In the year 411 the bishops of Christian North Africa, Augustine among them, assembled in Carthage to debate whether Catholics or Donatists should be recognized as the true Christian church in North Africa. Although most biographies of Augustine and histories of Christianity in North Africa mention this conference, they spend little time on the substance of the discussion which took place between the two parties. Accusations by fourthcentury Catholics, especially Augustine, and remarks by modern commentators often charge the Donatists with delaying the debate on the real issues of the Conference by interventions and procedural motions which served no useful purpose. Even W. H. C. Frend in The Donatist Church, and Peter Brown in his biography of Augustine take Catholic propaganda on this issue at face value.

In medieval German history excommunication, when considered at all, is usually examined from the perspective of the conflicts between empire and papacy, such as that between Pope Gregory VII and King Henry IV. Like the pope, the bishops of the German Empire were armed with the power to excommunicate. Excommunication therefore figured in local, regional politics, especially in the creation of territorial principalities within the German Empire. Territorial principalities formed during the High Middle Ages when the kingship weakened, and various powerful lords, secular and spiritual, began to build states which eventually gained near-autonomous status within the empire. When a secular dynastic lord struggled to expand his dominion over land and people, he often encroached upon church lands. To defend their churches bishops could and often did excommunicate their perceived oppressors. These regional conflicts were complicated by the dual role of prince-bishops: spiritual princes of the church and secular princes of empire. In competition with the lay nobility, prince-bishops were expanding their own secular dominions.

On 16 March 1742, Jonathan Edwards's church in Northampton adopted a new covenant of faith. Written in the heat of the Great Awakening, the document began, predictably, by acknowledging “the blessed manifestations and fruits of [God's] gracious presence in this town” during the recent spiritual revivals. It then plunged into more worldly matters. It called on every church member to deal honestly and justly in secular business: they were not “in any matter” to “overreach or defraud” their “neighbor…and either willfully or through want of care, injure him in any of his honest possessions or rights.” The oath became more explicit. Debtors were to pay their creditors, so to avoid “willfully or negligently” wronging others. Indeed, debtors promised to forego “rest till … that restitution, or …that satisfaction” were effected. Likewise, creditors pledged to eschew “wordly gain, or honor, or interest…or getting the better” of their “competitors” as the “governing aim” of their business. Those who managed public affairs also were to forsake competitiveness. They agreed to relinquish their private interests for the sake of equity, especially “concerning any outward possessions, privileges, rights or properties.” Although the covenant dealt with other matters, it sustained its striking focus on commerce. Even as it neared its conclusion, it used economic metaphor to urge piety, presenting life as capital “to be laboriously spent in the business of religion: ever making it our greatest business.”

Several scholars, including Workman, Cragg, Dreyer, and now Henry Rack, have called attention to Wesley's endorsement of Locke's philosophy (within limits) and, more broadly, to the debt which he owed to empiricist psychology and theories of knowledge. Wesley read the Essay Concerning Human Understanding in 1725 during the interval between his commencement as a Bachelor of Arts and his election to a Fellowship at Lincoln College, Oxford. The book made a favorable impression which endured to the end of his life. During the decade of the eighties, for instance, Wesley published a series of extracts from the Essay, books I and II, in his Arminian Magazine (volumes 5–7, 1782–1784). He also praised The Procedure, Extent, and Limits of Human Understanding and Things Divine and Supernatural Conceived by Analogy with Things Natural and Divine, books written by Peter Browne (died 1735), an Irish bishop and philosopher whom Locke had influenced to a considerable degree. Indeed, at one juncture, Wesley expressed a preference for Browne over Locke. He wrote in his journal for 6 December 1756, “I began reading to our preachers the late Bishop of Cork's Treatise on Human Understanding, in most points far clearer and more judicious than Mr. Locke's, as well as designed to advance a better cause.”

In the fifty years since the emergence of the neo-evangelical movement, the connotations of the word “evangelical” have changed significantly. Richard Quebedeaux charts an evolution of the movement beginning with the “neo-evangelicalism” of its founders, continuing through the “new evangelicalism” of their children, and on to the more radical evangelicalism typified by contemporary “Young Evangelicals.” Although these transitions cannot always be delineated as clearly as Quebedeaux implies, the evangelicalism of the past fifty years has certainly proved more dynamic than static and has managed to wiggle its way out of the grasp of its neo-evangelical founders.