Elesha Coffman

Elesha Coffman is assistant professor of church history at the University of Dubuque Theological Seminary. She is the author of The Christian Century and the Rise of the Protestant Mainline (Oxford).

A recent meeting of the Conference on Faith and History featured a paper session titled “20th century evangelicalism.” Surprisingly, all three papers focused on conservative Protestant gender ideologies in the years since World War II.  Just a few years ago, I would have expected studies of evangelicalism to emphasize political influence. Is gender the hot new topic?
November 12, 2014

Not long after graduating from college, I found myself editing Christian History magazine, a richly illustrated quarterly where most of the contributing writers were academics but most of the readers were not. Honestly, I had more in common with our readers than with our authors. On my way to a B.A. in English literature, I had taken one class in Christian thought, one in Western civ, and zero in church history. I also had basically no exposure to Christian traditions other than evangelical Protestantism.
August 6, 2014