America250 -- Twenty-Seven Voices in American Religious History

Dr. Randy White - Taos First Baptist Church

America's religious story is not one stream but many: revival, missions, liberty of conscience, new movements, public preaching, social reform, Pentecostal power, media religion, and political mobilization. These twenty-seven figures give a quick map of the religious forces that shaped the nation.

1770s-1790s

1770s - John Witherspoon: Presbyterian minister, Princeton president, and signer of the Declaration. He joined Reformed Protestant leadership to Revolutionary politics and early national education.
1770s - Francis Asbury: Methodist organizer and tireless bishop. His circuit system and itinerant leadership made Methodism a national frontier movement.
1780s - John Leland: Baptist preacher and religious-liberty advocate. He helped make liberty of conscience and disestablishment central Baptist and American principles.
1790s - Timothy Dwight: Yale president and Congregational minister. His preaching opposed deism and helped shape evangelical revival and Protestant education in the early republic.

1800s

1800s - Adoniram Judson: Baptist missionary to Burma. His career helped make foreign missions a defining feature of American evangelical identity.
1810s - Elizabeth Ann Seton: Catholic founder of the Sisters of Charity. She helped build American Catholic education and became the first U.S.-born Catholic saint.
1820s - Charles Grandison Finney: Revivalist of new measures and public appeals. He tied conversionist preaching to reform, abolition, and moral agency.
1830s - Joseph Smith Jr.: Founder of the Latter-day Saint movement. His new scripture, prophetic authority, and communal ambitions created a major American-born religion.
1840s - Ellen G. White: Adventist prophetic authority. Her writings shaped Adventist doctrine, health reform, education, publishing, and global missions.
1850s - Henry Ward Beecher: Famous Protestant preacher at Plymouth Church. His pulpit gave national religious force to antislavery, reform, and liberal evangelicalism.
1860s - Henry McNeal Turner: AME bishop, Reconstruction political leader, and advocate of Black self-determination. He made the Black church a platform for religious and civic leadership after emancipation.
1870s - Dwight L. Moody: Mass evangelist and institution builder. His campaigns, schools, music partnerships, and publishing shaped modern evangelical ministry.
1880s - C. I. Scofield: Popularized dispensational premillennialism through the Scofield Reference Bible. His notes shaped evangelical readings of prophecy, Israel, and the church.
1890s - Walter Rauschenbusch: Leading Social Gospel theologian. He argued that Christianity must confront social sin, economic injustice, and institutional evil.

1900s

1900s - William J. Seymour: Leader of the Azusa Street revival. His interracial mission and Spirit-baptism preaching helped launch global Pentecostalism.
1910s - Harry Emerson Fosdick: Liberal Protestant preacher and modernist voice. Riverside Church and his sermons made liberal Christianity nationally visible.
1920s - Reinhold Niebuhr: Public theologian of Christian realism. His work shaped Protestant ethics, politics, foreign policy debates, and critiques of liberal optimism.
1930s - Norman Vincent Peale: Positive-thinking preacher and bestselling author. He blended Protestant piety, psychology, optimism, and self-help culture.
1940s - Billy Graham: The twentieth century's most visible evangelist. His crusades, broadcasting, publishing, and political access made evangelicalism a global public force.
1950s - Oral Roberts: Pentecostal healing evangelist and media builder. He helped move Pentecostal and charismatic religion into national visibility.
1950s - Martin Luther King Jr.: Baptist preacher and civil-rights leader. His public theology made the Black church central to America's moral language about race and justice.
1970s - Jerry Falwell Sr.: Founder of Moral Majority and Liberty University. He became a central architect of the Religious Right.
1980s - James Dobson: Focus on the Family founder. His media, advice, and activism shaped conservative evangelical views of family, sexuality, parenting, and public life.
1990s - Rick Warren: Saddleback pastor and author of The Purpose Driven Life. His church-growth methods shaped megachurch evangelical leadership.

2000s

2000s - Joel Osteen: Lakewood pastor and media preacher. He popularized optimistic, therapeutic, prosperity-adjacent Christianity for a mass audience.
2010s - Beth Moore: Evangelical Bible teacher and author. Her ministry gave conservative Protestant women a national teaching platform and later became a flashpoint in evangelical debates.
2020s - Pope Leo XIV / Robert Prevost: U.S.-born pope and global Catholic leader. His election makes American Catholic formation part of worldwide papal leadership.