Discussion of Evangelicalism is everywhere these days but rarely does the discussion go beyond theological beliefs or politics. Dr. Adkins seeks to explore the material and embodied impact of Evangelicalism, particularly its revolutionary impact during the Great Awakening. How can such an exploration of our religious past help understand and better define the current state of Evangelicalism in America?
"Space, Sound, & the Body in American Evangelicalism" with Dr. Tucker Adkins
Evangelicals are perhaps the most discussed group in American Christianity, but such conversations often revolve around two distinctions: politics and theology. Evangelicals vote this way, and evangelicals believe these things. In this way, we typically cast evangelicalism as longstanding, identifiable sets of ideological and doctrinal convictions that steer conservative voting blocs and vaguely underpin “born-again” belief. By contrast, this lecture urges us to consider how the physical world—especially space, sound, and the body—have always distinguished so-called “evangelicals” from other Christians in the United States.
Paying particular attention to its early American figures, this presentation asserts that “evangelicalism” first took shape through revivalists’ manipulation of their bodies, voices, and terrain. Black, white, and indigenous people who received the “new birth” made their movement legible on the landscape, by expelling “frightfull Shrieks & groans” during their preachers’ cutting sermons, gathering outside of consecrated church spaces, and succumbing to uncontrollable bodily “exercises.” By foregrounding examples of evangelicals’ physical, lived religious experiences, we find that their controversial choreography of space, sound, and the body—not just what they believed—radically redefined what it meant to be Protestant in America.
Dr. Tucker Adkins teaches religious history at Calvin University in Grand Rapids, MI. His focus is on religious experience and lay spirituality in the early modern British Atlantic world.