Abstract: | The Evangelical movement in the United States arose as an interpretive community in the late 19th century when the penny press permitted mass dissemination of shared media texts. Network radio in the early and mid-20th century then furnished an ecology for Evangelicals to share real-time media rituals and be socially integrated into a broadly coherent subculture. This study presents a new history of Evangelicalism organized around its media, following the movement through its three “waves.” In the present era, radio continues to sustain the subculture, even as Evangelicals have tactically “reread” their media texts in response to societal change. |