College of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences

4. The Protestant International: Pietism, Premillennialism, and Pentecostalism

The fourth lecture of Professor David Hempton's Gifford Series.

Event details

Date: Monday 11 October 2021, 5.30 - 6.30pm

The lecture may be followed by questions.  Latest finishing time is 7pm.

Venue: The Playfair Library, Old College, South Bridge, Edinburgh EH8 9YL

Lecture abstract

The aim of this lecture is to apply our general organizing principle and method to some of the most significant developments in the English-speaking Protestant world in the last four centuries, including

  • the transition from pietism to evangelicalism,
  • the explosive growth of Protestant missions,
  • the origins of premillennial dispensationalism and its contribution to the rise of American fundamentalism,
  • and finally the worldwide spread of Pentecostalism. 

None of these developments in the creation of a ‘Protestant International’ can be studied within a single denominational or national tradition and none can be understood without coming to terms with their nucleus of ideas/theologies, the nodal points of their transmission and dissemination, and the transnational networks that facilitated their growth. 

Lecture video