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The Evangelicals: The Struggle to Shape America

Frances FitzGerald

4.16 · Rating details · 1,349 ratings · 276 reviews

* Winner of the 2017 National Book Critics Circle Award
* National Book Award Finalist
* Time magazine Top 10 Nonfiction Book of the Year
* New York Times Notable Book
* Publishers Weekly Best Books of 2017

This “epic history” (The Boston Globe) from Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Frances FitzGerald is the first to tell the powerful, dramatic story of the Evangelical mo * Winner of the 2017 National Book Critics Circle Award
* National Book Award Finalist
* Time magazine Top 10 Nonfiction Book of the Year
* New York Times Notable Book
* Publishers Weekly Best Books of 2017

This “epic history” (The Boston Globe) from Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Frances FitzGerald is the first to tell the powerful, dramatic story of the Evangelical movement in America—from the Puritan era to the 2016 election. “We have long needed a fair-minded overview of this vitally important religious sensibility, and FitzGerald has now provided it” (The New York Times Book Review).

The evangelical movement began in the revivals of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, known in America as the Great Awakenings. A populist rebellion against the established churches, it became the dominant religious force in the country.

During the nineteenth century white evangelicals split apart, first North versus South, and then, modernist versus fundamentalist. After World War II, Billy Graham attracted enormous crowds and tried to gather all Protestants under his big tent, but the civil rights movement and the social revolution of the sixties drove them apart again. By the 1980s Jerry Falwell and other southern televangelists, such as Pat Robertson, had formed the Christian right. Protesting abortion and gay rights, they led the South into the Republican Party, and for thirty-five years they were the sole voice of evangelicals to be heard nationally. Eventually a younger generation proposed a broader agenda of issues, such as climate change, gender equality, and immigration reform.

Evangelicals now constitute twenty-five percent of the American population, but they are no longer monolithic in their politics. They range from Tea Party supporters to social reformers. Still, with the decline of religious faith generally, FitzGerald suggests that evangelical churches must embrace ethnic minorities if they are to survive. “A well-written, thought-provoking, and deeply researched history that is impressive for its scope and level of detail” (The Wall Street Journal). Her “brilliant book could not have been more timely, more well-researched, more well-written, or more necessary” (The American Scholar). ...more

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Published April 4th 2017 by Simon & Schuster

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Sep 09, 2017 Michael Finocchiaro rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: american-21st-c, history, non-fiction, pulitzer-history, pulitzer-non-fiction

This book is an extraordinary history and analysis of the Evangelist movement since the Great Awakenings of the 18th and 19th centuries up to the Christian Right of today’s American political landscape.

In 2017, I read Joel Green's Devil's Bargain to understand how Bannon and Breitbart used propaganda to swing the 2016 election to Drumpf. I wanted to read this book to see how and why Drumpf got the evangelical vote (and how it has infected the GOP like a cancer).

Frances Fitzgerald teaches us abo This book is an extraordinary history and analysis of the Evangelist movement since the Great Awakenings of the 18th and 19th centuries up to the Christian Right of today’s American political landscape.

In 2017, I read Joel Green's Devil's Bargain to understand how Bannon and Breitbart used propaganda to swing the 2016 election to Drumpf. I wanted to read this book to see how and why Drumpf got the evangelical vote (and how it has infected the GOP like a cancer).

Frances Fitzgerald teaches us about the origins of radical Calvinism leading to the Great Awakenings although I needed to take extensive notes to recall which figure was associated with which branch (Baptist, Presbyterian or Methodist for the most part) and what their particularities were. The first shock for me was learning that in 1844, the Southern Baptist Convention was created explicitly to make excuses for slavery, ie. religion is one thing, slave-holding another. I was not previously aware that this was so explicit and it explains a lot of things (like more recent evangelical support of Roy Moore in Alabama and more broadly support by evangelicals of Drumpf). It was fascinating to learn the backgrounds of many legendary names that I grew up hearing about: Billy Graham, Jerry Falwell, Francis Shaeffer, and others. I grew up in a fundamentalist church and this book really helped me understand what was behind the rhetoric. It also convinced me that I did the right thing in ejecting myself from that world. It is interesting though that many progressive causes in the US came out of this movement (orphanages, concepts of social security and solidarity), and yet so many degressive and destructive things as well (rapid homophobia, misogyny, the aforementioned excuses for slavery). A few other interesting tidbits:
1/ lots of loonies from my home state Florida. Not surprising but alarming. No wonder I brought up that way!
2/ the enduring power of Pat Robertson was scary and just plain creepy
3/ it is surprising the amount of anti-Semitism that is wrapped up in many of the doctrines despite the difficulties they have to reconcile these ideas with their literal reading of the Bible

I also noted with some sense of horror the role of Drumpf lawyer Jay Sekulow who has been on the lunatic fringe of the Evangelical Right for nearly 30 years, on the forefront of their racist fights in favor of segregation and against public schools as well as against gays and against women.

I'll probably have to come back to this book in the future because it is so incredibly dense and informative. Highly, highly recommended if you want to understand a bit of how people can be convinced to vote and act against their best interest. Next read to understanding the 2016 election of Drumpf will be about the economic model in Democracy in Chains by Nancy MacLean.

Still if not more than ever, a must read - particularly when some evangelicals are trying to paint Drumpf as a repentant xtian which seems to this reader as a massive stretch of fantasy. It seems to me that they are attempting to hasten the clock towards what they hope will be a pre-millenial period. Scary times indeed. ...more

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May 01, 2017 Austin rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Finally I made myself take on a book that I didn't expect to enjoy (I am challenging myself to read 5, so had to get into it). And I took it on by the horns, in the topic I find perhaps the most obnoxious and perplexing in alternation: American Evangelicalism. This movement, or philosophy, is here defined by: "An evangelist is one who disseminates the gospels by zealous preaching... Evangelicalism is the religion."

