordances, cross-references, and the perspicuity of Scripture: “helps” that let lay readers interpret for themselves—while multiplying interpretations.Helps to study the Bible. Scofield (1909), Ryrie, MacArthur, and the commercial engine of Bible publishing—plus journaling Bibles, translations, and digital tools like Logos and YouVersion.Reverence for the object itself. The family altar, soldiers’ pocket Testaments, and the Museum of the Bible—the Bible as sacred artifact, not just text.Scripture, slavery, and politics. How the Bible was marshaled on both sides of slavery, woven into civil religion and nationalism, and invoked in times of war.The battle for the Bible. Higher criticism, neo-orthodoxy, Fuller Seminary, Harold Lindsell, the ICBI, and the inerrancy debates that reshaped evangelical identity—and the Southern Baptist Convention.BOOKS MENTIONEDThe Bible Cause: A History of the American Bible Society, by John Fea (Oxford University Press, 2016)America’s Book: The Rise and Decline of a Bible Civilization, 1794–1911, by Mark Noll (Oxford University Press, 2022)The Civil War as a Theological Crisis, by Mark Noll (University of North Carolina Press, 2006)The Battle for the Bible, by Harold Lindsell (Zondervan, 1976)Reforming Fundamentalism: Fuller Seminary and the New Evangelicalism, by George Marsden (Eerdmans, 1987)Evangelicals Incorporated: Books and the Business of Religion in America, by Daniel Vaca (Harvard University Press, 2019)PEOPLE MENTIONEDCyrus Scofield — author of the 1909 Scofield Reference Bible (Oxford), a landmark dispensationalist study Bible.Mark Noll — leading historian of American religion, cited on the Bible, slavery, and the Civil War.Harold Lindsell — editor of Christianity Today; his Battle for the Bible made inerrancy a litmus test.Carl F. H. Henry — founding editor of Christianity Today; author of the five-volume God, Revelation and Authority.Kenneth Kantzer — shaped Trinity Evangelical Divinity School as a counterweight to Fuller in the inerrancy debates.John Woodbridge — historian who critiqued the Rogers–McKim thesis on biblical authority.Donald Dayton — historian who challenged Lindsell’s framing of inerrancy.Eugene Peterson — translator of The Message, a single-author paraphrase of the Bible.Daniel Vaca — historian who argues evangelicalism is, in part, a commercial religion.Elias Boudinot, Francis Scott Key, John Jay — politically influential founders/supporters of the American Bible Society. Robert Lewis Dabney & James Henley Thornwell — Southern theologians who built biblical defenses of slavery.GET YOUR PODCAST BUTTONShttps://www.surveymonkey.com/r/AmerEvanPodButtonsSend 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 

When we tell the story of evangelicalism, we usually reach for famous pastors, theologians, and institutions. But what happens when we turn our attention to the women who taught, organized, wrote, fundraised, evangelized, and sustained evangelical life across generations? In this episode, hosts John Fea, Dan Hummel, and Maggie Capra are joined in the studio by historian Andrea Turpin for a wide-ranging conversation about women as co-creators of evangelicalism at every level.Beginning with the story of Welsh evangelist Jesse Penn-Lewis—who built a transatlantic preaching career through evangelical institutions even as those institutions remained led by men—the conversation explores how women shaped evangelical spirituality, education, missions, and ministry, often precisely because formal leadership roles were closed to them. Along the way the group examines the relationship between evangelicalism and feminism, the history of women’s education, the rise of women’s missionary organizations, and how historians are rethinking who belongs in the story of American evangelicalism. It’s a conversation about power, influence, faith, and why some of the most consequential figures in evangelical history have so often remained in the background.ABOUT OUR GUESTAndrea Turpin is a professor of history at Baylor University, specializing in women’s history, the history of education, and American religion. She is the author of a study of gender and the founding of American higher education, and is currently at work on a project on women in the fundamentalist–modernist controversy, focused on the era’s women’s missionary organizations. IN THIS EPISODEJesse Penn-Lewis and the paradox of a woman building a preaching career through male-led institutions—and why her central concerns were the Holy Spirit and spiritual warfare, not chiefly “women’s issues.”