This introduction embeds the Exploring the Global History of American Evangelicalism special issue into current historiographical debates in the field of US evangelicalism and globalization. It lays out the methodological framework and thematic scope of the special issue.

Established in 1979 by Watergate felon Charles Colson, Prison Fellowship International (PFI) is now one of the largest para-church organizations in world evangelicalism. This article explains PFI’s origins with reference to the existence of a transnational evangelical network, the compatibility of PFI’s mission with the emergent theme of…[Read more]

Between January 1969 and the summer of 1975, NASA received over eight million letters and petition signatures supporting the right of American astronauts to free religious expression in space. Prompted by Madalyn Murray O’Hair’s complaints about the reading of Genesis during the flight of Apollo 8, the petition campaign points to the complex…[Read more]

This is a pre-copyedited, author-produced version of an article accepted for publication in the Journal of Church and State following peer review. The version of record – Kendrick Oliver; “Hi, Fellas. Come on in.” Norman Carlson, the Federal Bureau of Prisons, and the Rise of Prison Fellowship, Journal of Church and State, Volume 55, Issue 4, 1 D…[Read more]

Charles Colson’s Born Again was the most celebrated spiritual memoir of the 1970s evangelical revival, and remains the best-known book-length conversion narrative of the twentieth century. Its account of how Colson—notoriously ruthless as a political aide to President Nixon—abruptly invited Christ into his life in the late summer of 1973 follo…[Read more]