Evangelicals : Who They Have Been, Are Now, And Could Be

The past, present, and future of a movement in crisis

What exactly do we mean when we say “evangelical”? How should we understand this many-sided world religious phenomenon? How do recent American politics change that understanding?

Three scholars have been vital to our understanding of evangelicalism for the last forty years: Mark Noll, whose Scandal of the Evangelical Mind identified an earlier crisis point for American evangelicals; David Bebbington, whose “Bebbington Quadrilateral” remains the standard characterization of evangelicals used worldwide; and George Marsden, author of the groundbreaking Fundamentalism and American Culture: The Shaping of Twentieth-Century Evangelicalism. Now, in Evangelicals, they combine key earlier material concerning the history of evangelicalism with their own new contributions about present controversies and also with fresh insights from other scholars. The result begins as a survey of how evangelicalism has been evaluated, but then leads into a discussion of the movement’s perils and promise today.

Evangelicals provides an illuminating look at who evangelicals are, how evangelicalism has changed over time, and how evangelicalism continues to develop in sometimes surprising ways.