I don't dislike evangelicals as a whole, because they are people, and I don't disl ...more

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May 28, 2017 Steve Matlak rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Evangelical reviewer here. A riveting overview of the major ideas and figures in Evangelical history from 1740 to present. The author is not an evangelical, but gives a comprehensive and factually accurate description of us, the good and the bad.

A couple criticisms. First, the latter half of the book focuses almost exclusively on evangelical engagement with politics. This is certainly a part of the story--and the most controversial and interesting, even amongst ourselves. But she mostly missed ...more

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May 09, 2020 Max rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: american-history

FitzGerald follows the development of the evangelical movement from the 18th century to the present focusing on theology as well as the impact on society and politics. It is a detailed presentation that will be best appreciated by those with a deep interest. My notes follow.

At the beginning of the eighteenth century most Americans were in established Protestant denominations: Congregationalists, Anglican, Baptist or Presbyterian. These structured religions embedded in doctrine lost their appeal ...more

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Jun 16, 2020 Mikey B. rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: history, journalism, religion, united-states

There is a mountain of details in this very probing book on the influence of evangelicals on American life and politics in particular.

As per this book they successfully penetrated the inner realm of government during President George W. Bush’s term of office (2000 - 2008). But even before they were influencing policies, more so on women and education.

Page 208 the George W. Bush White House

David Frum, reported that to his discomfort Bible study attendance was “if not obligatory, not quite uncompu ...more

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Jul 09, 2018 Kathleen rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

FitzGerald has done an amazing amount of research regarding the Evangelical movement in the United States, from its earliest roots in the 18th and 19th centuries to the formidable political power it nurtured during the last part of the 20th century through today. Indeed, the Republican Party co-opted many Evangelical political objectives with the result that Evangelicals are one of the Republican Party’s most loyal voting blocks.
Personally, I was raised as a United Methodist in the northern libe FitzGerald has done an amazing amount of research regarding the Evangelical movement in the United States, from its earliest roots in the 18th and 19th centuries to the formidable political power it nurtured during the last part of the 20th century through today. Indeed, the Republican Party co-opted many Evangelical political objectives with the result that Evangelicals are one of the Republican Party’s most loyal voting blocks.
Personally, I was raised as a United Methodist in the northern liberal theology tradition—supporting Government’s role in achieving social justice for the poor and disenfranchised. Apparently, in the 19th century, liberal theology challenged the whole concept of slavery. (No kidding!) So, Southern Protestant Christians focused on personal salvation instead.
In the early 20th century, Evangelicals sought to keep their faith separate from the State, believing that it was the best way to keep their religious beliefs pure. But Evangelical leaders in the latter half of the century—in their quest to obtain more and more members—preached that only by becoming involved in politics would they protect their faith from secular contamination. Thus, there entered the trend toward private schools and even home schooling. They sought to have the United States designated as a Christian country with Christian prayer returned to schools. They wanted to eliminate the Governmental social safety net. They wanted to have those services provided by the churches instead.
The modern evangelists were not steeped in theological training, but they did have a knack for marketing. They wrote books on everything from Christian child rearing to Christian marriage counseling. They used television and radio to reach the masses. And preached the urgency to get oneself right with God as the Second Coming was near. Different sects competed for membership—among them: Southern Baptists, Assembly of God, and Church of the Nazarene; but the one thing that seemed to motivate all of their memberships was the abolition of both abortion rights and gay rights.
Younger Evangelicals seem to be both more tolerant of pluralistic viewpoints and more interested in social justice issues. It will be interesting to see the evolution of the Evangelical movement in the future.
There are some gaps in FitzGerald’s exhaustive study—particularly the Evangelical movement within Black and Latino communities—but she provides a much needed understanding of the Evangelical movement and its influence on modern politics today. And most important, reinforces the wisdom of our Founding Fathers to establish Separation of Church and State. Highly recommend. ...more

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Mar 25, 2018 Kimba Tichenor rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: american-history, religion-in-the-united-states

In this book, Frances FitzGerald offers a history of white evangelicalism from the first Great Awakening in the 1730s (Jonathan Edwards) until the present. However the vast majority of the book focuses on evangelicalism in the 20th century and the emergence of the religious right; the first two centuries of evangelical politics and theology encompass only the first 142 pages of this 746-page tome.

Because the author's primary interest is the rise of Christian political conservatism in the twenti In this book, Frances FitzGerald offers a history of white evangelicalism from the first Great Awakening in the 1730s (Jonathan Edwards) until the present. However the vast majority of the book focuses on evangelicalism in the 20th century and the emergence of the religious right; the first two centuries of evangelical politics and theology encompass only the first 142 pages of this 746-page tome.

Because the author's primary interest is the rise of Christian political conservatism in the twentieth century, more progressive strains of evangelicalism in the nineteenth and twentieth century often receive only minimal attention. For example, FitzGerald does not cover Charles Grandison Finney's harsh criticism of predatory capitalism during the Second Great Awakening. Similarly, for the 20th century, FitzGerald only makes brief reference to the Chicago Evangelical Declaration of Social Concern in 1973 and to evangelicals who supported environmental protection and religious tolerance for all faiths. That said, in contradistinction to much of mainstream media, FitzGerald is careful not to present conservative evangelicals as a singular entity with a common set of beliefs. Instead, the author highlights the multiple internal theological and political debates that have divided conservative evangelicals over the course of the twentieth century. These differences, rather than external challenges, have often undermined the efforts of white evangelical leaders to exercise influence on the American political stage for extended periods of time. To her credit, the author avoids sensationalism in detailing these theological differences. But ultimately, what she has written is not a history of evangelicalism but a magisterial history of white Christian political conservatism since the 1940s, as she chose to omit a wide-ranging cast of individuals and groups that self-identify as evangelicals, including African-American, Latino, and Asian evangelicals as well as liberal and conservative Christians who over the years have expressed strong objections to the political agenda of the religious right. This omission results in an incomplete, and at times stereotypical, representation of the discursive world of Christian evangelicalism.

