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.

The name of Andrew Alexander Bonar probably first brings to mind the book: Memoir or M'Cheyne. Many people remember him also as the beloved pastor and preacher of the Collace Church, and later of the Finnieston Church in Glasgow. It is often overlooked that he was regarded by his contemporaries as a respected writer on various subjects, and as a great moral influence in the Church. This thesis represents an attempt to investigate the life, work, and religious thought of Bonar, and to present the results of that investigation objectively, critically, and constructively.

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Thesis (MTh)--Stellenbosch University, 2010. / ENGLISH ABSTRACT: In essence this thesis attempts to answer two questions: Broadly, what is “fundamentalism,” and particularly, “evangelical fundamentalism”? Ever since the terrorist attacks on the twin towers in New York on September 11, 2001, “fundamentalism” has become a synonymous term for these and any other militant Islamist attacks. Yet fundamentalism is historically an American and Protestant phenomenon. However, because fundamentalism is not merely a Protestant phenomenon but more distinctively a “sub-species” of nineteenth century evangelicalism in America, and because one cannot historically separate fundamentalism from evangelicalism, I prefer to adopt the term “evangelical fundamentalism.” Yet there is more to the term than simply defining it appropriately within a certain historical context. For example, many conservative evangelicals can neither be labeled, historically or theologically, as “fundamentalists” nor as “evangelical fundamentalists.” Definitions change over time. An understanding of the movement’s history—its resistance to modernity and engagement with postmodernity— will need to be examined as it opens up more questions concerning its identity and theology. After summarizing its historical development and evolution, I emphasize the fact that a simple definition does not exist—the movement is too heterogeneous. I therefore identify and adopt a plurality of senses or perspectives to the term and to what it means to be an “evangelical fundamentalist” today. / AFRIKAANSE OPSOMMING: In essensie poog hierdie tesis om twee vrae te beantwoord: Breedweg, wat is “fundamentalisme,” en in die besonder, “evangeliese fundamentalisme”? Sedert die terroriste-aanval op die tweelingtorings in New York op 11 September 2001, het “fundamentalisme” ‘n sinonieme term geword vir hierdie en soortgelyke militante Islamitiese aanvalle. Tog is fundamentalisme histories ‘n Amerikaanse en Protestantse fenomeen/verskynsel. Omdat fundamentalisme egter nie slegs ‘n protestantse fenomeen is nie, maar meer spesifiek ‘n “sub-spesie” van neëntiende eeuse evangeliekalisme of evangeliesgesindheid in Amerika, en omdat fundamentalisme en evangeliekalisme histories nie van mekaar geskei kan word nie, verkies ek om die term “evangeliese fundamentalisme” aan te neem. Daar is egter meer aan die term as om dit eenvoudig toepaslik binne ‘n sekere historiese konteks te definieer. Vele evangeliesgesindes kan byvoorbeeld nie histories of teologies as “fundamentaliste” of “evangeliese fundamentaliste” geëtiketeer word nie. Definisies verander met verloop van tyd. ‘n Begrip van die beweging se gekiedenis – sy weerstand teen modernisme en sy verbintenis met postmodernisme – sal ondersoek moet word aangesien dit meer vrae omtrent sy identiteit en teologie aan die lig bring. Na ‘n opsomming van sy historiese ontwikkeling en evolusie, belkemtoon ek die feit dat ‘n eenvoudige definisie nie bestaan nie – die beweging is te heterogeen. Ek identifiseer en verbind daarom ‘n pluraliteit/verskeidenheid van perspektiewe met die term of begrip van wat dit beteken om vandag ‘n “evangeliese fundamentalis” te wees.

