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Skillfully blending painstaking research, telling anecdotes, and astute analysis, Carpenter - a scholar who has spent twenty years studying American evangelicalism reveals that, contrary to the popular opinion of the day, fundamentalism was alive and well in America in the late 1920s, and used its isolation over the next two decades to build new strength from within. The book describes how fundamentalists developed a pervasive network of organizations outside of the church setting and quietly strengthened the movement by creating their own schools and oragnizations, may of which are prominent today, including Fuller Theological Seminary and the publishing and radio enterprises of the Moody Bible Institute. Fundamentalists also used youth movements, missionary work and, perhaps most significantly, the burgeoning mass media industry to spread their message, especially through the powerful new medium of radio. Indeed, starting locally and growing to national broadcasts, evangelical preachers reached millions of listeners over the airwaves, in much the same way evangelists preach through television today. All this activity received no publicity outside of fundamentalist channels until Billy Graham burst on the scene in 1949. Carpenter vividly recounts how the charismatic preacher began packing stadiums with tens of thousands of listeners daily, drawing fundamentalism firmly back into the American consciousness after twenty years of public indifference. Alongside this vibrant history, Carpenter also offers many insights into fundamentalism during this period, and he describes many of the heated internal debates over issues of scholarship, separatism, and the role of women in leadership. Perhaps most important, he shows that the movement has never been stagnant or purely reactionary. It is based on an evolving ideology subject to debate, and dissension: a theology that adapts to changing times.

This book deals with the structure and identity of American Protestantism in the 20th century, calling for a more nuanced, sophisticated profile than the standard bipolar model placing fundamentalism at one end and liberalism at the other.k

An acclaimed music critic strips away the myths shrouding "Jazz's Angry Man, " in "the best examination yet of an American original" ("The Washington Post").

Contrary to popular impressions, the days of the missionary are far from over. North American churches send more missionaries than ever before, and 90 percent of them are evangelicals who are not affiliated with the mainline Protestant mission boards. The first major historical treatment of the distinctly evangelical wing of twentieth-century American missions, Earthen Vessels truly breaks new ground. Covering territory that missions histories have scarcely explored yet, the distinguished historians contributing to this volume portray the North American (including Canadian) evangelical missionary enterprise from the Student Volunteer Movement to the very recent past. The book traces the influences of premillennial eschatology, the fundamentalist-modernist controversies, the rise of independent missions and conservative denominational boards, the role of World War II and America's rise to world power, the recent development of a distinctly evangelical theology of missions, and the growing influence of the Two-Thirds World's evangelical leaders. While this volume certainly does not contain the last word on these subjects, in a number of areas it does offer very nearly the first look. With its fresh subject matter and new historical interpretations, Earthen Vessels will interest church history scholars and students, missionaries and ministers, and any others who wish to know more about American missions.

Over the past seventy years, World Vision has grown from a small missionary agency to the largest Christian humanitarian organization in the world, with 40,000 employees, offices in nearly one hundred countries, and an annual budget of over $2 billion. While founder Bob Pierce was an evangelist with street smarts, the most recent World Vision U.S. presidents move with ease between megachurches, the boardrooms of Fortune 500 companies, and the corridors of Capitol Hill. Though the organization has remained decidedly Christian, it has earned the reputation as an elite international nongovernmental organization managed efficiently by professional experts fluent in the language of both marketing and development. God's Internationalists is the first comprehensive study of World Vision—or any such religious humanitarian agency. In chronicling the organization's transformation from 1950 to the present, David P. King approaches World Vision as a lens through which to explore shifts within post-World War II American evangelicalism as well as the complexities of faith-based humanitarianism. Chronicling the evolution of World Vision's practices, theology, rhetoric, and organizational structure, King demonstrates how the organization rearticulated and retained its Christian identity even as it expanded beyond a narrow American evangelical subculture. King's pairing of American evangelicals' interactions abroad with their own evolving identity at home reframes the traditional narrative of modern American evangelicalism while also providing the historical context for the current explosion of evangelical interest in global social engagement. By examining these patterns of change, God's Internationalists offers a distinctive angle on the history of religious humanitarianism.