...more

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Nov 15, 2017 Sher rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: religion

It was a pleasure to read and discuss this book with three reformed Evangelicals, a current Evangelical, and myself who probably identifies as a pseudo -Christian ? Buddhist. Without a doubt this is the best book I have read in 2017, because it answered so many questions I had about what defines Evangelicalism, where did it come from, and how has Evangelicalism shaped American politics. All the main figures from the 18th to the 21st century are covered. And each movement and how it influenced po ...more

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Apr 13, 2018 Caroline rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: women-authors

No time for a good review. Just to say it is an excellent and comprehensive of the changing shape, and various strains, of evangelicalism in the United States from colonial days to the present. She is particularly thorough and clear about how the conservative right and fundamentalism took over evangelicalism for much of the twentieth century, and how gradually an older view of evangelicalism is re-emerging with a focus on social justice and ministering to the poor and the earth. Recommended.

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Jun 04, 2018 Leo Walsh rated it really liked it · review of another edition

As a Christian, I often wonder about the strange unChristian things I often observe from my more conservative fellow believers. THE EVANGELICALS by Frances Fitzgerald is a fabulous book, providing a window into their worldview. And she takes the LOOOOOOOOONG view, tracing the movement back to the 17th century through the regional, southern movement that blossomed in the 1960's as a reaction to the "Long Sixties" and the challenges they to traditional, rural patriarchal society, like minority rig ...more

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Jul 18, 2017 Mary Ronan Drew rated it did not like it · review of another edition

American Evangelicals. The Great Awakening, tent revivals, Holy Rollers, slave preachers, millennialists, Southern Baptists, Pentecostals. Dwight Moody, Oral Roberts, Father Divine, Aimee Semple McPherson, Bob Jones, Billy Graham, Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker, Billy Sunday, Peter Marshall, Sweet Daddy Grace. Heck, even George Whitefield was a thought-provoking guy. What a lively book this should be.

Well, of course I got my evangelicals confused with my evangelists to start with, but still, there sh American Evangelicals. The Great Awakening, tent revivals, Holy Rollers, slave preachers, millennialists, Southern Baptists, Pentecostals. Dwight Moody, Oral Roberts, Father Divine, Aimee Semple McPherson, Bob Jones, Billy Graham, Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker, Billy Sunday, Peter Marshall, Sweet Daddy Grace. Heck, even George Whitefield was a thought-provoking guy. What a lively book this should be.

Well, of course I got my evangelicals confused with my evangelists to start with, but still, there should be plenty to work with in the history of conservative preachers, fundamentalism, and evangelicals in this country. And indeed, they are all mentioned in Frances Fitzgerald's history. Along with many of those mentioned above, there are Jonathan Edwards, Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson, Rick Warren, James Dobson. I heard Robert Schuller preach at the Chrystal Cathedral years ago and I thought I would read the story of him and his church.

Unfortunately, I only made it to page 11 of this 740-page book. I spent another hour and a half looking up and reading about some people and places and movements I was interested in and I found myself asking why this author should have wasted so much time writing this book. Deeply researched, widely ranging, filled with dates and numbers and details, the tome reads like the US Social Security Act.

It is seldom a good idea to write a book about a person or subject that you hold in great disdain unless you are prepared to be actively disdainful, sarcastic, mocking, witty. And clearly Fitzgerald holds fundamentalists and evangelicals, protestants, Christians, indeed believers of any sort in disdain. But she presents this history as if she were simply giving the reader the true and balanced story, no opinions here, straightforward narrative, nothing jaundiced or hostile. Just the facts.

Hoping for a balanced discussion nowadays of these admittedly controversial people and religious movements, I was distressed to find this well-researched book (71 pages of end notes) by a respected historian so entirely negative towards its subject. Everything she discusses she approaches unfavorably. It's as if no one ever found his life changed by a tent revival, no one was consoled by Billy Graham's words, no one got a good education at Bob Jones University.

As with seemingly every new book I read lately, the author ends warning of the dangers of the election of Donald Trump. ...more

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Nov 14, 2017 Mehrsa rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

This was so well done. It's a thoughtful, precise, and careful history of the evangelical movement. I was trying to decipher the author's own views the entire time and could never get a good handle on it--a mark of an excellent history.

As to the content, it's just so fascinating to follow the arc of the evangelical right and wonder about what's coming next. I hope there is more of a move toward causes (like poverty and justice) and not just a myopic fixation on abortion and gay marriage. I've n ...more

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Nov 16, 2017 Marks54 rated it it was amazing

There are some authors for whom I will move their new works to the top of my queue because I know it will be worth it. Margaret Atwood comes to mind. Frances FitzGerald wrote a wonderful book in 1972 on the Vietnam War - Fire in the Lake. When I heard that she had written a book on US Evangelicals, I was intrigued and after some due diligence decided to jump in.

The Evangelicals is a high quality of Evangelical and related enthusiastic religious movements in US history. It reads like a fine histo There are some authors for whom I will move their new works to the top of my queue because I know it will be worth it. Margaret Atwood comes to mind. Frances FitzGerald wrote a wonderful book in 1972 on the Vietnam War - Fire in the Lake. When I heard that she had written a book on US Evangelicals, I was intrigued and after some due diligence decided to jump in.

The Evangelicals is a high quality of Evangelical and related enthusiastic religious movements in US history. It reads like a fine history work written by someone who is also a skilled writer and story teller. The book embraces the varied names and labels applied to Evangelical groups and provides a detailed history back to Jonathan Edwards and the First Great Awakening. This is a complex story and FitzGerald does a good jobs at tracing the ins and outs of how this side of US Protestantism developed through it various stages past watersheds like the Civil War and Reconstruction and up to the 20th nad 21st centuries. If you get confused about who is an Evangelical and who is not, what a Pentacostal is and how they compare with other groups, what a fundamentalist is, or where various small churches and sects came from, then this is the book for you. FitzGerald has done her homework - although even with her clear writing it is hard to keep all the actors straight.

