A Short History of Global Evangelicalism

An overview of the history of evangelicalism as a global movement, from its origins in the eighteenth century to the present.

Mark Hutchinson (Author), John Wolffe (Author)

9780521769457, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 30 April 2012

320 pages, 4 b/w illus. 3 tables
23.5 x 15.8 x 2.1 cm, 0.55 kg

'[Hutchinson and Wolffe] aim to synthesise existing scholarship and to add to it fresh research in order to create a picture of evangelicalism as a whole from its origins as a renewal movement on the margins of mainstream North Atlantic religious life in the 1730s to its prominence as a worldwide movement today … this book represents a tremendous achievement. It is consistently both thoughtful and thought-provoking and is a miracle of compression … [it] clearly establishes the importance of the movement as a topic for further study in the contemporary work and the fascination of the history from which it has emerged - for this we are all in Hutchinson's and Wolffe's debt.' Mark Smith, Wesley and Methodist Studies

This book offers an authoritative overview of the history of evangelicalism as a global movement, from its origins in Europe and North America in the first half of the eighteenth century to its present-day dynamic growth in Africa, Asia, Latin America and Oceania. Starting with a definition of the movement within the context of the history of Protestantism, it follows the history of evangelicalism from its early North Atlantic revivals to the great expansion in the Victorian era, through to its fracturing and reorientation in response to the stresses of modernity and total war in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. It describes the movement's indigenization and expansion toward becoming a multicentered and diverse movement at home in the non-Western world that nevertheless retains continuity with its historic roots. The book concludes with an analysis of contemporary worldwide evangelicalism's current trajectory and the movement's adaptability to changing historical and geographical circumstances.

Preface
1. Understanding evangelicalism
2. 'The surprising work of God': origins to 1790s
3. Volunteering for the kingdom: 1790s to 1840s
4. The kingdom enlarged and contested: 1840s to 1870s
5. A new global spiritual unity: 1870s to 1914
6. Fighting wars and engaging modernity: 1900s to 1945
7. Towards global trans-denominationalism: 1945 to 1970s
8. 'The actual arithmetic': a survey of contemporary global evangelicalism
9. Localism and transnationality: 1970s to 2010
10. Conclusion.

Subject Areas: History of ideas [JFCX], Church history [HRCC2]