“Progressive” as a historical category: why 19th-century evangelicals often pushed furthest on women’s education—and what “progressive compared to the wider culture” does and doesn’t mean.Evangelical pragmatism and women’s education: Mary Lyon and Mount Holyoke, and the coeducational (and biracial) founding of Oberlin under Charles Finney.The waves of feminism, from the Seneca Falls Declaration of Sentiments through second- and third-wave feminism—and the surprisingly loose correlation between religious affiliation and support for suffrage.Teaching as women’s sanctioned space: Sunday school, Henrietta Mears, the “deputy husband” and Republican motherhood, and the long argument over 1 Timothy 2:12.Egalitarian vs. complementarian: how two categories hardened in the early 1990s, and Turpin’s case for a lost middle—“complementarity without hierarchy.”Women’s missionary organizations and church polity: how women held evangelism and social service together as the fundamentalist–modernist split tore them apart—and why polity determined whether anyone listened.Recovering hidden labor: Biddy Chambers and the making of My Utmost for His Highest, and a call for women in evangelicalism to donate their papers to the archives.PEOPLE, PLACES, and TERMSJesse Penn-Lewis — Welsh evangelist; author of The Magna Carta of Woman and War on the Saints.Mary Lyon (Mount Holyoke) and Charles Finney / Oberlin College.Phoebe Palmer, Hannah Whitall Smith, Henrietta Mears, Helen Barrett Montgomery, Biddy Chambers.Beverly LaHaye, Phyllis Schlafly, Elisabeth Elliot; the Equal Rights Amendment.Evangelical feminists: Nancy Hardesty, Letha Dawson Scanzoni, Sharon Gallagher.Laurel Thatcher Ulrich and the “deputy husband”; Anne Hutchinson; the Grimké sisters and Christabel Pankhurst.Key terms: evangelical pragmatism, postmillennialism, separate spheres, egalitarian and complementarian, “women’s work for women.”BOOKS MENTIONEDLaurel Thatcher Ulrich, Good Wives: Image and Reality in the Lives of Women in Northern New England, 1650–1750 (Knopf, 1982).Kristin Kobes Du Mez, Jesus and John Wayne: How White Evangelicals Corrupted a Faith and Fractured a Nation (Liveright, 2020).Beth Allison Barr, The Making of Biblical Womanhood: How the Subjugation of Women Became Gospel Truth (Brazos Press, 2021).Margaret Bendroth, Fundamentalism and Gender, 1875 to the Present (Yale University Press, 1993).Donald W. Dayton, Discovering an Evangelical Heritage (Harper & Row, 1976).David R. Swartz, Moral Minority: The Evangelical Left in an Age of Conservatism (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2012).Brantley W. Gasaway, Progressive Evangelicals and the Pursuit of Social Justice (University of North Carolina Press, 2014).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 

When most people imagine evangelical Christianity and science in America, they picture conflict: the Scopes Trial, school-board fights over evolution, faith retreating before modern science. But that picture is largely a product of the twentieth century. For much of American history, evangelicals understood faith and scientific inquiry as deeply compatible — even mutually reinforcing.In this episode, hosts John Fea, Dan Hummel, and Maggie Capra trace that longer, more complicated story with historian Ted Davis of Messiah University, one of the leading scholars of science and religion in American Protestant history. Beginning with the seventeenth-century idea that God authored “two books” — Scripture and nature — the conversation follows the relationship between evangelical faith and science through the early Republic, the arrival of Darwinism, the culture wars of the 1920s, and into the complex evangelical landscape of today.Along the way, the hosts and Ted Davis explore why the “conflict” between evangelicals and science is both older and newer than we tend to assume — and why the real story resists the tidy narratives offered by both sides.BONUS: The Full Interview on YouTubeJohn Fea sat down with Ted Davis for an extended conversation that ranges well beyond what we could fit into this episode. Watch the complete interview on our YouTube channel: https://youtu.be/OHTG1yY-6bY KEY THEMESThe “Two Books” FrameworkFor more than two centuries, educated Christians assumed God had authored two books — Scripture and nature — and that reading either carefully was an act of worship. Drawing on Francis Bacon’s The Advancement of Learning (1605), evangelicals embraced the pursuit of knowledge as a moral obligation oriented toward charity and human benefit rather than power or self-aggrandizement.Progress, Postmillennialism, and the Antebellum FusionEarly American Protestants fused Enlightenment ideas of progress with a postmillennial confidence that the Kingdom of God was advancing