American Evangelicalism is, indeed, “embattled and thriving,” as Smith et. al. (1998) have suggested, thriving precisely because it has remained in an embattled state as it cyclically seeks to establish itself as a counter to the dominant culture. However, over the last 40 years American Evangelicalism has become ingrained in the dominant culture and a new group of young Evangelicals are establishing themselves as the counter to that culture and thus defining themselves against Evangelicalism itself. Employing Smith’s (1998) “sub-cultural identity” theory of religious strength while drawing on interviews with movement leaders, members and published writings, the following research provides an overview of four social movements within Evangelicalism – Evangelical Environmentalism, social justice Christianity, the Emerging Church and New Monasticism – suggesting that these groups represent a social movement area seeking to draw a distinction in identity with American Evangelicalism. Then, drawing on over two hundred hours of in-depth interviews with 40 New Monastic leaders and community members, combined with analysis of the writings of New Monastic movement leaders, the research focuses in specifically on the identity-making activities of New Monasticism, examining the ways in which this movement seeks to influence beliefs, practices and conceptions of place within American Evangelicalism.

Quelle est l’influence du protestantisme évangélique américain, acteur non étatique -Et transnational en pleine expansion- sur la politique étrangère américaine? La constitution des protestants évangéliques en force de pression politique, à l’initiative de certains pasteurs évangéliques, remonte au début des années 70, peu après le passage du Civil Rights Act. Les protestants évangéliques traditionnellement acquis à la cause démocrate, ont alors choisi d’accorder leurs voix au camp républicain. Si R Reagan, proche des néo-Conservateurs, leur a entre-Ouvert les portes de la Maison Blanche, George W. Bush sera le président qui gouvernera en tenant compte de considérations morales et religieuses chères aux protestants évangéliques. Le vote évangélique est ainsi très disputé lors des échéances électorales. En quelques décennies, les protestants évangéliques ont acquis une place de choix dans la politique américaine nouant des alliances fructueuses avec les néo- conservateurs ainsi qu’avec le lobby pro-Israélien, tous les deux à la manœuvre en ce qui concerne la définition des politiques. Au niveau international, les protestants évangéliques ainsi que leurs alliés néo-Conservateurs défendent d’une même voix Israël. Si les néo-Conservateurs et le lobby pro-Israélien définissent une politique commune, les protestants évangéliques mobilisent leur électorat. L’alliance est ainsi très efficace ce dont atteste entre autres l’adoption de la loi International Religious Freedom Act ( Irfa). / How influent is the evangelical protestantism over american foreign policy? Evangelicals have established a lobby, in behalf of some well known evangelical pastors, not long after the enactment of the Civil Rights Act at the beginning of the seventies. Evangelicals traditionally more supportive of the democrats, chose therefore to give their votes to the republican party. Ronald Reagan, in close partnership with the neoconservatives, opened a space to the evangelicals while G.W. Bush while ruling the country, took into account their moral and religious considerations. Evangelical vote is a real issue for both parties in an election time. In the last decades, evangelicals have acquired an influent position in American politics along with their close allies, the neo-Conservatives and the Israël lobby, both of them defining a shared policy. On an international level, evangelicals along with neo-Conservatives are harsh defenders of Israel. Their partnership proved to be efficient, particularly concerning the enactment of the law International Religious Freedom Act ( Irfa) concerning religious freedom worldwide.

