American Evangelicals blends storytelling and free-flowing conversation to explore the varieties, similarities, and significance of evangelical Christians in American history.
Spanning the religious revivals of the 18th century to the cultural and political conflicts of the 21st, each episode is a conversation based on the historical research of its hosts, the deep scholarship on American evangelicals, and the lives of real figures who shaped the movement.
Hosted by three historians of American evangelicalism, discover how evangelicals have shaped and been shaped by the challenges of not just theology and belief, but by the same forces that have contributed to American society, from immigration to war, race, and economics.
Publisher
SL Brown Foundation
Category
history · religion & spirituality · religion & spirituality
BONUS: Cory Marsh & Vincent Bacote on Defining Evangelicalism
This special bonus episode closes out Season One of American Evangelicals: A History Podcast by sharing the complete, unedited interviews behind Episode 4, “What Is an Evangelical?” Only excerpts of these conversations made it into the original episode — here, listeners get both interviews in full. First up is Cory Marsh, Professor of New Testament at Southern California Seminary, who argues that the Bebbington Quadrilateral, while valuable, is theologically incomplete without local church fe...
23 Jul 2026
BONUS: Evangelicals, Science, & Ted Davis
Episode 8 of American Evangelicals only had room for excerpts of our conversation with historian of science Ted Davis. This bonus episode gives you the entire, unedited interview. Davis, a leading historian of science and religion, traces the relationship between American Christianity and scientific thought from the early republic through the Scopes trial and into the twenty-first century — challenging some common assumptions about evangelicals and science along the way. If you've already hea...
16 Jul 2026
Looking Back, Looking Ahead: Evangelicalism, History, and What Comes Next (Episode 12)
In the finale of Season One, John Fea, Dan Hummel, and Maggie Capra step out of their usual narrative format to reflect directly on the series and on the state of the field they study. They open by sharing what listener feedback has taught them about the value of a historian's “dispassionate” approach to a subject most people experience personally rather than academically. From there, the conversation turns to future casting — always, they admit, a risky exercise for historians. The hosts tra...
9 Jul 2026
Accidental Diplomats: Missionaries, Money, and the World (Episode 11)
It's easy to imagine American evangelicalism as a story that happens entirely inside the United States. In this episode, John Fea, Dan Hummel, and Maggie Capra push past that bubble to explore evangelicals' long, tangled relationship with the rest of the world. The episode opens with two stories drawn from recent scholarship. The first, from David Swartz's Facing West, complicates the founding myth of World Vision: American evangelist Bob Pierce is remembered as the organization's sole founde...
2 Jul 2026
The Bible: A People of the Book (Episode 10)
For many evangelicals, no object is more central to faith and practice than the Bible—preached, memorized, carried, gifted, and treated as the ultimate authority. But how did it come to occupy that place, and what happens when readers of the same text reach opposite conclusions? In this episode, historians John Fea, Dan Hummel, and Maggie Capra trace the Bible across American evangelical history: from the founding of the American Bible Society in 1816 and its mission to put a Bible in every h...
25 Jun 2026
"Can a Woman Preach?": Rethinking Gender in Evangelical History (Episode 9)
When we tell the story of evangelicalism, we usually reach for famous pastors, theologians, and institutions. But what happens when we turn our attention to the women who taught, organized, wrote, fundraised, evangelized, and sustained evangelical life across generations? In this episode, hosts John Fea, Dan Hummel, and Maggie Capra are joined in the studio by historian Andrea Turpin for a wide-ranging conversation about women as co-creators of evangelicalism at every level. Beginning with th...
18 Jun 2026
More Complicated Than the Scopes Trial: A History of Evangelicals and Science (Episode 8)
When most people imagine evangelical Christianity and science in America, they picture conflict: the Scopes Trial, school-board fights over evolution, faith retreating before modern science. But that picture is largely a product of the twentieth century. For much of American history, evangelicals understood faith and scientific inquiry as deeply compatible — even mutually reinforcing. In this episode, hosts John Fea, Dan Hummel, and Maggie Capra trace that longer, more complicated story with ...