through human effort. Scientific and technological advances were understood as part of a divine plan — an outlook that made faith and science natural partners well into the nineteenth century.The Rise of the “Conflict Thesis”The idea that science and religion have always been at war is itself a historical product, popularized after the Civil War by writers like John William Draper and Andrew Dickson White. Notably, these were liberal or modernist Protestants; the original conflict was less science-versus-faith than a struggle over which “book” would define Christianity.Defining “True Science”By the 1920s, fundamentalists were not anti-science by their own lights — they held a “common sense” view of science rooted in the Scottish Enlightenment, in which only what could be directly observed counted as fact. Evolution, unfolding too slowly to observe, was therefore dismissed as conjecture. The same logic shaped resistance to higher criticism of the Bible.Evolution, Germany, and World War IThe anti-evolution movement was politically entangled, not merely scientific. Evolution became linked in the American imagination with German militarism, a connection amplified by Vernon Kellogg’s Headquarters Nights (1917). For William Jennings Bryan, that link supplied a powerful political rationale for driving evolution out of public schools.Faith and Science After World War IIThe GI Bill, the neo-evangelical movement, and organizations like the American Scientific Affiliation opened space for devout Christians to pursue eminent scientific careers — Francis Collins, Ian Hutchinson, Katharine Hayhoe, and others. At the same time, a well-organized Young Earth Creationist subculture emerged, producing parallel institutions and a lasting polarization within the broader evangelical “tent.”PEOPLETed Davis — historian of science and religion, Messiah University; episode guestFrancis Bacon — 17th-century English philosopher; The Advancement of Learning (1605)Jonathan Edwards — colonial theologian; counter-Enlightenment strain of evangelical thoughtJohn Witherspoon — president of the College of New Jersey (Princeton); Scottish Enlightenment influenceSamuel Miller — New York City Presbyterian minister and early Princeton Seminary professorJames Ussher — 17th-century Church of Ireland bishop who calculated a creation date of 4004 BCJohn William Draper & Andrew Dickson White — popularizers of the “conflict thesis” after the Civil WarWilliam Jennings Bryan — populist politician, three-time presidential nominee, anti-evolution campaignerAsa Gray — Harvard botanist, Darwin’s first American champion, and a devout PresbyterianVernon Kellogg — Stanford biologist and pacifist; author of Headquarters Nights (1917)B. B. Warfield — conservative Calvinist theologian at Princeton Seminary who engaged evolutionFrancis Collins, Ian Hutchinson, Katharine Hayhoe, Joan Centrella — prominent contemporary scientists of faithBernard Ramm — neo-evangelical author of The Christian View of Science and ScriptureBOOKSThe Advancement of Learning, by Francis Bacon (Henrie Tomes, 1605)A Brief Retrospect of the Eighteenth Century, by Samuel Miller (T. and J. Swords, 1803)Headquarters Nights, by Vernon Kellogg (Atlantic Monthly Press, 1917)The Genesis Flood, by John C. Whitcomb and Henry M. Morris (Presbyterian and Reformed Publishing Company, 1961)The Creationists, by Ronald L. Numbers (Harvard University Press, 2006)The Warfare between Science and Religion: The Idea That Wouldn’t Die, edited by Jeff Hardin, Ronald L. Numbers, and Ronald A. Binzley (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2018)Science, Religion, and the Protestant Tradition, by James C. Ungureanu (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2019)Process and Providence: The Evolution Question at Princeton, 1845–1929, by Bradley J. Gundlach (Eerdmans, 2013)Fundamentalism and American Culture, by George M. Marsden (Oxford University Press, 1980)The Christian View of Science and Scripture, by Bernard Ramm (Eerdmans, 1954)The Battle for the Bible, by Harold Lindsell (Zondervan, 1976)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 

