Grant Wacker

This volume traces the history of Oneness Pentecostalism in North America. It maps the major ideas, arguments, periodization, and historical figures; corrects long-standing misinterpretations; and draws attention to how race and gender impacted the growth and trajectories of this movement. Oneness Pentecostalism emerged in the aftermath of the Azusa Street Revival (1906–9), baptizing its members in the name of Jesus Christ rather than the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, and splintering from trinitarian Pentecostals. With its rapid growth throughout the twentieth century, especially among ethnic minorities, Oneness Pentecostalism assumed a diversity of theological, ethnic, and cultural expressions. This book reckons with the multiculturalism of the movement over the course of the twentieth century. While common interpretations tend to emphasize the restorationist impulse of Oneness Pentecostalism, leading to notions of a static, unchanging movement, the contributors to this work demonstrate that the movement is much more fluid and that the interpretation of its history and theology should be grounded in the variegated North American contexts in which Oneness Pentecostalism has taken root and dynamically developed.Groundbreaking and interdisciplinary, this volume presents diverse perspectives on a significant religious movement whose modern origins are embedded within the larger Pentecostal story. It will be welcomed by religious studies scholars and by practitioners of Oneness Pentecostalism.In addition to the editors, the contributors to this volume are Daniel Chiquete, Dara Coleby Delgado, Patricia Fortuny-Loret de Mola, Manuel Gaxiola, David A. Reed, Rosa Sailes, and Daniel Segraves.

Christianity Today 2020 Book Award of Merit in History/Biography For more than five decades Billy Graham (1918-2018) ranked as one of the most influential voices in the Christian world. Nearly 215 million people around the world heard him preach in person or through live electronic media, almost certainly more than any other person. For millions, Graham was less a preacher than a Protestant saint. While remaining orthodox at the core, over time his approach on many issues became more irenic and progressive. And his preaching continued to resonate, propelled by his powerful promise of a second chance. Drawing on decades of research on Billy Graham and American evangelicalism, Grant Wacker has marshalled personal interviews, archival research, and never-before-published photographs from the Graham family and others to tell the remarkable story of one of the most celebrated Christians in American history. Where Wacker's previous work on Graham, America's Pastor, focused on the preacher's relation to the nation's culture, One Soul at a Time offers a sweeping, easy-to-read narrative of the life of the man himself.

This volume traces the history of Oneness Pentecostalism in North America. It maps the major ideas, arguments, periodization, and historical figures; corrects long-standing misinterpretations; and draws attention to how race and gender impacted the growth and trajectories of this movement. Oneness Pentecostalism emerged in the aftermath of the Azusa Street Revival (1906–9), baptizing its members in the name of Jesus Christ rather than the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, and splintering from trinitarian Pentecostals. With its rapid growth throughout the twentieth century, especially among ethnic minorities, Oneness Pentecostalism assumed a diversity of theological, ethnic, and cultural expressions. This book reckons with the multiculturalism of the movement over the course of the twentieth century. While common interpretations tend to emphasize the restorationist impulse of Oneness Pentecostalism, leading to notions of a static, unchanging movement, the contributors to this work demonstrate that the movement is much more fluid and that the interpretation of its history and theology should be grounded in the variegated North American contexts in which Oneness Pentecostalism has taken root and dynamically developed.Groundbreaking and interdisciplinary, this volume presents diverse perspectives on a significant religious movement whose modern origins are embedded within the larger Pentecostal story. It will be welcomed by religious studies scholars and by practitioners of Oneness Pentecostalism.In addition to the editors, the contributors to this volume are Daniel Chiquete, Dara Coleby Delgado, Patricia Fortuny-Loret de Mola, Manuel Gaxiola, David A. Reed, Rosa Sailes, and Daniel Segraves.

For more than five decades Billy Graham (1918-2018) ranked as one of the most influential voices in the Christian world. Nearly 215 million people around the world heard him preach in person or through live electronic media, almost certainly more than any other person. For millions, Graham was less a preacher than a Protestant saint. While remaining orthodox at the core, over time his approach on many issues became more irenic and progressive. And his preaching continued to resonate, propelled by his powerful promise of a second chance. Drawing on decades of research on Billy Graham and American evangelicalism, Grant Wacker has marshalled personal interviews, archival research, and never-before-published photographs from the Graham family and others to tell the remarkable story of one of the most celebrated Christians in American history. Where Wacker's previous work on Graham, America's Pastor, focused on the preacher's relation to the nation's culture, One Soul at a Time offers a sweeping, easy-to-read narrative of the life of the man himself.

At the end of the nineteenth century, Augustus Strong emerged as one of the most influential church leaders and theologians in America. But, as Grant Wacker reveals in this masterful study, Strong also proved to be as tragic a figure as he was influential. Strong was forced to choose between conceptual worlds that were, to him, equally incompatible and compelling. Strong wrestled with how the critical study of history, exemplified in the method commonly called ""historicism"" (or ""historical consciousness""), can be reconciled with the many ahistorical assumptions embedded in the claims of traditional Christianity. Is the notion of human sinfulness, for example, simply an artifact of time and place? Or does it carry an underlying truth that endures, independent of the biblical context and interpretation of classic Christian thinkers? Strong acquired a historical awareness considered rare among conservative scholars. Despite cultivating this historical sensibility, he struggled with its implications. In the end, Wacker writes, Strong ""clung to the conviction that the faith once delivered unto the fathers somehow stands above the vicissitudes of history, even as he became increasingly conscious that all things human are fragile creations of time and place."" This edition, complete with a new preface, reveals why Strong remains relevant today. Strong, though a man of his time, illustrates the perennial conflict created by competing interests of theology and history, a conflict that still torments those who seek to be faithful to the obligations of both the church and academy.

