Church History

In July 1974, thousands of evangelical leaders gathered in Lausanne, Switzerland, for the International Congress on World Evangelization. The meeting—closely associated with Billy Graham’s networks and with John Stott’s theological drafting influence—produced the Lausanne Covenant, a defining charter for late-twentieth-century evangelical mission. The “Lausanne Movement” that followed became less a denomination than a platform: congresses, … Read More

“Prosperity gospel” is a contested label for teachings that link Christian faith—often via positive confession, seed offerings, and destiny rhetoric—to material wealth, health, and success. Admirers call it faith for abundant life; critics call it exploitation baptized. Historians should do something harder than cheering or jeering: trace where the teachings came from, how they traveled, … Read More

Modern human rights language—equal dignity, freedom of conscience, limits on torture, claims against arbitrary power—feels secular in the United Nations General Assembly and in courtrooms that cite treaties rather than Gospels. Yet the genealogy of those ideas runs repeatedly through Christian moral vocabulary, church law, and Christian political conflict. The relationship is not a simple … Read More

For a century, social theorists treated Europe as the preview of a religiousless world. Factories, universities, welfare states, and Sunday football would finish what Voltaire began. Then global Christianity surged elsewhere, American religiosity refused to die on schedule, and even European maps looked patchier than the theory allowed: empty pews in the Netherlands beside crowded … 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

In 1900, Christianity looked, to many Western observers, like a European religion with overseas colonies of faith. By the early twenty-first century, the typical Christian was more likely to live in the Global South—Africa, Latin America, parts of Asia—than in Europe. Seminaries in Rome and Canterbury still mattered; growth engines in Lagos, São Paulo, Seoul, … 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

For much of Christian history, official speech about other religions oscillated between mission, polemic, and temporary truce. The Second Vatican Council (1962–65) marked a public turning for the Catholic Church: other religions were to be approached with respect, Jews were not to be charged with collective guilt for the crucifixion, and dialogue became a pastoral … 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

A megachurch is usually defined by weekly attendance in the thousands—often 2,000 or more—gathered under a single congregation’s identity, frequently with multiple services, campuses, and media arms. The word sounds American, and the United States did pioneer and brand the form. Yet huge congregations also thrived in Seoul, Lagos, São Paulo, and Singapore. Critics see … Read More