Thread by @danielsilliman

Next up: #AHA19

.@MalcolmBFoley: Race is fraught in the tradition called evangelicalism. By that I mean, people don't like seriously talking about. #AHA19

.@MalcolmBFoley: In the book Rope and Faggot, Walter White wrote that it is inconceivable the reign of lynching could have happened under any other religion than Christianity. Is it true? Are they linked in an important way? #AHA19

.@MalcolmBFoley: Let's talk about how black and white Christians saw lynching in dramatically different ways. Look at responses to lynching in Paris Texas, with 10,000 reportedly participating. #AHA19

.@MalcolmBFoley: Atticus Haygood, Methodist bishop, was paternalist white minister. Maybe courageous to say what he said in 1890, but it did more harm that less pretty forms of racism. Said no higher duty that obedience to law. #AHA19

.@MalcolmBFoley: For Haygood and many many white ministers mainly critiqued lynching as anarchy. "It's a horror," but then said it was provoked by black men preying on white women. False, but standard justification: "emotional insanity" #AHA19

.@MalcolmBFoley: "The southern people are not cruel," Haygood said. The lost cause was strong with this one. #AHA19

.@MalcolmBFoley: He thought lynching was idiosyncratic, not systemic.For Haygood, the Southern people were not cruel but "most sensitive" when it came to "the honor of Southern women" #AHA19

.@MalcolmBFoley: For Haygood, the lynching was emotional derangement of good, just men. Insane yet righteous. #AHA19

.@MalcolmBFoley: This brings me to Francis Grimke, the descendant of the famed abolitionists. He responded to lynching of Sam Hose in Georgia. He saw lynching as a response to violations of Jim Crow codes #AHA19

.@MalcolmBFoley: Grimke said "never ought we to accept the rulings of a mob." As long as allegations against black men were accepted as true, without law, without juries, rule of lynching would continue #AHA19

.@MalcolmBFoley: Grimke thought Southern white men needs to be educated into the fact of the humanity of black people. Important: he thought this anti-lynching work had to begin in the church #AHA19

.@MalcolmBFoley: Grimke said "let the ministers and elders ... first get right themselves on this subject. Let them accord to the negros the rights of citizenship" Can they have the courage to do what is right? #AHA19

.@MalcolmBFoley: Grimke was optimistic, but his words were not heeded. The good news of the gospel was stifled for the bad news of white supremacy #AHA19

.@MalcolmBFoley: These pastors' responses to lynching was paradigmatic of a broader phenomenon: the conversations of white pastors and black pastors were totally separate and totally different. Very disturbing, how much this continues #AHA19

.@kkdumez: Who is an evangelical? I thought I would just start with the dispute that started on twitter about Phillis Wheatley. Was Phillis Wheatley an evangelical? Where is the controversy? On twitter of course. #AHA19

.@kkdumez: This quickly reached the limits of a conversation. The conversation, of course, happens against the backdrop of the 81 percent of white evangelicals who voted for Donald Trump? Or did they? @ThomasSKidd and @drmoore have questioned "supposed evangelicals" #AHA19

.@kkdumez: There's an argument, developed by @ThomasSKidd and @drmoore, that there's a formal definition of evangelical. Historical. Theological. That had been misused by media and now lots of people were confused. Some Trump voters *think* they're evangelical. They're not #AHA19

.@kkdumez: This attempt to distinguish true from real has been incisively criticized. E.g. @timgloege's argument the Bebbington quadrilateral allows for gerrymandering, saves evangelicals from self reflection "while the movement they started burns down the country" #AHA19

.@kkdumez: There is also pushback from the other side. @DavidBrodyCBN, in book on the Faith of Donald Trump, said it *was* churchgoing evangelicals who formed basis of Trump's support #AHA19

.@kkdumez: Argument is about whether or not evangelicalism is defined by theological commitments or race and politics. Is "evangelical" above all a theological category? #AHA19

.@kkdumez: It is worth interrogating the people making this claim, about the essential theological character of evangelical. It's mostly white evangelical men, but there are also minorities who, sometimes, want to make a claim on evangelicalism, who invoke theology #AHA19

.@kkdumez: Minorities, though, have a very ambivalent relationship with evangelical. And it's complicated: often they resist the label *while* identifying with the four parts of Bebbington's quadrilateral. See evangelical as a "white religious brand" #AHA19

.@kkdumez: So how should be identify evangelical? Historically. And history didn't come to abrupt halt in the 19th c. #AHA19

.@kkdumez: Note changes in the uses of the word. With help of a linguist, I found it came to be used as a noun mostly in the 20th c. Connected with political changes #AHA19

.@kkdumez: James Dobson, Josh Harris, and the Duck Dynasty clan play a larger role, in the definition of the brand in the 20th c., than Edwards, Whitefield, or Wheatley #AHA19

.@kkdumez: Evangelicalism is an imagined religious community, imagined with boundaries, so we must pay attention to issues of power. Question is not which imaginings is right, but which influences the imaginings of others #AHA19

.@kkdumez: Scholars too need to examine our own positionally. Which scholars imaginings have wielded power, and why? #AHA19

.@kkdumez: Evangelicalism has always been fluid, imagined, dynamic. Imaginative process. And our work, as scholars, is implicated in this imaginative process #AHA19

.@JemarTisby: Dr. @kkdumez and I had nearly identical introductions. So for the time it would have taken for me to tell you about this twitter debate, I will stare at you awkwardly. J/k #AHA19

.@JemarTisby: I think it's important, that this debate about a black Christian's identity, Phillis Wheatley, was debated by a white scholar and a white journalist. Who gets to claim the identity of a black Christian? #AHA19

