ABSTRACT

Like much of America back then and unlike now, Columbia had had no fast-food restaurant or suburban shopping mall. But it also lacked something that people now take for granted: that medley of religious influences we associate with modern evangelicalism. While midweek prayer meetings were a staple of church life, small-group fellowships or care groups were unknown, as were Bible Study Fellowship and Walk-Thru-the-Bible. Churches spoke of revival but had few means to bring the laity into the process like the Four Spiritual Laws or Evangelism Explosion. Fifty years ago most learned interpreters of American religion expected revivalists, fundamentalists, and Pentecostals simply to wither and die. It was thought that these remnants of a bygone era, these expressions of old-fashioned orthodoxy and overt supernaturalism, could not hope to keep pace with the modern world. Denominational competition is not the most important story of the past 50 years.