The Evangelical Imagination: How Stories, Images, and Metaphors Created a Culture in Crisis Hardcover - 2023

"Thoughtful, elegantly written, literate, and timely"

Contemporary American evangelicalism is suffering from an identity crisis--and a lot of bad press.

In The Evangelical Imagination, acclaimed author Karen Swallow Prior analyzes the literature, art, and popular culture that has surrounded evangelicalism and unpacks some of the movement's most deeply held concepts, ideas, values, and practices. She shows that understanding what the term "evangelical" means today means understanding not only evangelicalism's faith commitments but also the images, metaphors, assumptions, and stories that have cultivated evangelical culture.

"Prior is among the most helpful Christian literary critics writing today. Her call for the reformation of evangelicalism is a call to repent, to allow new metaphors and analogies to drive us to more faithfully read and put into practice the Scriptures. An insightful work of love that aids a holy transformation of our imaginations."
--Tish Harrison Warren, Anglican priest and author of Liturgy of the Ordinary and Prayer in the Night

"A marvelous book--thoughtful, elegantly written, literate, and timely. An evangelical herself, Prior has done a masterful job of identifying the unstated assumptions that have shaped evangelical Christianity. American evangelicalism is in crisis; The Evangelical Imagination helps us to understand why and what needs to be done to make it an instrument of grace in a world that desperately needs it."
--Peter Wehner, contributing writer, the New York Times and The Atlantic

"As an artist and follower of Jesus often falling into the gaps and fractures of the church and the world, I found this book to be a refreshing and eye-opening guide to navigating beyond the borderlands. Sanctified imagination is critical in developing as the body of Christ, in being the harbingers of hope and creators of beauty, and Prior is one of the most trusted voices to help us find our thriving."
--Makoto Fujimura, artist and author of Art and Faith: A Theology of Making

"This book brings together the history of evangelicalism, Prior's expertise in Victorian literature, and sensitive analysis of the present moment into an indictment of the 'evangelical imagination, ' but an indictment with hope because of evangelical engagement with the gospel."
--Mark Noll, author of A History of Christianity in the United States and Canada