Matthew Avery Sutton is associate professor of history at Washington State University and the author of Aimee Semple McPherson and the Resurrection of Christian America (Harvard University Press).
Articles by Matthew Avery Sutton
Books
The Columbia Guide to Religion in American History
There are probably few reference books that vacationers will drag down to the beach this summer. And though I make a living in academia, there aren’t many works of reference that I want to read from cover to cover. I love history because I love stories, storytelling and engrossing narratives—not because I’m taken with the facts, figures and dates that populate reference books.
Jay Rubenstein offers a lively and well-researched history of the First Crusade. He has a gift for making thousand-year-old history both exciting and relevant.
In high school I was taught that the Earth is about 10,000 years old. But I also learned the basics of evolution from my evangelical teachers. School administrators knew that students taking Advanced Placement biology exams and heading off to state universities needed to understand secular scientific reasoning, if only to combat it properly.
Books
The Origins of Christian Zionism
Lord Shaftesbury and Evangelical Support for a Jewish Homeland
By Donald M. Lewis
Zeal for Zion
Christians, Jews, and the Idea of the Promised Land
Three new books give fresh insights into the complicated history of
evangelical Zionism. Together they present a compelling argument that
the founding fathers of the modern state of Israel were not just
Theodor Herzl and his Zionist Congress, but American and British
evangelicals who exercised tremendous political and economic power in
the 19th century—power that modern-day evangelicals like Hagee and his
allies can only dream of.
