David Clary - Soul Winners: The Ascent of Americas Evangelical Entrepreneurs

EPIGRAPH

. Cheering Singing Throngs Greet Billy Sunday as He Comes to Launch Revival, New York World, April 8, 1917.

PROLOGUE

. Cleve R. Wootson Jr., Florida Pastor, Others Flout Stay-Home Orders on Easter, Washington Post, April 12, 2020.

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. Interviews that journalist Bob Woodward conducted with Donald Trump in February 2020 revealed that Trump knew the novel coronavirus was deadlier than he let on. The interviews were included in Woodwards book, Rage, published in September 2020.

. Bianca Padr Ocasio, Demonic Spirit: Miami Pastor Rejects Coronavirus Warning, Miami Herald, March 15, 2020.

. Daniel Burke, Police Arrest Florida Pastor for Holding Church Services Despite Stay-at-Home Order, CNN, March 30, 2020.

. Burke, Police Arrest Florida Pastor for Holding Church Services Despite Stay-at-Home Order.

. University Administration Works Tirelessly to Accommodate Students, Comply with New COVID-19 Laws, Liberty University News Service, March 23, 2020.

. Elizabeth Williamson, Falwell Focuses on Critics as Coronavirus Cases Near His University Grow, New York Times, April 16, 2020.

. From the beginning, Republican leaders followed Trump in downplaying the threat. Oklahoma governor Kevin Stitt tweeted a cheerful selfie of him with two of his children dining inside a restaurant on March 14, 2020. Its packed tonight! he remarked. (In July 2020, Stitt became the first governor to test positive for the virus.) On the same day, Texas senator John Cornyn tweeted a photo of a bottle of Corona next to a glass of beer with a lime wedge on the lip. Be smart; dont panic. We will get us through this #coronavirus, he wrote, suggesting it was akin to waiting out a hurricane.

. Lisa Maria Garza, Despite Coronavirus Concerns, Worshippers Gather at Orlando Church Under Statewide Exemption, Orlando Sentinel, April 5, 2020.

. Jaclyn Peiser, Megachurch Pastor Who Held No-Mask Services Misses Hearing after Refusing to Wear Mask in Court, Washington Post, September 23, 2020.

. Peter Baker, Firing a Salvo in Culture Wars, Trump Pushes for Churches to Reopen, New York Times, May 22, 2020.

. Baker, Firing a Salvo in Culture Wars, Trump Pushes for Churches to Reopen.

. The Supreme Court, also in a 54 vote, rejected a similar challenge by Calvary Chapel Dayton Valley in Nevada on July 24. The dissenting justices were particularly upset that casinos were permitted to open at greater capacity than houses of worship. Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, the courts leading liberal, died on September 18, 2020. Her replacement, the conservative Amy Coney Barrett, swung the court in the opposite direction on this issue. With Barretts vote, the justices ruled Newsoms order was unconstitutional and separately struck down New York states restrictions on worship.

. Sara Cline, Church Tied to Oregons Largest Coronavirus Outbreak, Associated Press, June 16, 2020; Christian M. Giggenbach, Pastor Admits Mistakes but Wont Require Masks, Register-Herald, June 16, 2020; Kate Conger, Jack Healy, and Lucy Tompkins, Churches Were Eager to Reopen. Now They Are Confronting Coronavirus Cases, New York Times, July 8, 2020.

. Ruth Graham, The Phoenix Megachurch Where Trump Is Speaking Says Its Air Purifiers Kill 99.9 Percent of COVID, Slate, June 23, 2020.

. Trump resisted wearing protective face masks even after evidence made clear that the simple act helped slow the spread of the virus. During a press briefing on April 3, 2020, Trump read a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention guideline urging all Americans to wear face coverings in public. Then he immediately under-cut it by saying, This is voluntary. I dont think Im going to be doing it. I just dont see it for myself. See Michael D. Shear and Sheila Kaplan, A Debate over Masks Uncovers Deep White House Divisions, New York Times, April 3, 2020.