From the iconic pink Cadillac of Mary Kay Ash to the aisles of the Christian bookstore, this episode traces one of the most tangled relationships in American religious history: the bond between evangelical faith and the marketplace. Hosts John Fea, Dan Hummel, and Maggie Capra use the rise of Mary Kay Cosmetics as a launching point to explore how evangelicals have understood work, wealth, success, and consumption — and why prosperity has so often been read as a sign of divine blessing.Along the way, the conversation reaches back to the early republic, where revivalism, democracy, and the market economy grew up together, and forward through the postwar boom, the Cold War, the Sun Belt, and the Jesus People movement. The result is a wide-ranging discussion of faith, money, identity, and whether evangelicalism and capitalism have become so intertwined that they can no longer be easily separated.KEY THEMES & TOPICSMary Kay Ash and “golden rule leadership”: How a Southern Baptist saleswoman built a cosmetics empire infused with the motto “God first, family second, career third” — reworking Sunday school hymns into business jingles.Faith and feminism in tension: Mary Kay as both a product of and a conservative critique of second-wave feminism, offering women economic flourishing without challenging family norms.Prosperity, agency, and the prosperity gospel: From Weber’s Protestant work ethic to self-help figures like Zig Ziglar and Robert Schuller, and where Mary Kay sits near — but not squarely within — the prosperity gospel stream.A deeper history: Revivalism, democracy, and the market economy emerging together in the early 19th century, all centered on the empowered, choosing individual.The “business turn” in scholarship: How historians now study company records and business dynasties — the Cathy family (Chick-fil-A), the Green family (Hobby Lobby, Museum of the Bible), and earlier funders of Moody Bible Institute.The rarity of systemic critique: Why sustained evangelical critiques of capitalism are hard to find — with the unusual dispensationalist exception of Philip Mauro.Cold War capitalism and the Sun Belt: Consumer culture and business interests sold as ways to be a good American, a good Christian, and an anti-communist, fueling the postwar rise of Southern evangelicalism.Consumerism as belonging: Christian bookstores, CCM, the Amish romance genre, the faith principle vs. business principles, and the scaling of ministries from Billy Graham to the megachurch.PEOPLE MENTIONED Mary Kay Ash, Morley Safer, Phyllis Schlafly, Marabel Morgan, Zig Ziglar, Robert Schuller, Dwight L. Moody, George Rapp, Josiah Bissell, Philip Mauro, Cyrus Scofield, Hal Lindsey, Carl McIntire, Bill Bright, Billy Graham, Donald Grey Barnhouse, Lewis Sperry Chafer.BOOKS REFERENCEDThe Mary Kay Way by Mary Kay Ash (Harper & Row, 1984)The Total Woman by Marabel Morgan (Fleming H. Revell, 1973)The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism by Max Weber (originally published 1905; widely read in the Talcott Parsons translation, Scribner, 1930)Wanamaker's Temple: The Business of Religion in an Iconic Department Store by Nicole C. Kirk (NYU Press, 2018)Guaranteed Pure: The Moody Bible Institute, Business, and the Making of Modern Evangelicalism by Timothy E. W. Gloege (University of North Carolina Press, 2015)Faith in Markets: Christian Capitalism in the Early American Republic by Joseph P. Slaughter (Columbia University Press, 2023)The Conquest of Cool: Business Culture, Counterculture, and the Rise of Hip Consumerism by Thomas Frank (University of Chicago Press, 1997)Reading Evangelicals: How Christian Fiction Shaped a Culture and a Faith by Daniel Silliman (Eerdmans, 2021)The Late Great Planet Earth by Hal Lindsey (Zondervan, 1970)The Blessings of Business: How Corporations Shaped Conservative Christianity by Darren E. Grem (Oxford University Press, 2016)One Nation Under God: How Corporate America Invented Christian America by Kevin M. Kruse (Basic Books, 2015)From Bible Belt to Sunbelt: Plain-Folk Religion, Grassroots Politics, and the Rise of Evangelical Conservatism by Darren Dochuk (W. W. Norton, 2011)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 

In the late 1790s, a respected minister convinced much of evangelical America that a secret society called the Bavarian Illuminati was conspiring with Thomas Jefferson's allies to destroy Christianity and topple the government. The conspiracy was pure fiction—but the instinct behind it has proven remarkably durable. In this episode, the conversation turns to one of the most enduring and complicated themes in evangelical history: politics. From the Illuminati scare of the early republic to debates over slavery, abortion, religious liberty, humanitarian aid, and foreign policy, the hosts explore how evangelicals have understood their role in shaping America—and how they have reacted when they believed that role was under threat.At the center of the episode sits a larger question: are evangelicals driven by a coherent political philosophy, or have they historically responded to politics through the lens of theology, morality, and perceived cultural crisis? As always, the answer resists simple