Five Great Books on Evangelical Christianity<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"My recent post "'Evangelicals' Who Are Not Evangelicals" generated quite a discussion about who's in, and who's out of the evangelical camp. The study of\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/anxiousbench\/2014\/07\/five-great-books-on-evangelical-christianity\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Five Great Books on Evangelical Christianity\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"My recent post "'Evangelicals' Who Are Not Evangelicals" generated quite a discussion about who's in, and who's out of the evangelical camp. 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{"id":9619,"date":"2014-07-15T00:01:31","date_gmt":"2014-07-15T04:01:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/anxiousbench\/?p=9619"},"modified":"2014-07-14T18:51:31","modified_gmt":"2014-07-14T22:51:31","slug":"five-great-books-on-evangelical-christianity","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/anxiousbench\/2014\/07\/five-great-books-on-evangelical-christianity\/","title":{"rendered":"Five Great Books on Evangelical Christianity"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

My recent post \u201c\u2018Evangelicals\u2019 Who Are Not Evangelicals<\/a>\u201d generated quite a discussion about who\u2019s in, and who\u2019s out of the evangelical camp. The study of evangelicalism has seen an amazing renaissance in the past fifty years, so here\u2019s a list of five excellent books on evangelicals and their history. The usual disclaimers: I\u2019m not including my own books<\/a>! And these are by academic scholars \u2013 mostly historians \u2013 writing books that are accessible to a general audience.<\/p>\n

David Bebbington,\u00a0 Evangelicalism in Modern Britain<\/em><\/a>.\u00a0<\/em>Not only is this the essential study of evangelical development in Britain, but Bebbington here gave us his famous \u201cquadrilateral\u201d of evangelical characteristics: activism, biblicism, crucicentrism, and conversionism.<\/p>\n

George Marsden,\u00a0Fundamentalism and American Culture<\/em><\/a>. OK, Marsden was my doctoral advisor so I am biased, but this is arguably the most important book ever written on American evangelicalism, as it masterfully tells the story of the intellectual roots of late nineteenth century \u201cfundamentalism\u201d and the coming of the fundamentalist-modernist crisis in America\u2019s churches. If you have not read it, stop everything and get a copy right now.<\/p>\n

Catherine Brekus,\u00a0Sarah Osborn\u2019s World: The Rise of Evangelical Christianity in Early America<\/a><\/em>. In my jacket endorsement for the book, I wrote that it is \u201csimply one of the best books I have read on the life of an American evangelical, female or male, particularly because Brekus is able so successfully to combine historical analysis of evangelicalism with the details of Osborn\u2019s life and writings.\u201d<\/p>\n

Darren Dochuk, From Bible Belt to Sunbelt: Plain-Folk Religion, Grassroots Politics, and the Rise of Evangelical Conservatism<\/a>.\u00a0<\/em>From my fellow Marsden student, Dochuk\u2019s book is one of the most important books ever written $\"\"$ on the rise of religious conservatism in the 20th century.<\/p>\n

Michael Emerson and Christian Smith,\u00a0 Divided by Faith: Evangelical Religion and the Problem of Race in America<\/em><\/a>. This brilliant and devastating take on evangelicals and race will never let you look at this pressing topic the same way again.<\/p>\n

I would love to see your suggestions for additions or replacements in the comments thread!<\/p>\n

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