Submitted by SBI Biblioteca Digital (sbi.bibliotecadigital@puc-campinas.edu.br) on 2017-06-28T13:20:21Z No. of bitstreams: 1 EDUARDO VAGNER SANTOS SIM?ES.pdf: 1060941 bytes, checksum: ede4642d189ecc1b55282336c6853d25 (MD5) / Made available in DSpace on 2017-06-28T13:20:21Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 EDUARDO VAGNER SANTOS SIM?ES.pdf: 1060941 bytes, checksum: ede4642d189ecc1b55282336c6853d25 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2016-12-16 / The present research deals with the problematic of Latin American evangelical identity built from its historical issues in the second half of the 20th century. First, it shows the difficulties of the theme such as the semantic issue related to the term evangelical and the transdenominationality concerning the charismatic ways of living the Christian faith. It also briefly overviews the academic studies about protestantism and evangelicalism in which it fits. Then, it presents ways of dealing with the specific problematic of this research. In a second moment, this research faces the question regarding the political and religious field where Latin American evangelicalism develops its identity, presenting its major formative characters: Catholicism, ecumenism and fundamentalism. Last, it makes a discursive analysis of the final documents of the most important Latin American evangelical congresses, conferences, and the Lausanne Congress (1974). So Evangelicalism is seen like a historical product in close connection with the political, social and religious context of the studied decades. It is both fruit of fundamentalism, from which it develops its antiecumenism, as of the ecumenism, from which it inherits questions about the missiological praxis. / A presente pesquisa lida com a problem?tica da forma??o da identidade evangelical latino-americana a partir de seus contingentes hist?ricos na segunda metade do s?culo XX. Primeiro, exp?e as dificuldades relativas ao tema, tais como o problema sem?ntico ligado ? palavra evang?lico e a transdenominacionalidade ligada ?s formas carism?ticas de viv?ncia da f? crist?. Tamb?m faz um breve retrospecto do estudo acad?mico do protestantismo e do evangelicalismo no qual esta se insere. Ent?o apresenta caminhos para se tratar da problem?tica espec?fica desta pesquisa. Num segundo momento, trabalha com a quest?o do campo pol?tico-religioso no qual o evangelicalismo latino-americano desenvolve sua identidade, apresentando seus principais agentes informativos: o catolicismo, ecumenismo e fundamentalismo. Por fim, faz uma an?lise discursiva dos documentos finais dos principais congressos e confer?ncias evang?licas latino-americanas e do Congresso de Lausanne (1974). Assim, o Evangelicalismo ? visto como um produto hist?rico em ?ntima rela??o com o contexto pol?tico, social e religioso das d?cadas estudadas. ? fruto tanto fundamentalismo de onde desenvolve seu anti-ecumenismo, quando do ecumenismo do qual herda alguns questionamentos quanto ? pr?tica missiol?gica.

From a contemporary international perspective, there are two truly global religious movements of enormous vitality. One is a resurgent Islam, the other Pentecostal Protestantism. What makes the growth of Pentecostal Protestantism so fascinating is the fact that it’s transforming a region where the Catholic Church has for five centuries reigned supreme in its religious monopoly. While the first century of proselytizing in Latin America was relatively minute (constituting only 1 percent of the overall population in 1950), Pentecostalism began to show signs of its potential vitality in the 1960s and 1970s.2 Evangelical conversion became more pervasive in 1980s, and by the early 1990s church membership included over 50 million followers (11 percent of the population).3 Today there are over 90 million Protestants in Latin America, the vast majority of which are Pentecostal and Charismatic.4 What seemed like a seemingly insignificant movement before World War II has grown to include thirteen percent of the entire Latin American population.5 The six-fold growth of evangelicalism from the beginning to the end of the twentieth century has led many scholars like David Stoll to ask, “Is Latin America Turning Protestant?”6

This thesis describes the theology and praxis of philosopher/theologian Dr. Dallas Willard and its effect on contemporary forms of evangelicalism in America. Willard’s works have become increasingly attractive to emerging generations of Christians protesting the perceived excesses and hegemony of mainstream evangelical culture. Willard presents a positive alternative to contemporary versions of evangelicalism seen by many as increasingly devoted to soteriological escapism, modern consumerism, individualism and sectarianism. Alternatively, Willard proposes a return to the original (proto) message of good news (evangel) articulated by Jesus in the New Testament. For increasing numbers of disaffected evangelicals with postmodern sensibilities, this protoevangelical vision offers a more robust doctrine of God, a return to the primacy of discipleship to Christ, and the experience of a holistic and integrated life in the Kingdom of God. Ethnographies of four evangelical organizations applying Willardian theology provide insight into the current evolution within American evangelical theology and praxis.

No description available.