.@JemarTisby: "Evangelical" historically has less purchase, historically, in black Christian traditions. Black people mostly don't talk about whether they're evangelical or not. They're Baptists. Or they'll say "bible believing," more often than "evangelical" #AHA19

.@JemarTisby: Let's use perspectival approach. There's a genuine intractability about whether or not evangelical Christians are evangelicals. Must allow for ambiguity, recognize real ambiguities #AHA19

Sorry-- "tri-perspectival" method #AHA19

.@JemarTisby: Three perspectives: normative, situational, existential. Normative: evangelical theology. Standards of truth. Situational: Patterns and events in evangelicalism, in history. Existential: Individuals experience, self ID. #AHA19

.@JemarTisby: I think the debate, for historians, is between different perspectives. When applied to black Christians, each perspective is helpful but limited. #AHA19

.@JemarTisby: In my experience, when most people call black people evangelical, they're thinking normatively, not historically, descriptively, or w/r/t personal ID #AHA19

.@JemarTisby: Note how segregation was different before the Civil War. Black Christians were converted under the same preaching as white folks, went to same churches. Because white people didn't trust black people with independent spaces #AHA19

.@JemarTisby: Time period is going to change whether or not black people can be historically called evangelicals (but not normatively, that's different) #AHA19

.@JemarTisby: And there are also periods when black people do call themselves evangelical. That's a compelling argument for saying yes, they were evangelical, black evangelicals, even though it's not always best to use self descriptions #AHA19

.@JemarTisby: But, you can't call black people evangelicals without also always saying "black evangelicals." Because race is always an issue. #AHA19

.@JemarTisby: Let's talk about Tom Skinner's talk at Urbana, "The Liberator Has Come." Said evangelism must begin with understanding of racism. He started talking about systems and revolution. "I am a militant. Jesus was a militant." #AHA19

.@JemarTisby: 12k mostly white students gave him a standing ovation. But he was also met with other responses. Skinner was accepted when he talked about soul winning, as long as that didn't challenge the social order and politics #AHA19

.@JemarTisby: Should we call black Christians evangelical? I say, let the ambiguity remain #AHA19

.@JemarTisby: But we *must* talk about race. I am more and more convinced race is not a bug, but a feature, in white American evangelicalism after WWII (and we could go farther back) #AHA19

.@heathwcarter: We are well on our way to figuring this out, once and for all #AHA19

.@heathwcarter: My question for the start is what does this say about the state of our field. If you look at Sydney Ahlstrom "evangelical" barely shows up. Now it's dominant. But are we going to lose this, as a binding thread? #AHA19

.@kkdumez: I don't think that would necessarily be a bad thing. There's a lot more to American religion than "evangelical," but this question has been critical for looking at our current moment #AHA19

.@JemarTisby: We might, with evangelicalism, need to conceptualize a "long evangelical movement." Look at precursors, eye of the storm with Billy Graham to the year of the evangelical, and then repercussions, long after #AHA19

Q. Historically, which iteration of evangelicalism exercised the most authority and what influenced that authority? @kkdumez: This question gets at ... this is a rich question. #AHA19

.@kkdumez: Historiographically, there seems like a Kuhnian shift happening in evangelical history. It's happening, and it can be seen here at #AHA19.

.@kkdumez: In earlier scholarship, there was not enough attention to cultural dynamics. Now women and ministries and scholars trained in cultural history are telling stories that shift what's center, what's periphery. Describing evangelicalism in different way #AHA19

Q. How do fundamentalists and the fundamentalist-modernist controversy fit into this story? @MalcolmBFoley: @MaryBethMath's book is one of my favorite, and it speaks directly to this. #AHA19

.@JemarTisby: Interestingly, white evangelical's movement distancing themselves from fundamentalism allowed black Christians new opportunities to identify as evangelicals. Allowed them entre, But didn't always work out for them #AHA19

Elesha Coffman: @JemarTisby, you said, with post-war evangelicalism, "race was not a bug but a feature." Was it ever not? Jemar: I do think, and my book will be about this, racism is always there #AHA19

Q. What happens if you look at this from global perspective? A specifically American issue? @kkdumez: Multiple literature about this, Christian and scholarly. @MelaniMcA's recent book, e.g., is important on this. #AHA19

.@kkdumez: What I want to say, with global evangelical movement, is to not lose sight of the power in global evangelicalism, w/o ignoring indigenous expressions of evangelicalism #AHA19

.@JemarTisby: It's interesting, in Latin America, the evangelical left shows up with some strength. Worth looking at more. #AHA19

Mark Noll: As a technological troglodyte, I didn't know there was a Phillis Wheatley debate going on, last night. But we should be concerned about engaging too much, as historians, in current hot topics. What do you call it, a tweet? #AHA19

Mark Noll: But I think, the question of whether or not one person or one life is evangelical, who is evangelical, is almost irrelevant. I want @MalcolmBFoley to write an amazing book on Francis Grimke without worrying about he's an evangelical. #AHA19

Mark Noll: Good scholarship should leave it open, what defines an evangelical. Focus on networks and associations. I think this is a really important panel, who is an evangelical?, and I hope no one will follow up. #AHA19

.@kkdumez: I agree! We get backed up into this question. But the question has crystalized important issues, about, e.g. power, boundaries, centers. When a sermon someone hears conflicts with the Christian bookstore, what wins out? #AHA19

.@heathwcarter: Can I ask a follow up question for you, Mark? Has your thinking on this changed? You used to seem to think it was more real, but now it's historical and networks? #AHA19

Mark Noll: I don't think evangelicals exist. David Bebbington does. I don't. "Evangelical" is a useful fiction. I don't think I've changed on that. #AHA19

That's the end to a standing-room only panel. #AHA19