labels. The hosts trace a recurring “politics of reaction” while also recovering a surprisingly broad range of evangelical political engagement—including a vibrant evangelical left—that complicates any easy equation of “evangelical” with “conservative.”THE CENTRAL QUESTIONAre evangelicals guided by a consistent political philosophy, or by reaction to perceived threats? The hosts argue that across more than two centuries, evangelical politics has rarely produced a positive, sustained agenda—and has instead organized itself again and again around defending a vision of a Christian nation. IN THIS EPISODEThe Illuminati Scare and the Politics of ReactionJedediah Morse and Yale president Timothy Dwight warned that the Bavarian Illuminati were working with Jefferson's Democratic-Republicans to abolish Christianity and civil government. The conspiracy collapsed under the weight of evidence, but it established a recurring pattern: identifying a foreign or domestic enemy with one's political opponents and framing the threat as a danger to a Christian America.A Christian Nation Under ThreatThe hosts argue that what distinguishes evangelical conspiracy thinking is its framing—threats are cast not merely as political dangers but as assaults on a divinely favored, exceptional Christian nation, sometimes interpreted through the lens of spiritual warfare and satanic forces.Prophecy, Theology, and Spiritual WarfareDrawing on Nathan Hatch and the prophetic tradition, the conversation connects biblical prophecy to political interpretation, noting how the language of “principalities and powers” has migrated into contemporary partisan rhetoric.The Other Evangelical PoliticsAgainst the assumption that evangelical equals Republican, the hosts recover abolition, temperance and suffrage, late-19th-century humanitarianism, the anti-Vietnam evangelical left, the 1973 Chicago Declaration, and figures like William Jennings Bryan, Jimmy Carter, Mark Hatfield, and Jim Wallis.Peaks, Valleys, and the Crisis of the 1960sThe episode asks whether evangelical political intensity ebbs and flows, pointing to Carl Henry's mid-century call to re-engage and to the 1960s—school prayer rulings, immigration reform, feminism, abortion, and federal pressure on segregated schools—as a crisis cluster that gave rise to the Christian right.Foreign Policy, Missions, and the “Holy War” ParadigmThe hosts close on evangelical engagement abroad—from holy-war framings to the realist arguments of the early Iraq War era and the missionary and humanitarian hopes that accompanied it—underscoring just how diverse and complex evangelical political thought remains.PEOPLE, BOOKS, & TERMS MENTIONEDFigures: Jedediah Morse, Timothy Dwight, Thomas Jefferson, Elias Boudinot, John Jay, Jonathan Edwards, William Jennings Bryan, Jimmy Carter, Sen. Mark Hatfield, J. Frank Norris, Al Smith, Carl Henry, Francis Schaeffer, Jim Wallis, Mark Galli, Marvin Olasky, Franklin Graham, Pat Robertson, Reinhold Niebuhr, Samuel Huntington.Books & works: Nathan Hatch, The Democratization of American Christianity (Yale University Press, 1989); The Sacred Cause of Liberty (Yale University Press, 1977); Heather Curtis, Holy Humanitarians (Harvard University Press, 2018); Gaines Foster, Moral Reconstruction (University of North Carolina Press, 2002); David Swartz, Moral Minority (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2012); Jim Wallis, God's Politics (HarperSanFrancisco, 2005); James Davison Hunter, To Change the World (Oxford University Press, 2010); Carl Henry, The Uneasy Conscience of Modern Fundamentalism (Eerdmans, 1947); and Jonathan Den Hartog, Patriotism and Piety (University of Virginia Press, 2015), on evangelical Federalists.Terms & events: Bavarian Illuminati; Second Great Awakening; the “Black Robe Regiment”; the Chicago Declaration (1973); the moral majority and Christian coalition; Engel v. Vitale and Abington v. Schempp; the Hart–Celler Immigration Act (1965); the Scopes Trial; the Anti-Saloon League; Christian nationalism.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 