Among the British evangelicals of her day, Charlotte Elizabeth Browne Phelan Tonna was one of the most popular. She was an Anglican Evangelical Progressive who through her works of fiction, poetry, tracts, travel accounts, and essays dealing with theology, politics and social criticism convinced fellow evangelicals to get actively involved in the issues that concerned her.

This thesis explores how the Rapture fiction and popular prophecy of modern American premillennial dispensationalism shapes the eschatological beliefs of its readership. This will be accomplished through a text-based critical analysis of the anxiety narratives of the Bible study and exegetical guides of the Tim LaHaye Prophecy Library, and its counterpart, the Left Behind fiction series. This thesis represents the first scholarly analysis of the Tim LaHaye Prophecy Library, and the first situation of Left Behind fiction within its theological context. It will be proposed that these two sets of texts shape the eschatological beliefs of their readers through a discursive ‘streamlining’ that is performed in several ways. Firstly, the historical development of the movement will be examined, exploring the evolution of a specific premillennial dispensationalist hermeneutic and its ‘channelling’ through particular cultural institutions. Secondly, an analysis of the Tim LaHaye Prophecy Library and Left Behind fiction will demonstrate that this premillennial dispensationalist hermeneutic is almost exclusively communicated through anxiety narratives which focus on expressions of horror, isolation, powerlessness and paranoia. It will be argued that these narratives serve to explore ‘abjective’ elements of premillennial dispensationalist belief, re-integrating them into the fabric of the faith. Particular attention will be paid to these abjective elements, which include the role of the eschatological body, the nature of individual salvation, and the perpetual deferment of the Rapture. As such, the popular media of premillennial dispensationalism serves as a further channel for the discursive streamlining of the movement’s prophetic scheme. Finally, this thesis proposes that the ‘deprivation’ theory of millennial appeal does not adequately explain the appeal and success of premillennial dispensationalism. As such, the following analysis will suggest that an alternate critical analysis of the movement, concentrating on its tropes of anxiety, serves to better explain the continued appeal of this ideology.

The thesis uses the case study of the experience of middle-class northern white women in America during the period 1800-1860 to explore several issues of wider significance. Firstly, the research focuses upon the dynamic relationships between the culturally-constructed categories of public/formal and private/informal power and participation at both the practical and symbolic levels, suggesting ways in which they intersected on the lives of women. Secondly, consideration is given to the validity of the stereotyped view that 'domestic' women were necessarily disadvantaged and dominated relative to those who aspired to public political and economic roles. Thirdly, the relationship of religious belief to these two areas is discussed, in order to discover its relevance to the way in which women both perceived themselves and were perceived by others. In seeking to explore these issues, the research has analysed the patterns of social and cultural change in the era under question, indicating how those changes influenced the perceptions and experiences of both women and men. Their reactions in terms of discourse and activity are located as strategies of negotiation in redefining both social role and participation for the sexes. The rhetoric of 'separate spheres', which was used by men and women to order their mental and physical surroundings, is reduced to its symbolic constituents in order to illustrate that the distinction between male and female arenas was more perceptual than actual. The motivating forces behind the activities and ideas of women themselves are investigated to determine the role of religion in the construction of both female self-images and wider negotiational strategies. The context of nineteenth-century social dynamics has been revealed by detailed analysis of extensive primary sources originated by both women and men for private as well as public consumption. Feminist tools of analysis which enable the conceptualisation of 'meaningful discourse' as including female contributions have further enhanced the specific focus on how women constructed their own world-views and approaches to reality. 'Traditional' approaches and tools are shown to have seriously skewed and misrepresented the reality and variety of both discourse and female experience in the era. Great efforts have been made to allow women to speak in their own words. This has produced an insight into a richness of female social participation and discourse which would otherwise be obscured. The research indicates that women were indeed actors and negotiators during the period. Those women who advocated as primary the duties of women in the domestic and social arenas were by no means setting narrow limitations on female participation in both society and discourse. The religious impulses and eschatological frameworks derived by women (varied as they were) served to order and renegotiate reality and meaning, whilst they produced female roles and influence of great significance. Women were not passive victims of male oppression. Religion can thus be perceived as a positive force which women were able to approach both for its own sake, and for their own particular ends.