The Gospel in the Whole World

The Gospel in the Whole World: Studies in International Evangelicalism explores how evangelicalism forged international connections, making it a global phenomenon. The movement has attracted attention in the United States in the recent past by its political role since 1979, but it is far from exclusively American in its support and its tradition goes back a long way into the past. Its roots are in the Evangelical Revival of the eighteenth century in Britain and America, but from an early date it attracted backers and adherents in continental Europe.

The types of connection between different lands varied. The best documented links were those created by the missionary impulse that marked the movement from an early stage. In the Anglo-American world, societies founded from 1792 onwards existed to spread the gospel to the uttermost parts of the earth, but other lands such as Germany participated in the missionary enterprise. There were also shifts of population that implanted an evangelical presence in countries of European settlement such as Australia. In addition there were efforts to transmit the evangelical message to the indigenous inhabitants of lands which came under Western authority. So migration and empire were major forces in the process of evangelical diffusion. Individuals, furthermore, could have a crucial role, for a movement that produced star preachers sent them to new lands.

The outcome was the implanting of evangelicalism in many parts of the world. Links were sometimes maintained by the resulting Christian communities over many decades, generating surprising similarities in different places, but striking contrasts between branches of the international movement also emerged. A multiform global phenomenon was the outcome.