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The first part of chapter 4 addresses several of the most pressing critical challenges to Frei's work leveled by evangelical theologians. The first is that he forgoes all concern for whether or not the biblical accounts of Jesus do, in fact, truly correspond to actual historical events. The second is that Frei reduces the biblical witness to a self-contained literary world. The second part of chapter 4 reassesses the Barthian dimensions of Frei's work in light of the potentially devastating criticism that Frei's reading of Karl Barth is decidedly undialectical, inordinately stressing the role of analogy therein, and that this deficiency has been transmitted to many of the so-called "American neo-Barthians" (or "postliberals") influenced by Frei. The argument critically retrieves material from Frei's dissertation, his earliest publications, and recently circulated material from his unpublished archival papers in order to make the case that Frei identified a complex interrelation of dialectic and analogy in Barth's theology dating back as far as the second edition of Barth's Romans commentary and reaching forward into the Church Dogmatics.

Chapter four focuses on Gloria Gaither, the principal lyricist in the Gaither duo and the chief scriptwriter for most Homecoming videos and products. Gloria is a monumental yet marginal presence in the Homecoming world, as are her theological contributions. The chapter explores how Gloria—as woman, as artist—simultaneously expands and fortifies the boundaries of Homecoming evangelicalism and theology—primarily through her careful augmentations of conservative evangelical tropes.

This is a book by evangelical theologians about the theology of religions, that is, how Christians should think about world religions and live among adherents of other religious paths. The chapter begins with a discussion of what is meant by “evangelical” and “evangelical theology” and proceeds from there to provide an overview of the past history of Christian reflections about other religious traditions. The chapter concludes with consideration of some recent evangelical contributions to the subject.

This chapter investigates the question of how the Judaizing Evangelicals appear to want to become Jewish, believing in Jesus. It carefully analyzes the social and cultural organization of the religious hybridization undertaken by the community of the Judaizing Evangelicals. Special attention is given to how Christian tenets are gradually understood in new ways and are replaced by Jewish ideas and practices within this changing religious community. The analysis indicates that religious change is an open dialectic process, challenging both clear-cut “continuity” and “discontinuity” arguments found in the anthropology of religion. By revealing the dialectic role of past structures in change processes, the theoretical framework expands current conceptualizations exploring cultural hybridity.

This chapter examines intertextuality in Jacob's Room, Orlando, and Three Guineas by focusing on the lineage of Virginia Woolf's religious references, where texts written by members of the Stephen family in the Victorian period inform her modern critique of patriarchy and its interconnections with organized religion. Woolf has often been described as an agnostic like her parents; more recently, she has been regarded as an atheist, on the basis of statements such as “certainly and emphatically there is no God.” It is therefore curious that the Woolfs' library at Washington State University includes a small but significant selection of books on religion. The religious books in the Woolfs' library include several that were written by her ancestors in the Stephen family. The chapter also considers Woolf's attitude towards Victorian evangelical theology, with particular emphasis on her representation of women as the slaves of patriarchy.

This chapter discusses informal evangelical theologies that fused the circulation of human love and Divine Love into a basis for U.S. Christian globalism. It begins by clarifying how nineteenth-century Christians came to understand childhood innocence as a shared attribute of humankind. Without this revolutionary shift, sponsorship would likely never have come about. The chapter then looks at how the rising middle classes grappled with vexed questions about adult sin among heathens and in their own communities. Ultimately, a productive tension between a growing theology of love and earlier ideas about sin became the engine driving thousands of nineteenth-century Americans to band together, announce their sins, make objects, save pennies, and adopt a child abroad.

George Hill (1750–1819), a member of the Whig establishment, Principal of St Mary’s College, St Andrews and long-time leader of the Moderate Party at the General Assembly expressed a cautious and conservative theology that was pragmatic and even progressive in its application. He stressed the applicative doctrines that had moral force, such as the Atonement, and if not determinist, then at least a monist vision of the universe. Hill’s most famous pupil, Thomas Chalmers (1780–1847), for all his evangelical formation, from his time as Professor of Moral Philosophy at St Andrews to his spell as Professor of Theology at Edinburgh University then the Free Church College after the Disruption of 1843, held to a solid baseline of a rational religion to which was added an emphasis on the doctrine of sin and a need to receive the atoning work of Christ by faith and to be sanctified. This was to be enabled by preaching to all, without expecting that all will react with sufficient personal faith for salvation. As with Hill, the Bible alone was the guide to truth.