British religious revivalism in the mid nineteenth century is an undeniably neglected area of study; despite the widespread incidence of revivals, and the vast numbers of men, women and children embraced by evangelical churches, there exists no comprehensive analysis of revivals in these years. Similarly neglected - yet widely recognised as influential in the development of that revivalism - is the impact on the British evangelical community of American revivalistic ideas and practices. By examining the latter, and in particular the British itinerancies of American revivalists, this thesis offers an insight into the extent and organisation of British revivals in a generation when attitudes to conversion and revivals were undergoing fundamental changes. In the 1820s the majority of evangelicals were extremely reluctant to use anything other than the most traditional of 'means' to encourage revivals. By the time of the revival of 1859 a much more 'instrumentalist', calculated and promotional approach to conversion and church recruitment had taken hold. American example transmitted through publications, private letters and the work of visiting Anericans played a significant part in this transition. The main sources used for this study - especially biographies and autobiographies of major evangelical figures, revival sermons and addresses, and the great quarry of material in evangelical periodicals - have made it possible sympathetically, if not uncritically, to examine the evangelical world from within. They have suggested the need to recognise that there existed a world of conversion and revivals with a life of its own. The evangelical was always a member of a wider secular society as well as of his church; but for the most aggressively evangelistic the regeneration of himself and others was his primary object. Once this is understood, simple secular explanations of the outbreak of revivals - economic decline, or the onset of cholera - are seen to be inadequate} the causation of revivals was complex, but the evangelical's search for conversions and his constant expectation of widespread revival were always fundamental ingredients. Chapter one examines the origins of the more 'engineered', new measures revivalism in the United States in the early nineteenth century. It argues that the revival movement originating in upstate New York under the aegis of Charles Grandison Finney has been given too prominent a place in explaining the introduction of this new style revivalism, and that equally important was the stimulus provided by the fast-growing hyper-evangelistic Methodist churches. Moreover, much of this thrust came from urban centres and not, as has been generally assumed, from the frontier and western areas alone. The urban modifications in the methods and style of revivals (betterorganised agencies of conversion, growing refinement and decorum in worship, for instance) are examined, as are the problems of city churches facing a more heterogeneous population than in Protestant small-town America. The chapter concludes with a summary of the incidence of revivals in the generation up to 1857, noting the peaks of the late 1820s and early 1830s, the late 1830s and early 1840s, and the late 1850s; and asserting the everbroadening hold of the new measures during the period.

"Book People: Evangelical Books and the Making of Contemporary Evangelicalism" traces the conjoined histories of evangelical Christianity and evangelical book culture in the United States. Although existing studies of religion, media, and business have explored evangelical print culture in the nineteenth and twenty-first centuries, historians rarely have lent their attention to the century that intervenes. Addressing this historiographic silence, this dissertation's chapters move from the end of the nineteenth century to the present. These chapters center their narrative on the middle decades of this period, when ministerial and entrepreneurial evangelicals increasingly turned to books not only as tools of cultural and theological discipline but also as commercial opportunities. By the end of the century, the marketplace had molded evangelicalism into a constituency that everyone from ministers to scholars to politicians to suburban shoppers to international media conglomerates regularly imagined, addressed, and invoked. Drawing on such archival sources as business records, meeting minutes, advertisements, editorial correspondence, marketing plans, sermon collections, and interviews, "Book People" illustrates how contemporary evangelicalism and the contemporary evangelical book industry helped bring each other into being.

This thesis explores the development of missionary infrastructure in the Canadian north between approximately 1850 and 1915 and its impact on the evangelization of northern indigenous people by missionary organizations. Focussing on two groups of missionaries - the Catholic Oblates of Mary Immaculate and the Anglican Church Missionary Society - this thesis demonstrates how missionaries used buildings to develop a programme for evangelization based on the convert and civilize model prevalent in nineteenth-century global missions. It argues that the intent was to convert indigenous people to Christianity and to enact significant changes on their traditional way of life, including their economy and social structure. Within this programme, architectural spaces, specifically the mission station, were used as a frontier location where indigenous people and missionaries interacted, providing a location for missionary teaching, a didactic place to demonstrate how Christians lived, and a method of transforming what was viewed as a non-Christian wilderness into a Christian 'garden' through construction of buildings and control of the natural world. While these ideas were applied to diverse locations throughout the global mission field in the early modern period of missionary activity, the Canadian north presents a unique area of study for this topic because of the relative lack of pre-existing non-indigenous development in the region, the difficulties in building resulting from its environment, and the romantic approach that missionaries took to it as the frontier of European and Christian activity - in biblical terms, the 'uttermost ends of the earth'. Within this context, the use of architecture as part of a missionary programme of conversion and civilization became extremely important as a tool for the transformation of the land and its people to a Christian ideal rooted in European precedent. This proved problematic because of the inherent difficulties in evangelization in this geographic region. As a result, this thesis demonstrates how missionaries applied architecture within the mission station as a tool for evangelization in this region, taking into consideration both the way in which they perceived the territory and the realities they faced on the ground. It reveals how these missionaries created a unique set of architectures that responded to how missionaries understood building function within the missionary environment, as well as what was actually achievable in the northern mission field.