The heart of the story concerns the emergence of the Christian Right as a main player in US politics from the 1960s and 1970s up through the Bush 43 presidency and Obama. A strong point of the book is in its profiles of the different televangelists who drove this political action and become omnipresent on television in their shows and in coverage of their scandals. The book is strong in clarifying how the religious politics works and how alliances were made and unmade. The book is also strong in discussing the ebb and flow of these movements and the thoroughly perplexing role of the Evangelicals in the 2016 election and in the Trump administration. The book is not primarily about Trump, however, and is not merely another volume of post-election Trump anthropology.

I will confess that my background has not involved much contact with these sorts of churches or worshippers. Indeed, the prospect of a high quality and thorough intellectual examination of a set of actors who are by intent not pursuing intellectual approaches to Christianity struck me as a daunting challenge for the author. I approached the book as an outsider struggling to keep an open mind. That appears to be the author’s perspective as well in that I do not see her pursuing a pro or anti evangelical agenda or nursing preconceptions about these churches or their pastors. Fitzgerald is also excellent in covering the institutional structure of these churches and their seminaries and the political and bureaucratic strategies that different actors, such as Billy Graham, employed to attain positions of influence in the broader US society. The book combines the story of these churches as a religious history with the story of how evangelicals came to have positions of influence in American politics and especially in the “culture wars” since the 1990s.

This is a long book and quite detailed. It reads easily, however, and goes quickly for a long volume on social and religious history. It was very enjoyable. ...more

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Apr 08, 2017 Michael Perkins rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

I was familiar with the bulk of what is covered in this new book. But I give it props for being a thoroughly researched, balanced treatment of the subject. The writing is also quite fluid for a subject that could easily be a textbook instead.

Back in the 70's, I recall author and evangelist Francis Schaeffer being popular in Christian circles at colleges. (I was surprised the author did not talk about his popular early works such as "Escape from Reason"). What I hadn't realized until recent years ...more

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Jun 21, 2017 Jared Wilson rated it liked it · review of another edition

The first half is a really great book, the second half bogs down. This is not so much due to Fitzgerald's writing, however, as it is to the historical narrative shift of evangelicalism as revivalistic and culturally responsive movement to evangelicalism as political reactionary and morally compromised movement. The second half history is largely about the machinations of the Republican Party from 1970's onward, which for a book written about "The Evangelicals," tells you what you ought to know a ...more

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Dec 25, 2016 Anna added it · review of another edition

Shelves: for-review, nonfiction, history, politics, religion

Review forthcoming in Publishers Weekly. This title was both painful and heartening to read in this historical moment as the bulk of its 700+ pages focus on the twentieth century and evangelical conservatism and fundamentalism ... strains of Christianity that have been an abiding political force in our recent history. Painful because many of the fears and anxieties expressed by the white Protestants that FitzGerald focuses on were made manifest in the 2016 presidential election; heartening becau ...more

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Oct 23, 2017 Alex rated it it was ok · review of another edition

Shelves: politics-law, christianity, world-religion

I have yet to read a Simon and Schuster book with as many grammatical errors as there are in Evangelicals. As other reviewers pointed out, it seems that the book's release was rushed after Trump's 2016 victory. At over 600 pages, this book could have easily been cut down by half. Although Alec Ryrie's latest book Protestants focuses more on the global history of Protestantism, the chapters on the US include the same information as provided in Evangelicals, and are far more concise and accessible ...more

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Feb 03, 2021 Joelle rated it it was amazing

Whew. That was a methodical, layered, and long march through time. However, it was worth it. It skipped the scandals of the SBC, focusing more on the overall agenda and the ERLC as opposed to men like Paige Patterson. It also didn't mention the sexual accusations that Bill Hybels is under, or go into celebrity pastors like Mark Driscoll.

I appreciated the nuances it brought to the fundamentalist discussion. Today, when we hear that word, we picture, skirts, suits, anti science, anti masks, shout ...more

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Aug 24, 2019 Preston Stell rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Without a doubt, undeniably, this is the authoritative portrait of the Evangelical movement. I’ve never read anything quite like this. FitzGerald is well researched and certainly took the time to characterize this movement fairly. I don’t think it makes me any more ashamed to be part of this movement (there has been plenty to be ashamed about before this book came into my hands), but it has succinctly put a vast stretch of time and transition into a digestible read. FitzGerald has many opportuni Without a doubt, undeniably, this is the authoritative portrait of the Evangelical movement. I’ve never read anything quite like this. FitzGerald is well researched and certainly took the time to characterize this movement fairly. I don’t think it makes me any more ashamed to be part of this movement (there has been plenty to be ashamed about before this book came into my hands), but it has succinctly put a vast stretch of time and transition into a digestible read. FitzGerald has many opportunities to decry the movement or make sarcastic comments, but overwhelmingly avoids jabs at Christians where she would be justified in mocking us.

This book notes things you are simply not taught in Evangelical seminaries or bible schools (at least things I was not taught). I don’t, for a second, believe that my teachers were purposely not teaching some of the things in this book, it’s just teachers have to pick and choose what is important to highlight. For instance, this excellent historical work points out things about Charles Finney which I never knew. Finney was an theological Arminian, and sometimes gets pushed as far as the Pelagian camp (Pelagius lived during Augustine’s time). Finney has a belief in the doctrine “Christian Perfectionism,” that is, a belief that a Christian can go without willfully sinning from day to day, and that a Christian can faulter and lose her salvation which can be gained back again. This book recognizes this but also shows that Finney was strong for the abolition of slavery when this view was not popular. Additionally, Finney’s bible school was the first in America to allow women to enroll. Finney, the “heretic”, was a social justice giant, a true egalitarian, or one who at least was working toward this (African Americans were not enrolled in the school). How fascinating what is left out in our schools! This is just one minor example of what I never knew which shocked and awed me, frankly leaving me humbled by Finney instead of my previous deploring of his doctrine.

