Evangelicalism has always been a ‘surprising work’ whichevangelicals themselves have ascribed to God. It seemed to emerge from nowhereand quickly spread to everywhere. It was a movement of diverse origins –a confluence of transatlantic diasporas (English, Irish, Scottish, German andDutch, to name a few of the nationalities involved in its beginnings) withsources in Europe, but meeting and blending into new forms in America. Taking alonger view, just as the original founders of the Massachusetts Bay communityconsidered themselves to be pilgrims on the way to the city ofGod, it might be said that from the beginning, evangelicals saw themselves ascitizens of an emerging global kingdom. Evangelicalism was partof a long-term process of dissociation from national frameworks. In the daysbefore sophisticated telecommunications and modern health care, evangelicalspirituality warmed the heart and provided a bedrock for the soul in the midstof the social turbulence of the Old World, the tossing waves of the wildAtlantic and the trackless forests of the New World. Western historians havetended to tell the story of evangelicalism, where it has been remembered at all,as if it were a minority interest in the midst of great state churches. Such aview, organised around national frameworks, misses the dynamism of the movement,its emergence as a people ‘in-between’: in between classes, inbetween countries, in between continents, languages and cultures. There has alsobeen a great deal of work tracing the course of evangelicalism as if it wereprimarily a theological construct, or an economic influence or a form ofpolitical or social capital. This work has been valuable. Most, however, isconcentrated on the West, and thus isolated from the movement's largestpresent-day communities, or focused by disciplinary perspectives in ways whichdetach it from what evangelicalism functionally is.