Known as the “Father of Church History,” Eusebius was bishop of Caesarea in Palestine and the leading Christian scholar of his day. His Ecclesiastical History is an irreplaceable chronicle of Christianity’s early development, from its origin in Judaism, through two and a half centuries of illegality and occasional persecution, to a new era of tolerance and favor under the Emperor Constantine. In this book, Michael J. Hollerich recovers the reception of this text across time. As he shows, Eusebius adapted classical historical writing for a new “nation,” the Christians, with a distinctive theo-political vision. Eusebius’s text left its mark on Christian historical writing from late antiquity to the early modern period—across linguistic, cultural, political, and religious boundaries—until its encounter with modern historicism and postmodernism. Making Christian History demonstrates Eusebius’s vast influence throughout history, not simply in shaping Christian culture but also when falling under scrutiny as that culture has been reevaluated, reformed, and resisted over the past 1,700 years.

The American political scene today is poisonously divided, and the vast majority of white evangelicals play a strikingly unified, powerful role in the disunion. In this clear-eyed, hard-hitting chronicle of American religion and politics, Anthea Butler argues that racism is at the core of conservative evangelical activism and power. Propelled by the benefits of whiteness, white evangelicals used scripture to defend slavery and nurture the Confederacy during the Civil War era. During Reconstruction, they used it to deny the vote to newly emancipated blacks. In the twentieth century, they sided with segregationists in avidly opposing movements for racial equality and civil rights. White evangelicals today, cloaked in a vision of Christian patriarchy and nationhood, form a staunch voting bloc in support of white leadership. Evangelicalism's racial history festers, splits America, and needs a reckoning now. In a new preface to the second edition, Butler takes stock of how the trends she identified have expanded as Donald Trump mounts a third campaign for the presidency, evangelicals celebrate and respond to the overturning of Roe v. Wade, and ferocious backlash against racial equity has injected new venom into evangelicalism's role in American politics.

Evangelicalism, an inter-denominational religious movement that has grown to become one of the most pervasive expressions of world Christianity in the early twenty-first century, had its origins in the religious revivals led by George Whitefield, John Wesley and Jonathan Edwards in the middle decades of the eighteenth century. With its stress on the Bible, the cross of Christ, conversion and the urgency of mission, it quickly spread throughout the Atlantic world and then became a global phenomenon. Over the past three decades evangelicalism has become the focus of considerable historical research. This research companion brings together a team of leading scholars writing broad-ranging chapters on key themes in the history of evangelicalism. It provides an authoritative and state-of-the-art review of current scholarship, and maps the territory for future research. Primary attention is paid to English-speaking evangelicalism, but the volume is transnational in its scope. Arranged thematically, chapters assess evangelicalism and the Bible, the atonement, spirituality, revivals and revivalism, worldwide mission in the Atlantic North and the Global South, eschatology, race, gender, culture and the arts, money and business, interactions with Roman Catholicism, Eastern Christianity, and Islam, and globalization. It demonstrates evangelicalism’s multiple and contested identities in different ages and contexts. The historical and thematic approach of this research companion makes it an invaluable resource for scholars and students alike worldwide.

Winner of the Christianity Today Book of the Year Award (1995) “The scandal of the evangelical mind is that there is not much of an evangelical mind.” So begins this award-winning intellectual history and critique of the evangelical movement by one of evangelicalism’s most respected historians. Unsparing in his indictment, Mark Noll asks why the largest single group of religious Americans—who enjoy increasing wealth, status, and political influence—have contributed so little to rigorous intellectual scholarship. While nourishing believers in the simple truths of the gospel, why have so many evangelicals failed to sustain a serious intellectual life and abandoned the universities, the arts, and other realms of “high” culture? Over twenty-five years since its original publication, The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind has turned out to be prescient and perennially relevant. In a new preface, Noll lays out his ongoing personal frustrations with this situation, and in a new afterword he assesses the state of the scandal—showing how white evangelicals’ embrace of Trumpism, their deepening distrust of science, and their frequent forays into conspiratorial thinking have coexisted with surprisingly robust scholarship from many with strong evangelical connections.

The first major study to draw upon unknown or neglected sources, as well as original interviews with figures like Billy Graham, Awakening the Evangelical Mind uniquely tells the engaging story of how evangelicalism developed as an intellectual movement in the middle of the 20th century. Beginning with the life of Harold Ockenga, Strachan shows how Ockenga brought together a small community of Christian scholars at Harvard University in the 1940s who agitated for a reloaded Christian intellect. With fresh insights based on original letters and correspondence, Strachan highlights key developments in the movement by examining the early years and humble beginnings of such future evangelical luminaries as George Eldon Ladd, Edward John Carnell, John Gerstner, Gleason Archer, Carl Henry, and Kenneth Kantzer.

A leading historian of evangelicalism offers a concise history of evangelicals and how they became who they are today Evangelicalism is arguably America’s most controversial religious movement. Nonevangelical people who follow the news may have a variety of impressions about what “evangelical” means. But one certain association they make with evangelicals is white Republicans. Many may recall that 81 percent of self†‘described white evangelicals voted for Donald Trump, and they may well wonder at the seeming hypocrisy of doing so. In this illuminating book, Thomas Kidd draws on his expertise in American religious history to retrace the arc of this spiritual movement, illustrating just how historically peculiar that political and ethnic definition (white Republican) of evangelicals is. He examines distortions in the public understanding of evangelicals, and shows how a group of “Republican insider evangelicals” aided the politicization of the movement. This book will be a must†‘read for those trying to better understand the shifting religious and political landscape of America today.

In Apostles of Reason, Molly Worthen offers a sweeping history of modern American evangelicalism, arguing that the faith has been shaped not by shared beliefs but by battles over the relationship between faith and reason.