Overall this book excels where many books like it would fall flat. Withholding judgment and telling the story accurately is what I have come to believe a good journalist does. If this is what this journalist does, her readers are free to draw conclusions or form opinions since they’ve been handed down truths that are backed up by real events. I’m grateful for her good journalism and for her excellent & factual story telling.

I couldn’t recommend any non-fiction book more as a possible second Trump term looms. Know your America folks and thank folks like Frances FitzGerald for making this American piece of the pie that much clearer. ...more

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Jan 04, 2021 Matthew Manchester rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Brutally honest. You won't see evangelism the same after reading this. ...more

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May 29, 2017 Christopher rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: christianity, history, united-states

(Reviewer's Note: I just wrote a more in depth review of this book on my weekly book blog. If you like this review and would like to read more, click on the following link: https://tobereadnow.blogspot.com/2017... )

If you ask your average American what an Evangelical is, they will probably identify them as a Christian, but will probably also mention negatives terms such as bigot and homophobe. This is a sad fact that has its roots in the politics of the Christian Right during the 2000s, but it i (Reviewer's Note: I just wrote a more in depth review of this book on my weekly book blog. If you like this review and would like to read more, click on the following link: https://tobereadnow.blogspot.com/2017... )

If you ask your average American what an Evangelical is, they will probably identify them as a Christian, but will probably also mention negatives terms such as bigot and homophobe. This is a sad fact that has its roots in the politics of the Christian Right during the 2000s, but it ignores the extraordinary impact evangelical Christianity has had on the history of the country. This book examines that history and reminds us of how evangelistic Christianity has made its mark on the individualistic character of America.

Starting with the First Great Awakening and running through to the recent election of Donald Trump, Ms. Fitzgerald traces the evolution of evangelical Christianity through all of its tumultuous ups and downs. Throughout it all she shows how this movement has made its mark on American history. Several charitable societies in the 19th century were started by evangelical Christians. However, she does not ignore the bad history either. Southern evangelical Christians used their faith to justify slavery and then, after the Civil War, justify Jim Crow laws. Ms. Fitzgerald also gives details about the most important figures in the history of the movement, from Jonathan Edwards through Charles Finney and Billy Graham to Jerry Falwell, James Dobson and Rick Warren.

What most readers will be interested in though is the rise and the decline of the Christian Right starting in the late 1970s. Indeed, half of this book covers that part of the tale alone. It is very interesting indeed as it shows how the evangelical movement shifted its focus away from doctrinal issues within the movement (the inerrancy of the Bible, the virgin birth, the crucifixion, etc.) to political issues and elections. She spends an especially long time telling the story of the Christian Right during the George W. Bush administration and the backlash their support and identification with President Bush caused.

As fascinating as this book is, there are some problems with it that make it difficult to enjoy. The first is the length of the chapters and the lack of organization within each chapter. At the beginning, the chapters are relatively manageable with subheadings throughout. However, as the book gets closer to the present, the chapters get longer and the subheadings are few and far between. Ms. Fitzgerald's chapter on the George W. Bush years was over 100 pages long and is so detailed that I felt like her editor should have told her to pare it down to the most essential tales. Also, there are a ton of missing the's and a's throughout the book, especially after the first few chapters. In fact, by the end of the book, there is hardly a page that goes by that isn't missing an important the or a. Both of seem to suggest that this book start of well, but after the election of Donald Trump was rushed to publication. This book could have benefited from more time to edit and pare down some of the bloat. One other problem this book has in the beginning is that, before the 197s, Ms. Fitzgerald uses theological terms to note the controversies of the age. For non-christians and even some lay Christians, it may be difficult to figure out what she is talking about. However, there is a glossary in the back and I would recommend people use it.

As the movement loses its influence on politics and many of its members vote for Donald Trump, the book ends with evangelical Christians in a tough spot. Church attendance and baptism numbers are down and few millennials identify themselves as Christians. Whatsmore, many millennials identify evangelicalism with Republican politics, bigotry and homophobia. As an evangelical myself, this breaks my heart. Perhaps by reading books on our history we can humbly admit our mistakes and rededicate ourselves to living out the teachings of our Lord, Jesus Christ, in our daily lives. ...more

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Jul 08, 2017 Ethan rated it liked it

Shelves: history, christianity

A history of the Evangelical movement perhaps better subtitled, "The Story of Why Evangelicals Vote the Way They Do," aka the only reason secularists tend to care about Evangelical Christianity.

The author is well researched and does about as well as a person can in attempting to maintain a secular disinterest but communicate about the subject. She spends very little time in the early period of the movement, focusing mostly on the divides manifest in the great awakenings leading to the fundamenta A history of the Evangelical movement perhaps better subtitled, "The Story of Why Evangelicals Vote the Way They Do," aka the only reason secularists tend to care about Evangelical Christianity.

The author is well researched and does about as well as a person can in attempting to maintain a secular disinterest but communicate about the subject. She spends very little time in the early period of the movement, focusing mostly on the divides manifest in the great awakenings leading to the fundamentalist / modernist schism fully complete by the 1920s.

The author spends a bit more time discussing all the streams that lead to the Religious Right coalition of the 1970s and onward; the majority of the book, provided in extreme detail, focuses on that Religious Right coalition in its various iterations and the attempts of various Evangelicals to shape political movements and policy over the past 40 years. The author concludes by establishing her purpose: to show that the Evangelicals of today are really no different from the fundamentalists of yore, manifesting the same concerns, and still as alien as ever.

I'm not sure if we needed a book describing the political endeavors of the Evangelicals and its origins, considering that the Evangelicals would be offended by their portrayal and the secularist posture of the author, and I'm not quite sure many secularists are that particularly interested in what motivates Evangelicals...considering, as the author points out well, that the secularists tend to think Evangelicalism has died out as a political force until it arises again and influences elections, and is still summarily otherized or ignored. Nevertheless, we have it, and so:

...for secularists: the book does well to show that you can ignore conservative Christianity, you can summarily dismiss it, you can fear it or otherize it or in whatever various ways consider it a spent force going into decline, and yet it continues to exist and exerts continual influence.

