In the fifth part of the much acclaimed series The History of Christianity, Diarmaid MacCulloch makes sense of Protestant Evangelicalism,
Diarmaid MacCulloch traces the growth of an exuberant expression of faith that has spread across the globe – Evangelical Protestantism.
Today, it is associated with conservative politics, but the whole story is distinctly more unexpected. It is easily forgotten that the Evangelical explosion has been driven by a concern for social justice and the claim that one could stand in a direct emotional relationship with God.
It allowed the Protestant faith to burst its boundaries from its homeland in Europe. In America, its preachers marketed Christianity with all the flair and swashbuckling enterprise of American commerce. In Africa, it converted much of the continent by adapting to local traditions, and now it is expanding into Asia. But is Korean Pentecostalism and its message of prosperity in the here and now an adaptation too far?
To learn more about the development of Protestantism, you can watch it at this link – Protestant Evangelicalism
Diarmaid MacCulloch (born 31 October 1951, Kent, England) is Professor of the History of the Church at the University of Oxford (since 1997) and Fellow (formerly Senior Tutor) of St Cross College, Oxford (since 1995).
His book Reformation: Europe’s House Divided 1490–1700 (2003) won the 2004 National Book Critics Circle Award adding to his earlier success in carrying off the 1996 James Tait Black Memorial Prize for Thomas Cranmer: A Life. Christianity: the first 3000 years, was published in September 2009 with a related television series on BBC 4.
