History Commons^™

My Friend's Execution, William Vance Trollinger

William Vance Trollinger Jr.

Just after midnight on Wednesday September 24, 1997, I watched as the state of Missouri put Samuel McDonald to death by lethal injection. I had never wanted to witness an execution, and I was devastated by what I saw. How did I come to be at the Potosi Correctional Institute on that night?

It had to do with friendship, and with the unforeseen and frightening implications of taking even the smallest step forward in faith.

Since my late teens I have opposed the death penalty. I have had many reasons: Poor and minority defendants are executed in grossly disproportionate numbers. …

How John Nelson Darby Went Visiting: Dispensational Premillennialism In The Believers Church Tradition And The Historiography Of Fundamentalism, William Vance Trollinger

William Vance Trollinger Jr.

In the United States the history of John Nelson Darby's dispensational premillennialism is intimately tied up with the history of fundamentalism. It is difficult to talk about dispensational premillennialism in the believers church tradition in the twentieth century without making some reference to the fundamentalist movement. In fact, the two distinguishing marks of fundamentalist theology have been the doctrine of biblical inerrancy and the eschatological schema known as dispensationalism. It is thus rather surprising that historians have de-emphasized dispensational premillennialism in explaining the history of fundamentalism. I think that this is a mistake. But to explain why I think this …

Faith, History, And The Conference On Faith And History, William Vance Trollinger

William Vance Trollinger Jr.

The author notes of this paper, given as a keynote address:

• The talk that I give tonight is not the talk that I was originally planning to deliver at this conference. When I was asked to give the keynote address, I assumed that I would simply present an elongated version of the paper that I was going to give in this morning's session on "Peace, Justice, and Evangelicals"; my paper was to be on the strengths and weaknesses and omissions in the recent literature written by evangelicals on the notion of a Christian approach to history. But the more I …

An Outpouring Of ‘Faithful’ Words: Protestant Publishing In The United States, William Vance Trollinger

William Vance Trollinger Jr.

In a period characterized by expanding markets, national consolidation, and social upheaval, print culture picked up momentum as the nineteenth century turned into the twentieth. Books, magazines, and newspapers were produced more quickly and more cheaply, reaching ever-increasing numbers of readers. Volume 4 of A History of the Book in America traces the complex, even contradictory consequences of these changes in the production, circulation, and use of print.

Contributors to this volume explain that although mass production encouraged consolidation and standardization, readers increasingly adapted print to serve their own purposes, allowing for increased diversity in the midst of concentration and …

Creationism In Twentieth-Century America: The Antievolution Pamphlets Of William Bell Riley, William Vance Trollinger

William Vance Trollinger Jr.

It is difficult to overstate William Bell Riley's importance to the early fundamentalist movement; it is well-nigh impossible to exaggerate his prodigious energy. In the years between the world wars, when he was in his 60s and 70s and pastor of a church with thousands of members, Riley founded and directed the first interdenominational organization of fundamentalists, served as an active leader of the fundamentalist faction in the Northern Baptist Convention, edited a variety of fundamentalist periodicals, wrote innumerable books and articles and pamphlets (including, in the less-polemical vein, a forty-volume exposition of the entire Bible), presided over a fundamentalist …

Hero Of The Heartland: Billy Sunday And The Transformation Of American Society, 1862-1935, William Vance Trollinger

William Vance Trollinger Jr.

Review of: Hero of the Heartland: Billy Sunday and the Transformation of American Society, 1862-1935. Martin, Robert F.

Reports From Fundamentalism’S Front Lines: ‘The Pilot’ And Its Correspondents, 1920-1947, William Vance Trollinger

William Vance Trollinger Jr.

Religion and the Culture of Print in Modern America explores how a variety of print media—religious tracts, newsletters, cartoons, pamphlets, self-help books, mass-market paperbacks, and editions of the Bible from the King James Version to contemporary "Bible-zines"—have shaped and been shaped by experiences of faith since the Civil War. Edited by Charles L. Cohen and Paul S. Boyer, whose comprehensive historical essays provide a broad overview to the topic, this book is the first on the history of religious print culture in modern America and a well-timed entry into the increasingly prominent contemporary debate over the role of religion in …