...for conservative Christians: the work gives an opportunity to see how the political work over the past few decades has been managed and how it looks to secularists. Unfortunately it's not a very pretty picture...and it has not helped advance the purposes of God in Christ in His Kingdom.

If you're looking for an actual history of Evangelicalism you're going to have to seek out Noll or others like him. You won't find it here. But if you're looking for all the politics, here it is.

**--galley received as part of an early review program ...more

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Oct 10, 2018 Nancy rated it it was amazing

Shelves: nobel-pulitzer, favorites, current-events-commentary

Evangelicals is an intense work, extensively researched and thoroughly footnoted. FitzGerald covers the movement’s growth from the Great Awakenings to our current administration. How we arrived at this point in American politics was my motivation for reading. I am guilty of applying my own politically and spiritually progressive bias to my interpretation. This study underscored my opinions about the battles over inerrancy of the Bible, the tendency for the most vocal fundamentalist right wing re ...more

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Dec 16, 2018 John David rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: history-of-ideas, modern-history, religion, theology

Embarking on a book like this can be emotionally enervating, even if one’s opinion isn’t well-formed enough to either agree or disagree with the author’s central thesis. Over the last couple of generations, American evangelicalism has become so intertwined with political conservatism that the history of one is closely connected with the history of the other. You can’t be sure the author doesn’t have an axe to grind, or perhaps worse yet, a hagiography to craft. Frances Fitzgerald, though, has ga Embarking on a book like this can be emotionally enervating, even if one’s opinion isn’t well-formed enough to either agree or disagree with the author’s central thesis. Over the last couple of generations, American evangelicalism has become so intertwined with political conservatism that the history of one is closely connected with the history of the other. You can’t be sure the author doesn’t have an axe to grind, or perhaps worse yet, a hagiography to craft. Frances Fitzgerald, though, has gained a reputation as a well-respected journalist-historian whose “Fire in the Lake,” on the subject of the Vietnam War, won her both a Pulitzer Prize and a Bancroft Prize upon its 1972 publication.

One cannot accuse Fitzgerald of lacking historical reach. Her narrative begins firmly in the 18th century during the first Great Awakening. The 630 pages are not evenly divided, however. By page 95, she is already in the 20th century discussing the differences between fundamentalists and modernists and by page 169, she has arrived at the early career of Billy Graham. So while the book does acknowledge the historical roots of evangelicalism, it by and large speaks to 20th century evangelicalism and the figures within it. Some of the names that she discusses don’t fall into the decades where evangelicalism was especially politically influential, like before 1925 when the Scopes Trial brought William Jennings Bryan back into the public light to take up the mantle of Biblical literalism. Consequently, they get almost no contemporary attention; among them are J. Frank Norris, William B. Riley, and J. Gresham Machen.

I was especially grateful for Fitzgerald’s thoughtful, generous inclusions of two names that barely register in the culturally secular collective memory of our country: Francis Schaeffer and the truly fascinating character of R. J. Rushdoony. Seriously, if you are unfamiliar with either Rushdoony’s name or influence, he is someone to be explored beyond the limits of what Fitzgerald provides here. He was a bizarrely thoughtful and soft-spoken man, but one whose idea of a perfect society would have made the treatment of women in “The Handmaid’s Tale” look like radical feminism.

But it’s hard to argue with a man like Rushdoony, who literally believed that U.S. law should be based on Mosaic penal codes (no, that’s not a joke). You know he’s sincere, but it’s just that he comes from another time, another place. However, as conservative Protestant Christianity becomes more and more popular, you start to sense the rise of people joining the movement whose sincerity should be thoroughly examined. You can almost feel Fitzgerald’s blood pressure rising as she recounts biographies of increasingly conspicuous grafters and con men, from Jerry Falwell to Pat Robertson to Jimmy Swaggart and James Bakker, whose oleaginous behavior did little more than line their own self-serving pockets. Upon Falwell’s death, Christopher Hitchens couldn’t have been more right than to say, “If they would have given him an enema, you could have buried him in a matchbox.”

One interesting thing about historical movements that seem to occur and reoccur is that only with historical retrospection do they seem to have any degree of subtlety or complexity. In our own time, the slow evangelical creep that took over much of American conservatism seemed inevitable and unquestionable. It is only with a larger historical lens that one can begin to get a grasp of the characteristics that define evangelicalism as a whole in all of its reincarnations (i.e., the three Great Awakenings). One of the definite weak points of this book is that, at least since the rise appearance of Falwell’s Moral Majority in the 1970s, Fitzgerald assumes the endpoints of American conservatism and evangelicalism to be coterminous, but that’s far from the case.

Consistent research actually shows that the average evangelical is not the Supreme Court-protesting, soldier funeral-picketing Westboro Baptist Church member that you might envision from reading this book. By and large, they do tend to vote Republican, but they don’t self-identify as activists in any greater proportion than any other religious demographic group. Another group Fitzgerald doesn’t mention is the Emerging Church Movement, participants of which are not easily theologically classified, but tend to deemphasize formal theology in favor of living a generally moral life and the recognition and integration of postmodern elements, like the feeling of spiritual anomie so common in Westernized technocracies.

