The American Evangelical Story Quotes

“To this day, the vast majority of black Christians are Baptists, and this is not a coincidence. White Baptists proved most aggressive in gospel missions to slaves. Their spiritual dynamism, populism, and extemporary preaching attracted large numbers of Africans in the early United States.”
― Douglas A. Sweeney, The American Evangelical Story: A History of the Movement

“Of course, there were other motives as well for their migration to the New World. But many believed that Native Americans had descended from ancient Israel—from the “ten lost tribes” dispersed soon after the exile in the Old Testament—and that their salvation was a necessary component of the conversion of “all Israel” that would precede the return of Christ (Rom. 11:11–36).”
― Douglas A. Sweeney, The American Evangelical Story: A History of the Movement

“Despite all this schism, Wesleyan Methodism continued to grow by leaps and bounds throughout the nineteenth century, bringing Arminian views to the mainstream of American evangelicalism.”
― Douglas A. Sweeney, The American Evangelical Story: A History of the Movement

“fact, he traveled nonstop for nearly forty-five years, covering three hundred thousand miles on horseback, crossing the Appalachian Mountains more than sixty times in the process, preaching sixteen thousand sermons, and ordaining four thousand Methodist preachers. He had no home—literally—and once told an English friend to address all future letters to him “in America.”
― Douglas A. Sweeney, The American Evangelical Story: A History of the Movement

“Most prodigious by far was the growth of the Baptists and the Methodists. Scholars estimate that at the outbreak of the American Revolution there were 494 Baptist congregations in the colonies. By 1795, this number had more than doubled to 1,152, and Baptists were poised to exert an enormous influence on the church of the next century. They proved most powerful in the South and on the ever-expanding frontier,”
― Douglas A. Sweeney, The American Evangelical Story: A History of the Movement

“On the eve of the Revolution in 1776, more than half of the nation’s churchgoers went to Congregational, Presbyterian, and Anglican worship services—and supported the legal establishment of their churches. By 1850, though, these denominations contained fewer than 20 percent of churchgoers, while evangelical communities predominated the landscape. Baptists and Methodists alone comprised over half of the nation’s attenders.”
― Douglas A. Sweeney, The American Evangelical Story: A History of the Movement

“On the one hand, disestablishment led to an exponential increase in religious institutions, none of which was able to claim a legally sanctioned cultural authority. On the other hand, it deregulated the religious marketplace, enabling new ministry groups to flourish like never before.”
― Douglas A. Sweeney, The American Evangelical Story: A History of the Movement

“As Whitefield declared to a friend in May of 1742, “If the Lord gives us a true catholic spirit, free from a party sectarian zeal, we shall do well . . . for I am persuaded, unless we all are content to preach Christ, and to keep off from disputable things, wherein we differ, God will not bless us long. If we act otherwise, however we may talk of a catholic spirit, we shall only be bringing people over to our own party, and there fetter them. I pray the Lord to keep . . . me from such a spirit.”[14] In the 1740s, thousands of others began to pray in this way too.”
― Douglas A. Sweeney, The American Evangelical Story: A History of the Movement

“11, 1729, Stoddard passed away, leaving the twenty-five-year-old Edwards the sole pastor of a church that boasted nearly seven hundred members. Edwards soon led a revival there that anticipated the Awakening. In 1734, and while still in his early thirties, he began to preach a lengthy sermon series on justification by faith (based on his master’s thesis at Yale), which was by now a major doctrine of the emergent evangelicals. Before he knew it, revival broke out, and hundreds of locals experienced conversion.”
― Douglas A. Sweeney, The American Evangelical Story: A History of the Movement