. Jack Graham, the seventy-year-old pastor of Prestonwood Baptist Church, sat next to Laurie at the Rose Garden event. He ignored medical guidelines to quarantine for two weeks and led an in-person service at his Dallas-area mega-church on October 4, 2020. I am ridiculously healthy, lets just put it that way. Im not sick. Im fine. I dont have COVID, the maskless Graham assured his congregation at Prestonwood Baptist Church, even though the possibility of asymptomatic spread had by then been well documented. A spokesperson said two tests came back negative without giving dates. Grahams sermon on the Sunday after the Rose Garden event was titled, Socialism: A Clear and Present Danger. Jack Jenkins and Emily McFarlan Miller, Trump Evangelical Advisers Exposed to COVID-19 Flout CDC Guidelines, Preach in Public, Religion News Service, October 5, 2020.

. Patricia Mazzei, The Virus Death Toll in the U.S. Has Passed 400,000, New York Times, January 19, 2021.

. Elizabeth Dias and Ruth Graham, White Evangelical Resistance Is Obstacle in Vaccination Effort, New York Times, April 5, 2021.

. Alec Tyson, Cary Funk, Brian Kennedy, and Courtney Johnson, Majority in U.S. Says Public Health Benefits of COVID-19 Restrictions Worth the Costs, Even as Large Shares Also See Downsides, Pew Research Center, September 15, 2021. Among white, nonevangelical Protestants, 73 percent said they had received at least one dose. Among all Catholic respondents, 82 percent said they had been vaccinated.

. Jeremy McGarity, author interview, October 5, 2021.

. McGarity interview.

. Balmer and Winner, Protestantism in America, 2223; and FitzGerald, Evangelicals, 637.

. Luhrmann, When God Talks Back, xv; and Kidd, Who Is an Evangelical?, 45.

. The survey found that 14 percent of Hispanics identified as evangelical Protestant and 10 percent as nonevangelical Protestant. Among multiracial respondents, 23 percent identified as evangelical Protestant and 18 percent as nonevangelical protestant. Asian or Pacific Islanders had 10 percent in each camp.

. Pew Research Center, U.S. Public Becoming Less Religious, November 3, 2015.

CHAPTER 1

. Stout, The Divine Dramatist, 131.

. Cousins, In God We Trust, 39. For ease of readability, I have modernized the spelling, capitalization, and punctuation when quoting from older writings.

. Lambert, Pedlar in Divinity, 174. For more on Whitefields clash with Vesey, see Stout, The Divine Dramatist, 96.

. Morgan, Benjamin Franklin, 59; and Cousins, In God We Trust, 37.

. Stout, The Divine Dramatist, 99.

. [Original source: The Papers of Benjamin Franklin, vol. 6, April 1, 1755, through September 30, 1756, ed. Leonard W. Labaree. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1963, 46869.]

. Cousins, In God We Trust, 42. Benjamin Franklin letter to Ezra Stiles dated March 9, 1790. His letter to Ezra Stiles, a Congregational minister and president of Yale College, is especially moving considering he was eighty-four years old and weeks away from his death. On the notion of Christs divinity, Franklin wrote, It is a question I do not dogmatize upon, having never studied it, and think it needless to busy myself with it now, when I expect soon an opportunity of knowing the truth with less trouble.

. Cousins, In God We Trust, 2021.

. Stout, The Divine Dramatist, 228.

. Kidd, Who Is an Evangelical?, 2425.

. Cousins, In God We Trust, 38.

. Stout, The Divine Dramatist, 107.

. Stout, The Divine Dramatist, 226.

. Marty, Righteous Empire, 38; and Wills, Head and Heart, 7.

. Thomas Jefferson letter to John Adams dated October 13, 1813, quoted in Cousins, 24142. Adams also rejected doctrines such as the divinity of Jesus and the Trinity, compelling him to leave his Congregationalist church to become a Unitarian.