At the end of the nineteenth century, Augustus Strong emerged as one of the most influential church leaders and theologians in America. But, as Grant Wacker reveals in this masterful study, Strong also proved to be as tragic a figure as he was influential. Strong was forced to choose between conceptual worlds that were, to him, equally incompatible and compelling. Strong wrestled with how the critical study of history, exemplified in the method commonly called ""historicism"" (or ""historical consciousness""), can be reconciled with the many ahistorical assumptions embedded in the claims of traditional Christianity. Is the notion of human sinfulness, for example, simply an artifact of time and place? Or does it carry an underlying truth that endures, independent of the biblical context and interpretation of classic Christian thinkers? Strong acquired a historical awareness considered rare among conservative scholars. Despite cultivating this historical sensibility, he struggled with its implications. In the end, Wacker writes, Strong ""clung to the conviction that the faith once delivered unto the fathers somehow stands above the vicissitudes of history, even as he became increasingly conscious that all things human are fragile creations of time and place."" This edition, complete with a new preface, reveals why Strong remains relevant today. Strong, though a man of his time, illustrates the perennial conflict created by competing interests of theology and history, a conflict that still torments those who seek to be faithful to the obligations of both the church and academy.

During a career spanning sixty years, the Reverend Billy Graham’s resonant voice and chiseled profile entered the living rooms of millions of Americans with a message that called for personal transformation through God’s grace. How did a lanky farm kid from North Carolina become an evangelist hailed by the media as “America’s pastor”? Why did listeners young and old pour out their grief and loneliness in letters to a man they knew only through televised “Crusades” in faraway places like Madison Square Garden? More than a conventional biography, Grant Wacker’s interpretive study deepens our understanding of why Billy Graham has mattered so much to so many.Beginning with tent revivals in the 1940s, Graham transformed his born-again theology into a moral vocabulary capturing the fears and aspirations of average Americans. He possessed an uncanny ability to appropriate trends in the wider culture and engaged boldly with the most significant developments of his time, from communism and nuclear threat to poverty and civil rights. The enduring meaning of his career, in Wacker’s analysis, lies at the intersection of Graham’s own creative agency and the forces shaping modern America.Wacker paints a richly textured portrait: a self-deprecating servant of God and self-promoting media mogul, a simple family man and confidant of presidents, a plainspoken preacher and the “Protestant pope.” America’s Pastor reveals how this Southern fundamentalist grew, fitfully, into a capacious figure at the center of spiritual life for millions of Christians around the world.

"Quite ambitious, tracing religion in the United States from European colonization up to the 21st century.... The writing is strong throughout."--Publishers Weekly (starred review) "One can hardly do better than Religion in American Life.... A good read, especially for the uninitiated. The initiated might also read it for its felicity of narrative and the moments of illumination that fine scholars can inject even into stories we have all heard before. Read it."--Church History This new edition of Religion in American Life, written by three of the country's most eminent historians of religion, offers a superb overview that spans four centuries, illuminating the rich spiritual heritage central to nearly every event in our nation's history. Beginning with the state of religious affairs in both the Old and New Worlds on the eve of colonization and continuing through to the present, the book covers all the major American religious groups, from Protestants, Jews, and Catholics to Muslims, Hindus, Mormons, Buddhists, and New Age believers. Revised and updated, the book includes expanded treatment of religion during the Great Depression, of the religious influences on the civil rights movement, and of utopian groups in the 19th century, and it now covers the role of religion during the 2008 presidential election, observing how completely religion has entered American politics.

Tours the ever-shifting landscape of nineteenth-century America, reflecting the constant change of religious life in that century.

In this lively history of the rise of pentecostalism in the United States, Grant Wacker gives an in-depth account of the religious practices of pentecostal churches as well as an engaging picture of the way these beliefs played out in daily life. The core tenets of pentecostal belief—personal salvation, Holy Ghost baptism, divine healing, and anticipation of the Lord’s imminent return—took root in the first quarter of the twentieth century. Wacker examines the various aspects of pentecostal culture, including rituals, speaking in tongues, the authority of the Bible, the central role of Jesus in everyday life, the gifts of prophecy and healing, ideas about personal appearance, women’s roles, race relations, attitudes toward politics and the government. Tracking the daily lives of pentecostals, and paying close attention to the voices of individual men and women, Wacker is able to identify the reason for the movement’s spectacular success: a demonstrated ability to balance idealistic and pragmatic impulses, to adapt distinct religious convictions in order to meet the expectations of modern life. More than twenty million American adults today consider themselves pentecostal. Given the movement’s major place in American religious life, the history of its early years—so artfully told here—is of central importance.

Accessible and wide-ranging, Religion in American Life illuminates the rich spiritual heritage central to nearly every event in American history. Jon Butler begins by describing the state of religious affairs in both the Old and New Worlds on the eve of colonization. He traces the progress of religion in the colonies through the time of the American Revolution, covering all the religious groups in the colonies: Protestants, Jews, Catholics, as well as the unique religious experiences of Native Americans and African Americans Grant Wacker continues the story with a fascinating look at the ever-shifting religious landscape of 19th-century America. He focuses on the rapid growth of evangelical Protestants-Methodists, Presbyterians, Baptists, and others-and their competition for dominance over religions such as Catholicism and Judaism, which continued to increase with large immigrant arrivals from Ireland, Eastern Europe, and other countries. The 20th century saw massive cultural changes. Randall Balmer discusses the effects industrialization, modernization, and secularization had on new and established religions. He examines Protestants, Hindus, Jews, New Age believers, Mormons, Buddhists, Roman Catholics, and many more, providing a clear look into the kaleidoscope of religious belief in modern-day America