Boundaries and traditions: defining American evangelicalism from 1965-1980

Wallace, Marissa Elizabeth

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https://hdl.handle.net/2142/93022 Copy

Description

Title

Boundaries and traditions: defining American evangelicalism from 1965-1980

Author(s)

Wallace, Marissa Elizabeth

Issue Date

2016-06-28

Director of Research (if dissertation) or Advisor (if thesis)

Murphy, John

Doctoral Committee Chair(s)

Murphy, John

Committee Member(s)

• Finnegan, Cara
• O’Gorman, Ned
• Ebel, Jonathan

Department of Study

Communication

Discipline

Communication

Degree Granting Institution

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Degree Name

Ph.D.

Degree Level

Dissertation

Keyword(s)

• evangelicalism
• rhetoric
• feminism
• social change
• race

Abstract

"Drawing from primary sources, including popular books and institutional archives, this dissertation explores how evangelical deliberations about social reform from 1965-1980 cast contesting definitions of evangelicalism. Each chapter identifies what evangelicals advocated, how they made those appeals, and the lines of fracture that split the movement. Ultimately, these historical fractures link to contemporary debates within evangelicalism that are still used to define and bound ""evangelical"" as an identity claim. This project is less about what led up to the Christian Right as a political power and more about a rhetorical issue of definition and the historical claims that articulated how evangelicals envisioned their role in America. Ideal models of evangelical identity manifested in three primary areas: individual reform, an ordered home, and a Christian nation. The first case study of this dissertation explores the tension between individual depravity and social inequality, out of which emerged an evangelical ideal that privileged personal piety over structural change. The second case study examines ""the woman question,"" or how evangelicals contested the home as a microcosm of divine order that either upheld hierarchical gender roles or functioned as a place to resist those roles. The final case study analyzes how evangelicals engaged and contested the myth of America as a Christian nation, examining the implications of that myth on race and poverty."

Graduation Semester

2016-08

Type of Resource

text

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http://hdl.handle.net/2142/93022

Copyright and License Information

Copyright 2016 Marissa Wallace

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