The Making of Evangelicalism: From Revivalism to Politics and Beyond

With impressively clear prose and a superb command of history, best-selling author Randall Balmer here offers a spirited history of evangelical Christianity in the United States. Effortlessly situating developments in evangelicalism in their wider historical context, he demonstrates the ways American social and cultural settings influenced the course of the evangelical tradition. By revealing the four key moments in the movement’s history—the transition from Calvinist to Armenian theology in the embrace of revivalism, the shift from postmillennialism, the retreat into a subculture, and the rise of the Religious Right—Balmer masterfully demonstrates how American evangelicalism is truly American and concludes with a manifesto directing where evangelicalism must go from here forward.