Religion & the Public Sphere

Who are evangelicals?

"Just who are America’s evangelicals?," Joel Carpenter recently asked at The Immanent Frame. While the media's recent discussion of "the evangelical vote" generally has assumed that the answer to Carpenter's question is self-evident, the category is highly contested. Recognizing that the category's complexities rarely receive sustained critical attention in either academic or public forums, The Immanent Frame has invited a diverse range of scholars to air out critical issues surrounding what politicians, journalists, scholars and even evangelicals themselves mean when they refer to "evangelicals" and "evangelicalism." Some contributors have offered their own answers to Carpenter's question, while others have focused more on evangelicalism outside of the United States. Together, posts by sociologists, historians, and theologians such as Nancy Ammerman, Brian Howell, Paul Lichterman, John Schmalzbauer, David Smilde, James K.A. Smith, and Corwin Smidt not only unsettle common assumptions about who evangelicals are, but also shed light on how the "evangelical" category has been used to position people institutionally and historically.

To read the full discussion on "Evangelicals and Evangelicalisms," visit The Immanent Frame.