While Fitzgerald admits to a kind of evangelical resurgence during the presidency of George W. Bush, she thinks it sort of lost its way in the light of the egregious failures that defined his second administration – the continued failure of Iraq, Hurricane Katrina, and the 2009 recession. But it’s far from finished; it’s just gone into one of its intermittent dormant, regrouping phases, awaiting to vocally support a Supreme Court decision to illegalize abortion or a pagan president who thinks that “Corinthians Two” is a kind of alternative leather. The book isn’t without significant oversights – the African-American evangelical experience and the Protestant religious coalitions that helped bring about the civil rights reforms of the 1960s are almost wholly elided, for example – but all in all, it’s probably one of the fairest, reliable, and thorough accounts you’ll likely find written for a broad readership. ...more

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Jul 28, 2017 Greg rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Just as it is impossible to begin to understand the complicated rivalries of the Middle East without an appreciation for the crucial role that various religious faiths have long played there, so is it also difficult to comprehend American politics without an awareness of religion’s central role in the story of the United States.
Unlike in Europe, where Protestants and Catholics competed for the loyalties of its people since the outbreak of the Reformation, Protestantism early assumed a dominant r Just as it is impossible to begin to understand the complicated rivalries of the Middle East without an appreciation for the crucial role that various religious faiths have long played there, so is it also difficult to comprehend American politics without an awareness of religion’s central role in the story of the United States.
Unlike in Europe, where Protestants and Catholics competed for the loyalties of its people since the outbreak of the Reformation, Protestantism early assumed a dominant role in the United States. Both Frances Fitzgerald’s The Evangelicals: The Struggle to Shape America, and Chris Lehman’s The Money Cult: Capitalism, Christianity, and the Unmaking of the American Dream, examine not only how it has been an integral part of American history from its colonial beginnings, but also how its more conservative values have come to play such a key role in many important policy issues from the second half of the 20th century onward.
While Ms. Fitzgerald devotes the bulk of her book to developments in the 20th century –when the voice and power of conservative Christians came to assume a decisive role in America’s divisive “culture wars” – Mr. Lehman focuses on how these fundamentalist adherents became so intertwined with, and supportive of, unrestrained capitalism and the celebration of material wealth.
Among the most important of the earliest settlers were the Puritans, so-called because of their conviction that their practices were “purer” than those of the Church of England. Puritan theology owed much to the teachings of John Calvin, a key Reformation leader who believed that depraved humanity was not only “despised” by an angry, jealous deity, but also – without God’s merciful forgiveness – condemned to eternal damnation.
Also inherent in Calvin’s theology was the concept that each individual’s fate was essentially “predetermined,” since God – possessing all knowledge – knew before anyone’s birth just who would be “saved” and who would be “lost.” This created an undeniable tension with those who believed that individuals possessed “free will”:
• Were individual “choices” really free, or were they foreknown – hence pre-determined – from the beginning of time?
• Furthermore, what was the relationship, if any, between the choices persons made their lifetimes and their fate after death?
To allay the consequent anxieties of many, Calvin also taught, however, that people could learn who the lucky few were by observing their earthly lives: the “chosen” were those who prospered while those who suffered or failed were destined to be among the “lost.” It was but a short leap from this to the hopeful suspicion that perhaps individuals could positively “influence” their destiny if they were to achieve success or standing in this life.
As new colonists continued to arrive in North America in the 17th century, they frequently left behind the more established cities of the Atlantic coast – where the earliest colonists had settled – and began migrating further inland, settling in small, rural villages. The ministers who chose to follow them – some formally ordained and many non-ordained, pious laymen – were usually less educated than the leaders of the coastal cities’ established churches.
It was in these rural areas that extraordinary revivals, which came to be known as spiritual awakenings, occurred on several occasions in the 18th and 19th centuries. These large gatherings featured astonishing examples of otherwise normal persons speaking in tongues, experiencing ecstatic states, and undergoing intensely emotional conversions that convinced those involved that they had experienced a personal connection with the divine. Their excited retellings, bolstered by the accounts of observers, sparked a broader enthusiasm that infectiously spread through neighboring villages and communities. Over time, these experiences modified the harsh theology of the early Puritans into a more accessible form.
Since these conversion experiences were intensely personal – experienced by average men and women who often knew little scripture or doctrine – they contributed to a suspicion of, and even an aversion to, persons possessing academic or scientific credentials. Moreover, since it seemed that good fortune – say, an uptick in a business venture, or a bountiful harvest – frequently came to those who had undergone such experiences, material gains came to be understood as an outward sign from God marking those who had been “saved.”
It was, then, only a small step to embrace the operation and fruits of capitalism as an integral experience of their religious faith, the genesis of what Chris Lehman identifies as the money cult that celebrates “wealth as a spiritual virtue in American Protestantism” and, by “minting the promise of individual salvation into a precept of economic advancement, [allows] today’s prophets of prosperity [to ignore] entirely matters of economic justice as they pertain to Christian morality….”
Throughout the latter 19th and into the 20th centuries, these fundamentalist communities routinely jostled with the more mainline Protestant churches – and, because of immigration, the growing influence of the Catholic Church – over interpretations of Jesus’ teachings concerning the importance of caring for one’s neighbors and of working to make “this world” a more just and compassionate place. The more fundamentalist sects, while fervent believers in the necessity of personal reform (such as avoiding tobacco, liquor, and other vices), were, nonetheless, wary of larger social reform movements since these appeared too accommodating to modernism and its many threats to established authority.
While it often seemed in the first half of the 20th century that fundamentalist sects were dwindling in influence and in the number of adherents, this was not the case. In fact, even into the present day, fundamentalism’s appeal has always been strongest in the South and in America’s rural areas, the very places where lingering racism, suspicion of various elites, and resentment towards “others” – immigrants, freeloaders, and welfare-dependent “takers” who demand and consume ever-increasing amounts of attention and federal dollars – have always been strongest.
It is hardly surprising that those with the most conservative religious convictions have been drawn into the orbit of those with the most conservative political views. Especially since the 1970s, religious fundamentalists have acquired ever-greater power within the Republican Party and have become key allies of the ideological Right. Their aversion to science and fact, coupled with their devotion to doctrine and myth, is allowing the interests of the wealthy elite to ignore the pressing needs of the many while pursuing policies favoring the few.
Civilization is, at best, a very thin veneer covering human irrationality; it can exist only as long as a sufficient number of citizens choose facts over lies and rumors, prefer substance and achievement in policy proposals and action rather than fractious division, and support the rights of the larger community over the wishes of the greedy few.
These books make it very clear that America’s “civilization,” in fact somewhat less glorious and refined than advertised, is in grave danger of falling prey to the priesthood of the devoted ignorant.