Aim.C. Peter Wagner is a well-known missiologist. In the late twentieth century Wagner became interested in the means by which the devil, as the enemy of God, obstructs the spread of the Gospel. Based on his reading of Daniel 10:13 [20-21], a passage referring to the prince of Persia, he concluded that the earth is ruled by Satan’s angels, whom he terms “territorial spirits.” The same chapter mentions other supernatural beings, Michael, one of the chief princes and the prince of Greece. In Wagner’s understanding Scripture reveals the existence of good and evil spirits having authority or control over specific geographical regions. Further, Wagner believed he had discovered why evangelism is ineffective in some locations - territorial spirits blind the minds of the populace and need to be bound spiritually to remove hindrances to the gospel’s reception. Wagner devised a prayer methodology called Strategic Level Spiritual Warfare (SLSW), to accelerate world evangelisation by strategically targeting designated cities or locations with aggressive prayer to disarm the spiritual powers of wickedness. SLSW depends for effectiveness on the associated practice of spiritual mapping,” entailing foundational research into an area’s historical and spiritual background preceding the prayer programme. Wagner believes SLSW to be both divinely revealed and empirically verifiable. The SLSW methodology spread with startling rapidity to many sectors of Christianity. SLSW became associated with Pentecostalism, and is now mistakenly assumed to be a Pentecostal teaching. This thesis aims to show this is inaccurate. Scope. C. Peter Wagner, an Evangelical, is associated with Third Wave groups who deliberately distance themselves from the Pentecostal label. Classical Pentecostalism is differentiated historically from the later Charismatic Renewal Movement. Third Wave groups are a separate more recent spiritual movement, sometimes known as neo-charismatics. Neither Wagner’s theological nor ecclesial location is Pentecostal, but this fact has not helped negate the mistaken assumption that his teaching originated within Pentecostalism. In order to demonstrate the difference between Wagner’s demonology and that of Pentecostalism, their respective interpretive methods need to be compared. This task was approached firstly by showing what comprises a Classical Pentecostal hermeneutic. Three distinctive principles were identified for a conventional Pentecostal reading of Scripture, namely: (1) the Protestant Reformation principle of Sola Scriptura, (2) a pneumatic approach to interpreting Scripture and (3) biblical revelation, not self-revelation, in the community of faith. In the past, Pentecostals depended on academic writings stemming from within Evangelicalism. This was a dependence of convenience, since historically Pentecostalism had no systematic theology, nor until comparatively recently a critically active academia. The disadvantage of this borrowing has been that Pentecostals have been obliged to filter out anti-Pentecostal bias evident in much Evangelical literature. The text Daniel 10:13 was then exegeted using these principles. This narrow focus is based on Wagner’s use of this text as the foundation of his demonology. Using a combined theological and literary approach, stances on reading the book of Daniel in general and Daniel 10:13 in particular were discussed. The relaxation of tensions between the factions which divided biblical scholarship for much of the twentieth century has allowed some cross-fertilization of ideas and methods, without reducing the ideological chasm separating the camps. The history of the text was recognised but meaning was sought more particularly from the form of the extant text. The results were tested against the principles of Pentecostal hermeneutics. Finally, Wagner’s writings on SLSW were appraised. His hermeneutical method was compared with the Pentecostal hermeneutical principles, the Pentecostal reading prepared from the exegesis, and the demonology of two Classical Pentecostal writers. Discussion of SLSW was confined to Wagner as the initiator of the concept. Wagner’s specific contribution has been in relating a hypothetical demonic hierarchy according to their perceived function (not simply the degree of power they may possess). He is well aware that his theory stands or falls on the issue of whether demonic spirits can legitimately be seen as occupying territories. Conclusions. Whilst some aspects of Wagner’s demonology and hermeneutic are held in common with that of Pentecostalism, the mistaken identification of SLSW as Pentecostal has led to confusion. Notwithstanding Wagner’s high view of Scripture and enthusiasm for evangelism, the hermeneutic employed in his interpretation of Dan 10:13 is not consistent with that of Classical Pentecostalism. The conclusion reached was that C. Peter Wagner’s teaching on SLSW should not be labelled Pentecostal.

Thesis (M.A.)-- Wheaton College Graduate School, 2005. / Abstract. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 91-99).

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Notre Dame, 2007. / Thesis directed by George Marsden for the Department of History. "July 2007." Includes bibliographical references (leaves 420-442).