The Evangelical Imagination: How Stories, Images, and Metaphors Created a Culture in Crisis
Christianity Today 2024 Book Award Finalist (Culture and the Arts)

Contemporary American evangelicalism is suffering from an identity crisis—and a lot of bad press.

In The Evangelical Imagination, acclaimed author Karen Swallow Prior analyzes the literature, art, and popular culture that has surrounded evangelicalism and unpacks some of the movement's most deeply held concepts, ideas, values, and practices.

She shows that understanding what the term "evangelical" means today means understanding not only evangelicalism's faith commitments but also the images, metaphors, assumptions, and stories that have cultivated evangelical culture.

Brought to life with color illustrations and paintings, this book explores ideas including
● conversion
● domesticity
● empire
● sentimentality
● and more

"Provides plenty of fodder for those wishing to explore what evangelicalism is and reimagine what it might become. It's an eye-opener."—Publishers Weekly

"Akin to enjoying a lively conversation over a cheering yet bracing cup of tea."—Christianity Today (5-star review)

"A breathtaking reminder of just how powerful the evangelical imagination has been and how much is lost when we forfeit it."—The Gospel Coalition
1142993311
The Evangelical Imagination: How Stories, Images, and Metaphors Created a Culture in Crisis
Christianity Today 2024 Book Award Finalist (Culture and the Arts)

Contemporary American evangelicalism is suffering from an identity crisis—and a lot of bad press.

In The Evangelical Imagination, acclaimed author Karen Swallow Prior analyzes the literature, art, and popular culture that has surrounded evangelicalism and unpacks some of the movement's most deeply held concepts, ideas, values, and practices.

She shows that understanding what the term "evangelical" means today means understanding not only evangelicalism's faith commitments but also the images, metaphors, assumptions, and stories that have cultivated evangelical culture.

Brought to life with color illustrations and paintings, this book explores ideas including
● conversion
● domesticity
● empire
● sentimentality
● and more

"Provides plenty of fodder for those wishing to explore what evangelicalism is and reimagine what it might become. It's an eye-opener."—Publishers Weekly

"Akin to enjoying a lively conversation over a cheering yet bracing cup of tea."—Christianity Today (5-star review)

"A breathtaking reminder of just how powerful the evangelical imagination has been and how much is lost when we forfeit it."—The Gospel Coalition
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The Evangelical Imagination: How Stories, Images, and Metaphors Created a Culture in Crisis

The Evangelical Imagination: How Stories, Images, and Metaphors Created a Culture in Crisis

by Karen Swallow Prior
The Evangelical Imagination: How Stories, Images, and Metaphors Created a Culture in Crisis

The Evangelical Imagination: How Stories, Images, and Metaphors Created a Culture in Crisis

by Karen Swallow Prior

Hardcover

$26.99 
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Overview

Christianity Today 2024 Book Award Finalist (Culture and the Arts)

Contemporary American evangelicalism is suffering from an identity crisis—and a lot of bad press.

In The Evangelical Imagination, acclaimed author Karen Swallow Prior analyzes the literature, art, and popular culture that has surrounded evangelicalism and unpacks some of the movement's most deeply held concepts, ideas, values, and practices.

She shows that understanding what the term "evangelical" means today means understanding not only evangelicalism's faith commitments but also the images, metaphors, assumptions, and stories that have cultivated evangelical culture.

Brought to life with color illustrations and paintings, this book explores ideas including
● conversion
● domesticity
● empire
● sentimentality
● and more

"Provides plenty of fodder for those wishing to explore what evangelicalism is and reimagine what it might become. It's an eye-opener."—Publishers Weekly

"Akin to enjoying a lively conversation over a cheering yet bracing cup of tea."—Christianity Today (5-star review)

"A breathtaking reminder of just how powerful the evangelical imagination has been and how much is lost when we forfeit it."—The Gospel Coalition

Product Details

ISBN-13: 9781587435751
Publisher: Baker Publishing Group
Publication date: 08/08/2023
Pages: 304
Sales rank: 391,605
Product dimensions: 5.60(w) x 8.60(h) x 1.20(d)

About the Author

Karen Swallow Prior (PhD, SUNY Buffalo), one of today's leading evangelical writers and commentators, is the award-winning author of On Reading Well: Finding the Good Life through Great Books. She is a frequent speaker, a monthly columnist at Religion News Service, and has written for Christianity Today, The Atlantic, the Washington Post, the New York Times, and Vox. She is a research fellow with Comment, a founding member of the Pelican Project, a senior fellow at the Trinity Forum, and a senior fellow at the International Alliance for Christian Education. Prior lives with her husband in central Virginia.

Table of Contents

Contents
Introduction: Victorians, Evangelicals, and the Invitation
1. Made in His Image
Imagination, Imaginaries, and Evangelicalisms
2. Awakening
Mumford, MLK, Hurston, Hughes, and Other Poets
3. Conversion
Language, Dr. Pepper, and Ebenezer Scrooge
4. Testimony
Grace Abounding and "Evangelically Speaking"
5. Improvement
The Puritan Work Ethic, Paradise Lost, and the Price of Progress
6. Sentimentality
Sweet Jesus, Uncle Tom, and Public Urination
7. Materiality
Jesus in the Window, the Virgin Mary on Grilled Cheese, Gingerbread Houses, and the Sacramentality of Church Space
8. Domesticity
Angels and Castles and Prostitutes, Oh My!
9. Empire
"The White Man's Burden," His Man Friday, the Jesus Nobody Knows, and What Johnny Cash Really Knew
10. Reformation
Pardon Me, Reckoning or Rip Van Winkle?
11. Rapture
Or How a Thief Came in the Night but Left My Chick Tracts Behind
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