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Oct 11, 2020 Ed Erwin rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: nonfiction, history

Very well researched and detailed. For me, it was much more detail than I really wanted. (I rate based on enjoyment, and this got boring for me.) Lots and lots of names of people I've never heard of arguing over tiny doctrinal differences that I don't care about. The biggest take-away is that Evangelicals and Fundamentalists are not a single block who think, behave or vote alike. They group together and split apart over and over in hundreds or more different groups. Sometimes they prefer to with ...more

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Feb 03, 2019 Anat rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: read-nf-politics-society, read-nf-religion

Francis FitzGerald’s give us a very comprehensive book on the history of the white evangelical movement in America, from the First Great Awakening to today. She lays the groundwork with introducing the movements of the Great Awakenings, where we first see the various ideologies born that will influence the future of this group. She then takes the reader through milestone moments and rising leaders during the Civil War, tent revival era, Long Sixties, televangelists and ending with the Christian Francis FitzGerald’s give us a very comprehensive book on the history of the white evangelical movement in America, from the First Great Awakening to today. She lays the groundwork with introducing the movements of the Great Awakenings, where we first see the various ideologies born that will influence the future of this group. She then takes the reader through milestone moments and rising leaders during the Civil War, tent revival era, Long Sixties, televangelists and ending with the Christian Right. FitzGerald captures the feelings and dilemmas the evangelicals face with each generation and bridges these with the atmosphere of the time so you can see the weight this group had on politics and society on a regional or national level. As controversial topics are integral to the evangelical story, FitzGerald doesn’t shy away from reporting on how important issues such as slavery, abortion and education/evolution were driving factors in group factions and involvement in politics. You can tell she has been observing this movement for a while, particularly that of Jerry Falwell, as she has a lot of firsthand journalistic experience with his campaign. She does an excellent job of compiling hers and others journal accounts with historical commentary to give an account of the evangelical movement.

It was fascinating to see how evangelical Christianity evolved and how long it has been in the making. I grew up in a white evangelical household and I was excited to read about where the ideas I grew up being taught came from and how they started. I liked being able to read through the Great Awakenings and notice where sects I see today initially got their traction and how they evolved. There were so many intriguing parts but my favorite section was about how the Christian Right came to be associated with the Republican Party and, later, the Tea Party Conservatives. I also liked reading about the push and pull between different evangelical sects; I had never realized there was so much in-fighting amongst the group. It also felt kind of like a behind-the-scenes documentary of how the author pulls together various documents and commentary to paint the picture of what was happening. It was interesting, to say the least, to read about the conversations between leaders and discussions of strategy in proselytizing and politics.

There were times I was a little bogged down by all the names and different labels, but there is a glossary in the back of the book that helped keep me on track with the labels of different groups and ideologies. I was impressed with the lack of bias from FitzGerald while reading the book, especially this kind of topic, it is easy to come in with a lot of presuppositions, but she was very respectful. Only rarely was there a snide comment, mostly toward the end when outlining the Christian Right agenda(although I could have just read it that way). Overall, I highly recommend if you are interested in religion and/or politics in America.
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Sep 24, 2018 Irene rated it really liked it · review of another edition

This is an extensively researched, detailed survey of the establishment, growth and acquisition of political power of Evangelical Christianity in the United States. Although FitzGerald has synthesized a great amount of information from the historical record, I feel I know less after reading this tome than I did before. Maybe that is a sign of a good study, after all, the more one knows, the more one should realize how little one knows. And, maybe I wanted something from this scholarship which it ...more

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Jun 16, 2018 Karin rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: 2017-nba-nonfiction-longlist

a true definitive history, this kind of lost my interest at points, but the modern day stuff was fascinating. especially in light of what's happening at the border now, and how evangelicals have roundly embraced trump. ...more

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Aug 10, 2018 Emily rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Very good history, though some of the finer theological points were hard for this secular Jew to keep straight. She does have a glossary in back. Lucid account; helped me see some of the different currents in evangelicalism.

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About Frances FitzGerald

Frances FitzGerald

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Frances FitzGerald is an American journalist and historian.

Books by Frances FitzGerald

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“In his sermons, as in the book he published in 2005, The Myth of a Christian Nation, Boyd challenged the idea that America had been, or ever could be, a “Christian nation.” Taking his text from the Gospels, he reminded evangelicals that Christ’s kingdom was “not of this world,” and worldly kingdoms were the domain of fallen man. Evangelicals, he wrote, speak of “taking America back to God,” but the Constitution said nothing about a Christian nation, and America never remotely looked like the domain of God, certainly not in the days of slavery or of Jim Crow, and not today. A nation may have noble ideals and be committed to just principles, but of necessity it wields the “power over” of the sword, as opposed to the “power under” of the cross—which is that of Jesus’ self-sacrificial love. To identify the Kingdom of God with that of any version of the kingdom of the world is, he wrote, to engage in idolatry. The myth of a Christian nation, he continued, has led to the misconception that the American civil religion is real Christianity. Evangelicals, he wrote, spend our time striving to keep prayer in the public schools, “In God we trust” on our coins, and the Ten Commandments in public places. Might it not be, he asked, that the effort to defend prayer before civic functions reinforces the notion that prayer is a perfunctory social activity? And what if we spent all that energy serving each other with Christ-like love? We could, he wrote, feed the hungry, house the homeless, bridge the “ungodly racial gap,” and side with others whose rights are routinely trampled.” — 1 likes

“He and his fellow pastors attacked the public schools for teaching “immorality” and “secular humanism.” But what bothered pious members of his congregation was not just that the public schools taught wrong answers; it was that they did not protect children from information that might call their beliefs into question.” — 1 likes

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