Towards the Ends of the Earth: Exploring the Global History of American Evangelicalism, 1840-2010
University of Southampton, 23-25 April 2014

Inside and outside the United States the interest in the evangelical tradition in the US is growing. In recent years, the revival of religious history as a field has generated a body of fresh scholarship on evangelicals and their interventions in society, culture and politics. Historians and social scientists have also started to direct their attention to evangelical engagements with the world beyond the United States, in the form of missions, crusades and efforts to influence foreign policy. Recent publications like Ian Tyrrell’s Reforming the World: The Creation of America’s Moral Empire (2010), Mark Hutchinson and John Wolffe’s A Short History of Global Evangelicalism (2012), Andrew Preston’s Sword of the Spirit, Shield of Faith: Religion in American War and Diplomacy (2012) and Robert Wuthnow’s Boundless Faith: The Global Outreach of American Churches (2009) have led the way.

This conference seeks to build upon these pioneering studies by bringing together scholars from all continents to examine American evangelicals’ interactions with Asia, Africa, Europe, and South America in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. In particular, we wish to encourage research both into the domestic forces that have stimulated, facilitated and sustained (and sometimes limited) American evangelicals’ work in the wider world and into the patterns of reception and response within the overseas communities affected.

The keynote address at the conference will be delivered by Professor Melani McAlister, George Washington University.

The conference is organized by the Centre for Imperial and Post-Colonial Studies, University of Southampton, in co-operation with the David Bruce Centre for American Studies, Keele University, the Institute of North American Studies, King’s College London, and the Roosevelt Study Center, Middelburg, the Netherlands. The organizing committee comprises Dr. Kendrick Oliver (Southampton), Professor Axel Schäfer (Keele), Dr. Hans Krabbendam (RSC) and Dr. Uta Balbier (KCL).