This book examines the immensely popular turn-of-the-twentieth-century big tent revivals. By showing how these revivals combined the Protestant ethic of salvation with the emerging consumer ethos, McMullen sheds light on the way in which the United States became the most consumer-driven and yet one of the most religious societies in the western world. In Under the Big Top, Josh McMullen explodes traditional stereotypes that label evangelicalism a backward and retrograde cultural force. Instead, he shows how Victorian evangelicals mobilized advertising, celebrity culture, and the desire for healing - all too familiar tropes of the modern age - on behalf of their message. And in so doing, he argues, they helped usher in the America we know today.