Loveland, Anne C. 1938- (Anne Carol Loveland)

PERSONAL:

Born December 23, 1938, in Jamaica, NY; daughter of John Wayne and Edith Ellen Loveland; married Otis B. Wheeler, 1991. Ethnicity: "White." Educa-tion: University of Rochester, B.A., 1960; Cornell University, M.A., 1963, Ph.D., 1968.

ADDRESSES:

Office—Department of History, 224 Himes Hall, Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge, LA 70803; fax: 225-578-4909.

CAREER:

Historian, educator, and writer. Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge, instructor, 1964-68, assistant professor, 1968-72, associate professor, 1972-80, professor of history, 1980-93, T. Harry Williams Professor of American History, 1993-2000, department chair, 1993-96, T. Harry Williams Professor Emerita, 2000—.

MEMBER:

Organization of American Historians, Southern Historical Association, Southern Association for Women Historians.

AWARDS, HONORS:

Younger humanist fellow of National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH), 1973-74; Francis Makemie Award, Historical Foundation of the Presbyterian and Reformed Churches, 1980-82, for Southern Evangelicals and the Social Order, 1800-1860; Willie Lee Rose Publication Prize, Southern Association for Women Historians, 1987, for Lillian Smith, a Southerner Confronting the South: A Biography; 1997 distinguished research master, Louisiana State University, 1998.

WRITINGS:

Emblem of Liberty: The Image of Lafayette in the American Mind, Louisiana State University Press (Baton Rouge, LA), 1971.

Southern Evangelicals and the Social Order, 1800-1860, Louisiana State University Press (Baton Rouge, LA), 1980.

Lillian Smith, a Southerner Confronting the South: A Biography, Louisiana State University Press (Baton Rouge, LA), 1986.

(With Stanley J. Idzerda and Marc H. Miller) Lafayette, Hero of Two Worlds: The Art and Pageantry of His Farewell Tour of America, 1824-1825, Queens Museum (Flushing, NY), 1989.

American Evangelicals and the U.S. Military, 1942-1993, Louisiana State University Press (Baton Rouge, LA), 1996.

(With Otis B. Wheeler) From Meetinghouse to Megachurch: A Material and Cultural History, University of Missouri Press (Columbia, MO), 2003.

Contributor to history journals.

SIDELIGHTS:

Historian Anne C. Loveland has written several books about evangelicals, as well as the Marquis de Lafayette, a wealthy French citizen who joined the American Revolution. In her 1996 book, American Evangelicals and the U.S. Military, 1942-1993, Loveland explores the relationship between American evangelicals and the armed forces of the United States. She traces the rise of the evangelical ministry's efforts to bring an evangelical mind-set to the military. Their efforts began in the late 1940s and early 1950s during the Cold War, when the National Association of Evangelicals and other organizations set out to reform what they saw as a morally corrupt U.S. military. According to the author, these evangelicals also believed that their efforts in the military would help counteract the influence of more liberal churches and church organizations. A turning point, writes Loveland, was Billy Graham's early efforts in the Eisenhower administration, which helped establish evangelical leaders within the system of power in Washington, DC. Dean C. Curry wrote in the Journal of Church and State that the author's "history of the relationship between American evangelicals and the military is interesting and fills a void in the burgeoning genre of evangelical studies." Curry added that Loveland provides many insights into "evangelicalism's rise to power within American public life after World War II."

Loveland also wrote From Meetinghouse to Megachurch: A Material and Cultural History with Otis B. Wheeler. In their cultural history of the phenomenon of megachurches, the authors recount how the number of megachurches rose from ten in 1970 to more than 400 by the middle of the 1990s. Loveland and Wheeler look to the seventeenth century to begin their analysis of how megachurches evolved from revival tents and other structures to auditorium church meetings in the early twentieth century and then slowly evolved into massive churches with congregations of thousands by the 1990s. From Meetinghouse to Megachurch also analyzes how architectural form is a crucial element of modern megachurches, and explores the social aspects involved, such as specific practices of worship and community efforts.

"The mission of this book is to raise the megachurch out of this slough of disdain by, as the title suggests, relocating it squarely within a lineage of American Protestant church building," Church History contributor Jeanne Halgren Kilde wrote in a review of From Meetinghouse to Megachurch. William Martin, a Journal of Southern History contributor, noted: "The authors demonstrate a familiarity with not only the buildings they describe but also the subcultural communities that inhabit and enliven them. The book reflects both careful historical research and extensive sociological field work, and it offers valuable insights into a significant dimension of American religious history and culture."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

American Historical Review, June, 1974, review of Emblem of Liberty: The Image of Lafayette in the American Mind, p. 848.

Armed Forces & Society: An Interdisciplinary Journal, fall, 1997, Robert L. Goldich, review of American Evangelicals and the U.S. Military, 1942-1993, p. 169.

Church History, September, 2006, Jeanne Halgren Kilde, review of From Meetinghouse to Megachurch: A Material and Cultural History, p. 689.

Journal of Church and State, spring, 1998, Dean C. Curry, review of American Evangelicals and the U.S. Military, 1942-1993, pp. 495-496.

Journal of Southern History, August 1, 2006, William Martin, review of From Meetinghouse to Megachurch, p. 721.

Library Journal, October 1, 2003, L. Kriz, review of From Meetinghouse to Megachurch, p. 82.