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by Isaac B. Sharp (Author), David P. Gushee (Foreword)
What’s the first thing that comes to mind when you hear “evangelical”?
For many, the answer is “white,” “patriarchal,” “conservative,” or “fundamentalist”—but as Isaac B. Sharp reveals, the “big tent” of evangelicalism has historically been much bigger than we’ve been led to believe. In The Other Evangelicals, Sharp brings to light the stories of those twentieth-century evangelicals who didn’t fit the mold, including Black, feminist, progressive, and gay Christians.
Though the binary of fundamentalist evangelicals and modernist mainline Protestants is taken for granted today, Sharp demonstrates that fundamentalists and modernists battled over the title of “evangelical” in post–World War II America. In fact, many ideologies characteristic of evangelicalism today, such as “biblical womanhood” and political conservatism, arose only in reaction to the popularity of evangelical feminism and progressivism. Eventually, history was written by the “winners”—the Billy Grahams of American religion—while the “losers” were expelled from the movement via the establishment of institutions such as the National Association of Evangelicals.
Carefully researched and deftly written, The Other Evangelicals offers a breath of fresh air for scholars seeking a more inclusive history of religion in America.
EDUCATION
B.A., Carson-Newman College
M.Div., Mercer University
M.Phil., Union Theological Seminary
Ph.D., Union Theological Seminary
Isaac B. Sharp is the Director of Certificate Programming and Visiting Professor. He graduated from Union Theological Seminary with a Ph.D. in Social Ethics, with a minor emphasis in Religious Studies, in May 2019.
Dr. Sharp’s current research focuses on the theology, ethics, and history of U.S. American evangelicalism. His dissertation, “The Other Evangelicals,” develops an alternative reading of 20th-century evangelicalism from the point of view of some of the most marginalized, minoritized, and frequently overlooked constituencies in recent evangelical history in order to demonstrate how American evangelical identity became so closely associated with only its most politically conservative, religiously narrow, and culturally white claimants.
Dr. Sharp is the co-editor of Evangelical Ethics: A Reader in the Library of Theological Ethics series (Westminster John Knox, 2015) as well as the forthcoming Christian Ethics in Conversation (Wipf & Stock, 2020).
Prior to his doctoral studies at Union, Dr. Sharp received the B.A. with Honors in Religion from Carson-Newman College, where he served as an Oxford Studies Fellow, conducting research in British Baptist history at Regent’s Park College, Oxford University, and an M.Div. with an emphasis in Christian Ethics from the McAfee School of Theology, Mercer University, in Atlanta, GA.
More Pending
