Michael Adegoke

Evangelicalism entered the twentieth century as a contested word and exited it as a global network of megachurches, mission agencies, parachurch ministries, and political brands. Between those bookends lie the Fundamentalist-Modernist split, the neo-evangelical rebuilding of mid-century America, Billy Graham’s mass crusades, the Lausanne movement’s world congresses, Pentecostal and charismatic overlaps, and a demographic shift … Read More

When European empires retreated in the mid-twentieth century, the churches those empires had escorted—or at least tolerated—faced a legitimacy crisis and an opportunity. Mission compounds, foreign bishops, Western hymnbooks, and funding pipelines suddenly looked like political liabilities in new nations. Yet Christianity did not leave with the governors. In much of Africa, parts of Asia, … Read More

Between 1941 and 1945, Nazi Germany and its collaborators murdered approximately six million Jews in a campaign of industrialized genocide now called the Holocaust (Shoah). Christians were among the perpetrators, the bystanders, the rescuers, and the victims of related persecutions. For church history, the necessary question is not only what Hitler did, but how older … Read More

The two world wars of the twentieth century killed tens of millions, redrew empires, and tested every moral vocabulary the churches possessed. Christians fought on every major side. Chaplains blessed troops who shot at other chaplains’ flocks. Pacifists went to prison. National churches prayed for victory as if God wore a uniform. After 1918, disillusionment … Read More

In the decades around 1870–1920, a current of American Protestantism insisted that the kingdom of God required more than converted individuals. Factories, tenements, child labor, corrupt machines, and racial injustice were not merely “secular” problems; they were spiritual emergencies. Preachers and professors who shared this conviction built what historians call the Social Gospel—a reform movement … Read More

Between the 1890s and the 1930s, American Protestantism fought a civil war of pulpits, seminaries, and denominational assemblies. One side insisted that historic doctrines—biblical inspiration and inerrancy, the virgin birth, substitutionary atonement, bodily resurrection, and Christ’s literal second coming—were non-negotiable “fundamentals.” The other argued that Christianity must be restated for a scientific age: evolution, historical … Read More