As a Christian historian interested in 18th century evangelicalism, de Vries postdoctoral fellow Tucker Adkins recognized the need for fresh scholarship on this much-studied movement and time period in British and American religious history. Inspired during his doctoral studies by Professor John Corrigan’s “Religion, Space, and America” seminar at Florida State University and historian Douglas Winiarski’s recent award-winning book, Darkness Falls on the Land of Light: Experiencing Religious Awakenings in Eighteenth-Century New England, Professor Adkins’s own research “explores the connections between 18th-century evangelical revivalism and physical space, sound, and the body.”
As he explains, “When we look at the source material, we find that English-speaking revivalists in North America, England, Scotland, and Wales participated in a movement that radically altered the relationship between religion and the material world. In short, as early evangelicals underwent the ‘new birth,’ the moment of personal conversion they valued above all else, they seemed to enter a new world.” Through radical experiences like visions and uncontrollable weeping or screaming, evangelicals found themselves breaking from the strict expectations and order of rational, civilized religion. “I’m most interested in exploring the radical religion common among early evangelical men and women and reflecting on how such experiences effected their place in British society.”
Adkins’s work adds a nuanced perspective to this topic that has inspired past generations of scholarship and connects it to the present, seeking how the religious past can help define the current state of evangelicalism in America. In November 2022, he presented on this question at Theology on Tap, a lecture series hosted by the Mission Chattanooga. Adkins attended Theology on Tap lectures when he was an undergraduate at the University of Tennessee-Chattanooga and returned as a speaker to share his research within Theology on Tap’s focus: the intersection of theology and culture. Evangelicalism is often understood in a certain way – defined by a particular political leaning, for example. However, his talk observed that “by foregrounding examples of evangelicals’ physical, lived religious experiences, we find that their controversial choreography of space, sound, and the body—not just what they believed—radically redefined what it meant to be Protestant in America.” There is more to the evangelical identity than the political ideology associated with it, and going back to its historical roots can widen the scope of how people understand it.
Beyond his academic communities at Calvin and the Mission Chattanooga, Adkins also shared his research with the Early American Republic Seminar at the City University of New York (affectionately referred to as “CUNY EARS”). According to Adkins, this seminar offered “an excellent chance to receive feedback on a current draft of one of my book chapters and open new avenues for improving my work.”
Looking forward to this spring and summer, Adkins has the opportunity to revise his book manuscript and take his research international. “In May, I’m visiting London, England, and Aberystwyth, Wales, to conduct further archival work for existing chapters. Later, I will visit Halifax, Nova Scotia, to complete research necessary for a new chapter on the Canadian revivals.
Whether it’s abroad for continued research or south to Tennessee to start his faculty position at Milligan University in 2024, Adkins reflected on what he’s learned at Calvin as a de Vries postdoctoral fellow that he hopes to take with him as he follows his vocation. “During my time in Grand Rapids, participating in the de Vries cohort has pushed me to think about scholarship, pedagogy, and faith as overlapping, constitutive parts of being a confessing historian. As I move to another Christian liberal arts institution, I hope I’ll carry the convictions and hopes I’ve cultivated here. For the first time I have thought deeply about why I study what I study, how to think about research as Christian practice, and what it looks like to responsibly fit research alongside teaching, service, collegial relationships, and family life.”