From Meetinghouse to Megachurch: A Material and Cultural History. By Anne C. Loveland and Otis B. Wheeler. (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 2003. xii, 307 pp. $59.95, ISBN 0-8262-1480-0.)

Abstract

Evangelical Protestantism is thriving in the United States. That is the appearance at least from weekly news magazines that regularly feature cover stories on evangelicals. An even better sign of evangelical vitality is the favorable coverage it continues to receive from religious historians. Four decades ago, before the historical profession studying the United States had taken the religious turn, historians often dismissed born-again Protestantism as strange and off-putting. Today such assessments are much harder to find. This book is evidence of that shift. The favorable treatment that evangelical Protestantism has received from historians is not the result of poor scholarship. In fact, From Meetinghouse to Megachurch fills a very useful niche in the ongoing research on material culture. It is an exploration of the buildings Protestants in the United States have used for worship and more. The more is important here because, as the book shows, from the mid-nineteenth century to the present Protestants have rarely built churches merely for Sunday worship. Instead they have required space for activities as different as Sunday school instruction and food vendors. As such, the book offers a relatively brief survey of Protestant church structures from the Puritans through nineteenth-century urban revivalists to contemporary megachurch pastors. Eighty two photographs (most in color) or illustrations accompany the text, thus making the book even more informative about the aesthetics of low-church Protestants. The authors succeed in attempting to go beyond the familiar terrain of evangelical Protestantism's theology, politics, and social origins to examine the religion's material culture.