The Evangelical Landscape

Evangelical Landscapes presents a wide-ranging discussion of evangelical growing pains as the movement confronts a variety of challenges in the new millennium.

Mark A. Noll looks at the evangelical mind in the twentieth century. Arguing that evangelicals must be concerned about questions of the intellect and the development of a Christian mind, he asserts that though striking gains have been made since the Fundamentalist-Modernist controversy, the task remains incomplete because recent progress has been modest at best. Bruce Shelley sets up what he sees as a crucial agenda for America's evangelicals: recovery of a sense of community within the church, renewed commitment to the Bible's evangelistic mandate, and the development of transformational leaders with a clear vision of the future. Defining essential evangelicalism as commitment to biblical authority, conversion, and worldwide evangelization, Timothy L. Smith points out that evangelicalism enfolds a rich diversity of traditions. He pleads with these groups to lay aside their divisiveness, and to focus instead on seeking peace with one another and pursuing that holiness of life without which no one can see the Lord.

"James Resseguie draws from recent studies in narrative criticism and the New Testament to bring our attention to the spiritual significance of the physical landscapes, social relationships, and economy in Luke's Gospel. Gleaning from this rich perspective, Resseguie explores Luke's illustrations of spiritual formation and development. Students, preachers, spiritual directors, and readers interested in spirituality from a biblical perspective will gain insight from the role that stories such as the road to Emmaus, a widdow's offering, the tax collector's feast, and the demoniac's change of clothes play in the Lukan narrative." --

Sam Turner's important new interpretation of early medieval patterns of landscape development traces landscape change in the South West from the introduction of Christianity to the Norman Conquest (AD c. 450-1070). It stresses the significance of political and religious ideology in both the 'Celtic' west (especially Cornwall) and the 'Anglo-Saxon' east (especially the Wessex counties of Devon, Somerset, Wiltshire and Dorset). Using innovative new research methods, and making use of archaeology, place-name evidence, historical sources and land-use patterns, it challenges previous work on the subject by suggesting that the two regions have much in common. Using modern mapping techniques to explore land-use trends, Turner advances a new model for the evolution of ecclesiastical institutions in south-west England. He shows that the early development of Christianity had an impact on the countryside that remains visible in the landscape we see today. Accessibly written with a glossary of terms and a comprehensive bibliography, the book will appeal to both veterans and newcomers to landscape archaeology.

Landscape Liturgies offers outdoor worship material drawn from 2,000 years of outdoor Christian practice. It contains prayers, rituals, blessings and liturgies compiled from Anglican, Roman Catholic, Methodist and Orthodox sources, as well as early church material, the desert tradition and monastic spirituality. It includes resources for the blessing of water courses, tree planting, garden blessings, a wide range of churchyard ceremonies, Rogation and other processionary ideas, field and animal blessings, pilgrim and walking prayers, ceremonies at holy wells and sacred grottoes, at hilltops and landmark monuments, and for the ringing of bells which traditionally demarcated sacred space in the landscape. This fascinating and versatile resource will enable urban and rural churches and church schools, retreat houses and pilgrimage centres to conduct a wide variety of services and meditations in the landscape around them.

Eight of today's most noted thinkers here examine the nature of evangelical Christianity and explore its ongoing role in contemporary culture. Produced in conjunction with the establishment of a new professorship in evangelical theological studies at Harvard University, these chapters discuss evangelicalism's shared religious features, its intellectual agenda, and the impact its deeply felt religious commitments have had on society. In the process, this volume provides a significance view of evangelicalism in its broadest outlines and suggests ways to cultivate and preserve its finest qualities.

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER The “paradigm-influencing” book (Christianity Today) that is fundamentally transforming our understanding of white evangelicalism in America. Jesus and John Wayne is a sweeping, revisionist history of the last seventy-five years of white evangelicalism, revealing how evangelicals have worked to replace the Jesus of the Gospels with an idol of rugged masculinity and Christian nationalism—or in the words of one modern chaplain, with “a spiritual badass.” As acclaimed scholar Kristin Du Mez explains, the key to understanding this transformation is to recognize the centrality of popular culture in contemporary American evangelicalism. Many of today’s evangelicals might not be theologically astute, but they know their VeggieTales, they’ve read John Eldredge’s Wild at Heart, and they learned about purity before they learned about sex—and they have a silver ring to prove it. Evangelical books, films, music, clothing, and merchandise shape the beliefs of millions. And evangelical culture is teeming with muscular heroes—mythical warriors and rugged soldiers, men like Oliver North, Ronald Reagan, Mel Gibson, and the Duck Dynasty clan, who assert white masculine power in defense of “Christian America.” Chief among these evangelical legends is John Wayne, an icon of a lost time when men were uncowed by political correctness, unafraid to tell it like it was, and did what needed to be done. Challenging the commonly held assumption that the “moral majority” backed Donald Trump in 2016 and 2020 for purely pragmatic reasons, Du Mez reveals that Trump in fact represented the fulfillment, rather than the betrayal, of white evangelicals’ most deeply held values: patriarchy, authoritarian rule, aggressive foreign policy, fear of Islam, ambivalence toward #MeToo, and opposition to Black Lives Matter and the LGBTQ community. A much-needed reexamination of perhaps the most influential subculture in this country, Jesus and John Wayne shows that, far from adhering to biblical principles, modern white evangelicals have remade their faith, with enduring consequences for all Americans.

Once upon a time, evangelicalism was a countercultural upstart movement. Positioned in between mainline denominational liberalism and reactionary fundamentalism, evangelicals saw themselves as evangelists to all of culture. Billy Graham was reaching the masses with his Crusades, Francis Schaeffer was reaching artists and university students at L’Abri, Larry Norman was recording Jesus music on secular record labels and touring with Janis Joplin and the Doors, and Carl F. H. Henry was reaching the intellectuals through Christianity Today. It was the dawn of “classic evangelicalism.” Surveying the current evangelical landscape, however, one gets the feeling that we’re backpedaling quickly. We are more theologically diffuse, culturally gun-shy, and fragmented than ever before. What has happened? And how do we find our way back? Using the life and work of Carl F. H. Henry as a key to evangelicalism’s past and a cipher for its future, this book provides crucial insights for a renewed vision of the church’s place in modern society and charts a refreshing course toward unity under the banner of “classic evangelicalism.”

This book gives a general as well as personal perspective of evangelical America from a Catholic viewpoint. There is much interest in the Catholic community in this topic due to intense proselytizing of some evangelical churches and to the many families living on the denominational divide