One of the most complex and contested questions in the study of American religion is the relationship between evangelicalism and race. Episode 5 of American Evangelicals: A History Podcast takes up that question through an unexpected doorway: the story of J. M. Humphrey, a little-known holiness minister who built a ministry in the early twentieth century — and whose race, historian Maggie Capra discovered, was invisible in the sources until a single letter revealed it.That discovery — that Humphrey was Black, and that his racial identity had been effectively unknown from the sources that survived him — opens into a wide-ranging and deeply layered conversation. Maggie Capra, John Fea, and Dan Hummel explore how race has shaped evangelical institutions, archives, and historical memory itself, and they wrestle with some of the sharpest debates among scholars today: Is racism intrinsic to evangelicalism, or does it reflect broader patterns in American culture? What is "colorblind Christianity," where did it come from, and what does it mean for how evangelicals discuss race today? And how do political developments — above all the rise of Donald Trump — change the way historians interpret the evangelical past?From Black fundamentalism to the church growth movement to the sociological insights of Michael Emerson and Christian Smith, this episode offers a nuanced and historically grounded examination of faith, race, and the challenge of telling honest stories about American evangelicalism.Most episodes of American Evangelicals open with a narrative story about the subject. In Episode 5, Maggie Capra reads from J. M. Humphrey's pamphlet "A Word of Warning on Divorce Marriage" — a deeply personal testimony about Humphrey's tormented conscience after remarrying following divorce — and from a letter written by Jenny Jolly, a white evangelist in the holiness movement who knew Humphrey personally.Jolly's letter, appended to a posthumous reprint of Humphrey's pamphlet, contains the sentence that stopped Capra cold: "Colored people couldn't claim him after that. He was too much in demand by the free Methodist whites." Nowhere in Humphrey's published sermons or pamphlets had race appeared. The letter was the only surviving evidence of his racial identity — and its tone, matter-of-fact in its racism, raises hard questions about who gets preserved in the historical record, and why.Who was J. M. Humphrey? Born in 1872 in Tennessee, Jerry Miles Humphrey and his wife moved to Chicago in their early twenties, where both were converted and sanctified in the holiness movement. After his first wife renounced her faith, Humphrey divorced her and eventually — under pressure from church leaders — remarried. He spent the rest of his ministry promoting his belief that his "divorce marriage" was spiritually dangerous, using his own experience as a warning to others. Only one surviving letter, written after his death, reveals that he was Black. The Whitewashing of the Historical RecordCapra's experience with the Humphrey sources illustrates a problem historians increasingly acknowledge: the archives are not neutral. Racist attitudes and exclusionary practices shaped which voices were preserved, which pamphlets were reprinted, and whose papers were collected. As a result, historians working from traditional archives may unintentionally reproduce the racial biases that shaped those archives.The hosts discuss how this dynamic shaped the story of the fundamentalist-modernist controversy — a narrative almost entirely built around white evangelical figures — and note ongoing scholarly work, including Daniel Bare's book on Black fundamentalism, that seeks to recover what was excluded.Is Racism Intrinsic to Evangelicalism?The episode grapples with one of the most contested questions in the field: Is racism essential to evangelicalism as a movement, or is it a historical contingency — present in particular eras and communities, but not definitionally part of what evangelicalism is? The hosts survey both ends of this debate:Some historians argue that evangelicalism, as it developed in the United States, is inseparable from white supremacy — that pulling racism out of it leaves something unrecognizable.Others, drawing on the Bebbington Quadrilateral's theological definition, argue that evangelicals held widely divergent positions on race (abolitionists alongside slaveholders) and that racism is better understood as reflecting broader American culture than as intrinsic to the movement.A third concern, raised by John Fea, is "race reductionism" — the tendency, accelerated after 2016, to interpret evangelicalism primarily or exclusively through a racial lens, producing historical accounts that are accurate in their particulars but reductive as total explanations.Colorblind Christianity: Origins and ConsequencesDan Hummel traces the rise of what scholars call "colorblind Christianity" — the belief, which entered the mainstream of white evangelicalism in the 1970s, that the most Christian approach to race is to ignore racial difference altogether, to see all people as equal before God without acknowledging race. Drawing on Jesse Curtis's book The Myth of Colorblind Christianity, Hummel explains how this ideology took hold and