11 Jun 2026
God, the Pink Cadillac, and Commerce: Evangelicals connection with Business & Consumerism (Episode 7)
From the iconic pink Cadillac of Mary Kay Ash to the aisles of the Christian bookstore, this episode traces one of the most tangled relationships in American religious history: the bond between evangelical faith and the marketplace. Hosts John Fea, Dan Hummel, and Maggie Capra use the rise of Mary Kay Cosmetics as a launching point to explore how evangelicals have understood work, wealth, success, and consumption — and why prosperity has so often been read as a sign of divine blessing. Along ...
4 Jun 2026
The Politics of Reaction: Evangelicals and the American Nation
In the late 1790s, a respected minister convinced much of evangelical America that a secret society called the Bavarian Illuminati was conspiring with Thomas Jefferson's allies to destroy Christianity and topple the government. The conspiracy was pure fiction—but the instinct behind it has proven remarkably durable. In this episode, the conversation turns to one of the most enduring and complicated themes in evangelical history: politics. From the Illuminati scare of the early repu...
28 May 2026
Faith and Race: Whose Story Gets Told?
One of the most complex and contested questions in the study of American religion is the relationship between evangelicalism and race. Episode 5 of American Evangelicals: A History Podcast takes up that question through an unexpected doorway: the story of J. M. Humphrey, a little-known holiness minister who built a ministry in the early twentieth century — and whose race, historian Maggie Capra discovered, was invisible in the sources until a single letter revealed it. That discovery — that H...
21 May 2026
Theology, History, and the Question of Identity
It is the summer of 1976. A Gallup poll asks Americans a deceptively simple question: "Have you been born again?" Thirty-four percent say yes. Overnight, a single survey question gives a name to a movement that has existed in America for over two centuries. In Episode 4, hosts John Fea, Dan Hummel, and Maggie Capra invite two theologians into the conversation — scholars who have spent their careers thinking carefully about what evangelicalism actually is, not just what it has historically loo...
14 May 2026
Defining the American Evangelical Movement: Doctrine and Denominations
In January 1953, the Reverend Donald Gray Barnhouse published a striking New Year's resolution in his magazine Eternity. After 25 years of building a ministerial empire — through Bible conferences, books, a widely syndicated radio broadcast, and a national magazine — Barnhouse confessed that he had fallen short in one significant area: unity. Long known for his willingness to call out anyone he disagreed with, even on minor points, Barnhouse declared that he wanted to widen his "circle of Chr...
7 May 2026
Defining the American Evangelical Movement: Spirituality and Practice
In Episode 1, we explored what it means to become an evangelical — the new birth, the conversion experience that George Whitefield and the First Great Awakening placed at the center of Protestant identity. But Episode 2 presses deeper. Conversion is the beginning, not the destination. So what happens next? What does it actually look like to live the Christian life — to become holy, to grow in faith, to be transformed from the inside out? To get at that, the hosts dive into a fascinating 19th-...
30 Apr 2026
Defining the American Evangelical Movement: Born Again
We begin where history often does — with a story. It’s October 23, 1740, and Connecticut farmer Nathan Cole has just heard urgent news: the famous preacher George Whitefield will be in Middletown in a matter of hours. Cole drops his tools, saddles his horse, and races twelve miles through a cloud of dust kicked up by thousands of others doing the same. What he experiences that day — and over the two years that follow — opens a window into one of the most important and contested movements in A...
15 Apr 2026
Introducing American Evangelicals - A History Podcast
AMERICAN EVANGELICALS blends storytelling and free-flowing conversation to explore the varieties, similarities, and significance of evangelical Christians in American history. Spanning the religious revivals of the 18th century to the cultural and political conflicts of the 21st, each episode is a conversation grounded in the historical research of its hosts, deep scholarship on American evangelicals, and the lives of real figures who shaped the movement. Hosted by three historians of America...
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4.8 / 5
9 ratings
Spotify
5.0 / 5
1 ratings
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