Introduction

The ‘history of histories’ is a growing discipline, directing closer attention not just to the content of historical writing but also to the philosophical ideals and worldviews which have shaped such literature. This chapter surveys recent historiographic developments, including the rise of intellectual history and memory studies, and the importance of religious agency as a subject for analysis, thus setting the context for the ‘history of evangelical histories’. The history of evangelicalism is a battleground of competing methodologies, with polarised providentialist and naturalistic approaches, differences which are especially pronounced in the writing of biography (often the go-to genre for evangelical authors). Questions relating to how evangelical historians in the secular academy should reconcile their religious commitments with the ‘standards of the professional guild’ have generated a considerable literature.