Where Are the Pentecostals in American Political History?

This paper explores the relationship between the discipline of American history and the study of Pentecostalism, particularly as it relates to the literature on the rise of the Religious Right and conservative evangelical Christianity. Since the 1990s, but accelerating since the presidency of George W. Bush, historians have turned their attention to the emergence of the Religious Right and the politicization of evangelical Christianity across the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Yet, Pentecostals and charismatics, with a few notable exceptions, have remained marginal figures within this broader historiographical turn. It examines this absence with particular attention to the writing and development of two fields: how the study of the Religious Right took place within the American historical profession and how American Pentecostal historiography emerged with a distinct reluctance to engage in political questions.