Evangelical Lessons Final Essay – Explanation

The culminating assignment of this course is a five-page essay that explores three vital lessons you think the American evangelical church needs to learn from its nearly 300-year past (1730s-present). Use your reading of Sweeney’s text as your starting place. Identify three people/events/ideas/movements out of which arise an important positive or negative lesson for American evangelicals today. When you have selected your three lessons, do some additional research using three to four reliable sources (in addition to Sweeney). For each lesson, answer these questions in your essay:

What is the background on this person/event/idea/movement whose story has something to teach us?
What specific lesson ought we as the American evangelical community learn from this person/event/idea/movement?
Why do we need to learn this lesson? Provide evidence that this lesson reawakens us to something we have forgotten.
Use good critical thinking skills, thoughtful reflection, substantive content, and clear, clean writing. You will work on the bulk of your essay and submit it in Week 6.

Here are some ideas to get you started:

People

Richard Allen
Isaac Backus
Catharine Beecher
Henry Ward Beecher
Evangeline Booth
James Petigru Boyce
Bill Bright
William Jennings Bryan
Alexander Campbell
Jimmy Carter
Lewis Sperry Chafer
W. A. Criswell
Fanny Crosby
James Dobson
Thomas Dorsey
Lorenzo Dow
Timothy Dwight
Jim Elliot
Jerry Falwell
Charles Hodge
Sam P. Jones
Dwight L. Moody
John Perkins
A. T. Pierson
C. I. Scofield
Francis Schaeffer
William J. Seymour
A. B. Simpson
Amanda Berry Smith
Harriet Beecher Stowe
Billy Sunday
R. A. Torrey
Sojourner Truth
Frances Willard
(or any one of the historical figures whose writings are being read for the course)

Events

American Revolution
Azusa Street revival (190615)
Cane Ridge revival (1801)
Charles Briggs heresy trial (189193)
Chicago Statement on Biblical
Inerrancy (1978)
Civil War
Contemporary Christian music
(CCM) movement
Denominational controversies/splits
Emancipation
Fuller Seminary founding (1947)
Fundamentalist-modernist controversies
Great Awakenings (18th & 19th centuries)
Higher criticism movement
Jesus People movement
Laymens Foreign Missions Inquiry (1933)
Neoevangelical movement
Religious Right
Roe v. Wade
Scopes Trial (1925)
Separation of church & state
Sunday school movement
Prohibition/temperance movement
Vietnam War/protests
Womens suffrage
World Wars (I or II)
Worship Wars
Youth for Christ organization/movement

Ideas (limit to a specific issue that relates to American evangelicalism)

Bible/biblical interpretation
Children
Class
Culture
Denominations or denominationalism
Doctrinal disputes (baptism, biblical inspiration, etc.)
Education (general or biblical/theological)
Evangelism
Faith practices
Fundamentalism
Gender
Hymns/spiritual songs
Immigration
Institutions (seminaries, colleges, universities, influential churches)
Media
Megachurches
Missions (to or by Americans)
Modernism
Neoevangelicalism
Pentecostalism
Politics
Race
Religious skepticism/unbelief
Roman Catholicism
Rural life/ministry
Science & the Bible
Slavery
Social justice/activism
Urban life/ministry
Volunteerism/societies
War
Women in ministry

Sources for the assignment below:
https://christianhistoryinstitute.org/
https://www.lbc.edu/library/