Winners and Losers In the American Religious Market

Abstract

This thesis researched into the phenomena of the rise of evangelical churches in the United States of America. In order to clarify and provide some rational explanation for such phenomena. I used Rodney Stark's theory of competitive marketing - to examine why American evangelism has been booming in this era. Moreover, Robert Wuthnow's empirical data proved that evangelism was in fact booming. Through those theory and data. we can reach our goal to understand the phenomena of be rise of evangelicalism. This thesis argued that the theory of religious market could explain the booming of American evangelism well : in particular, the competitive marketing theory does this especially well. In order to successfully compete with other religions. transformation was necessary and the answer was evangelism. The American churches especially succeeded in this endeavor and became one of the most important and fastest growing religions in the twentieth century. As a result, the rise of American evangelism served as an example to show that the secularization of religions was mistaken. And. the de-secularization of religions was able to explain the rise of religious evangelicalism