American Evangelicals - A History Podcast | Podcast Guru

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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.

Recent Episodes

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...

42 MIN

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...

39 MIN

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...

64 MIN

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...

64 MIN

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...

74 MIN