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Routledge
310 pages
This volume makes a significant contribution to the ‘history of ecclesiastical histories’, with a fresh analysis of historians of evangelicalism from the eighteenth century to the present. It explores the ways in which their scholarly methods and theological agendas shaped their writings.
Each chapter presents a case study in evangelical historiography. Some of the historians and biographers examined here were ministers and missionaries, while others were university scholars. They are drawn from Anglican, Baptist, Congregationalist, Methodist, Presbyterian, Fundamentalist and Pentecostal denominations. Their histories cover not only transatlantic evangelicalism, but also the spread of the movement across China, Africa, and indeed the whole globe. Some wrote for a popular Christian readership, emphasising edification and evangelical hagiography; others have produced weighty monographs for the academy.
These case studies shed light on the way the discipline has developed, and also the heated controversies over whether one approach to evangelical history is more legitimate than the rest. As a result, this book will be of considerable interest to historians of religion.
Introduction: Towards a History of Evangelical Histories
Andrew Atherstone and David Ceri Jones
1 John Gillies and the Evangelical Revivals
David Ceri Jones
2 Erasmus Middleton’s Biographia Evangelica
Darren Schmidt
3 Dissent and Religious Liberty in David Bogue and James Bennett’s History of Dissenters
Robert Strivens
4 J. C. Ryle and Evangelical Churchmanship
Andrew Atherstone
5 Luke Tyerman and the History of Early Methodism
Martin Wellings
6 Geraldine Guinness Taylor and the Histories of the China Inland Mission
Alvyn Austin
7 G. R. Balleine and the Evangelical Party
Andrew Atherstone
8 Arnold Dallimore: Whitefield’s Champion
Ian Hugh Clary
9 Iain H. Murray and the Rise and Fall of British Evangelicalism
David Ceri Jones
10 Ogbu Kalu and African Pentecostalism
Richard Burgess
11 Timothy L. Smith, George Marsden, David Bebbington and Anglo-American Evangelicalism
Mark Noll
12 Andrew Walls, Brian Stanley, Dana Robert, Mark Noll and Global Evangelicalism
David Bebbington
The study of evangelicalism is a well-developed discipline with a strong international readership. A major movement within global Christianity, it continues to attract considerable scholarly and ‘popular’ interest on both sides of the Atlantic and further afield. The Routledge Studies in Evangelicalism series publishes monographs and collaborative volumes of significant original research in any aspect of evangelical history or historical theology from the eighteenth century to the present, and is global in its scope. This series will appeal both to the flourishing community of scholars of religious history and to informed practitioners within the evangelical constituency.
