Deep Church

It’s taken me a few weeks to collect the books I need for my next tranche of PhD reading.  This Autumn/Fall I’ll be exploring the development of the modern evangelical church and the relationship of the individual to the market, consumerism and ecclesiology.

This will form my chapter one of my PhD.   I am going to explore the question of whether evangelicalism is a creature of modernity, and response to industrialism. I’ll be trying to provide an historical account of how much the evangelical church is a carrier and distributor of the market.

I’ll be trying to do that with a general historical account of the last couple of hundred years then some examples of specific cases studies of evangelical groups, such as methodism and the salvation army. I’ll also explore how unlike these movements later renewal movements don’t take determinate social forms.

In other words whereas previous forms of evangelicalism led to forms of church that ordered the rest of life, later renewal movements had no corresponding exploration of polity, or ceded that to the nature of the market and secularism. Or at least I’ll be trying to see if that was the case. Ultimately I’ll be asking if the emerging church ecclesiology lacks any determinative social forms, and if this is a continuing detriment to christian identity and formation.

This account, I expect will be a mixed bag, of how the church resisted the logic of the market and how it succumbed to it. Evangelicalism has an under-told story of it’s relationship to the market, that I want to uncover.

Below is the initial list of books I’ll be exploring.  If you know any others, do let me know.

Bebbington, D. W. Evangelicalism in Modern Britain : A History from the 1730’s to the 1980’s: Unwin Hyman, 1989.

Butler, Jon. Awash in a Sea of Faith : Christianizing the American People: Harvard University Press, 1990.

Hatch, Nathan O. The Democratization of American Christianity: Yale University Press, 1989.

Haykin, Michael A. G., and Kenneth J. Stewart. The Emergence of Evangelicalism : Exploring Historical Continuities. Nottingham: Inter-Varsity Press, 2008.

Haykin, Michael A. G., Kenneth J. Stewart, and Timothy George. The Advent of Evangelicalism : Exploring Historical Continuities. Nashville, Tenn.: B & H Academic, 2008.

Hempton, David. Religion and Political Culture in Britain and Ireland : From the Glorious Revolution to the Decline of Empire. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996.

________. The Religion of the People : Methodism and Popular Religion C. 1750-1900. London: Routledge, 1996.

Hilton, Boyd. The Age of Atonement : The Influence of Evangelicalism on Social and Economic Thought, 1785-1865: Clarendon Press, 1991.

Noll, Mark A. The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind. Grand Rapids, Mich.: W.B. Eerdmans, 1994.

________. The Work We Have to Do : A History of Protestants in America. New York: Oxford University Press, 2002.

________. The Rise of Evangelicalism : The Age of Edwards, Whitefield and the Wesleys A History of Evangelicalism. Nottingham: IVP, 2004.

________. America’s God : From Jonathan Edwards to Abraham Lincoln. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005.

________. The New Shape of World Christianity: How American Experience Reflects Global Faith. Downers Grove, Ill.: Intervarsity Press, 2009.

Wolffe, John. The Expansion of Evangelicalism : The Age of Wilberforce, More, Chalmers and Finney A History of Evangelicalism V. 2. Downers Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity Press, 2007.