what its consequences have been.Hummel connects colorblind Christianity to the church-growth movement of the same era, particularly Donald McGavran's Homogeneous Unit Principle — the sociological observation that churches grow when they gather people who resemble one another. Applied to American suburbs, this principle reinforced the idea that building a racially homogeneous congregation was not just strategically sound but compatible with Christian identity. The result: millions of evangelicals raised in churches that treated race as a divisive topic, one better left outside the sanctuary door.The Christian Right and the Racial Politics DebateThe hosts discuss competing historical interpretations of the rise of the Christian right in the 1970s and the role race played in motivating figures like Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson. Two contrasting views emerge:Randall Balmer argues, based in part on a direct conversation with political organizer Paul Weyrich, that the Christian right was primarily mobilized not by abortion but by opposition to the desegregation of private Christian academies — making race the foundational political issue.Daniel Williams and others offer a multi-causal account: race was certainly present, but so were concerns about abortion, secularism in public education, and other issues. Reducing the Christian right to a single motivating factor, they argue, distorts the history.Evangelicals and Systemic Racism: The "Toolkit" ProblemThe conversation turns to a landmark study by sociologists Michael Emerson and Christian Smith, Divided by Faith (2000), which argued that evangelicals possess a limited "cultural toolkit" for thinking about race. Because evangelical theology places such heavy emphasis on individual conversion, free will, and personal accountability, evangelicals tend to frame racism as an individual sin rather than a structural or systemic reality.Fea illustrates this from his own teaching: evangelical students consistently reach for relational or individual responses to racial injustice — volunteer work, cross-racial friendship, personal witness — rather than structural or political engagement. The Promise Keepers movement of the 1990s is discussed as a prominent example of the relational approach to racial reconciliation, along with its limitations.Black Evangelicalism: Parallel HistoriesThe episode also considers the story of Black evangelicalism — a tradition that ran parallel to, and sometimes intersected with, white evangelical institutions — but which has been systematically underrepresented in archives and historiography. The hosts recommend Vince Bacote's documentary on Black evangelicalism and discuss how institutions such as Moody Bible Institute, InterVarsity Christian Fellowship, and Fuller Seminary both excluded African Americans and eventually opened to their participation.Hummel notes a striking contemporary data point: as of 2026, the National Association of Evangelicals, Fuller Seminary, and Christianity Today — the three flagship institutions of postwar American evangelicalism — are all led by non-white leaders.The "White Evangelical" Label: A Disciplinary DivideThe episode closes with a discussion of the term "white evangelical" itself, prompted by a view expressed in an earlier episode by guest Corey Marsh. Marsh objects to the racial modifier, arguing that evangelicalism is a theological category that shouldn't be bounded by race.Hummel agrees in part — using the term as a reflexive political statement can be imprecise — but defends it as analytically necessary for historians studying communities that were, in fact,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 

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 GUESTSVincent 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 RevisitedThe 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" QuintilateralMarsh 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 CelebrityismOne 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 MethodsAfter 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 MENTIONEDDavid 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 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 

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 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 

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 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 

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 

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.HOSTSJOHN 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 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