The Evangelicals: The Struggle to Shape America
Written by Frances Fitzgerald
Narrated by Jacques Roy
4.5/5
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About this audiobook
* 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).
Editor's Note
Award winning…
A Pulitzer Prize-winning historian traces the dramatic rise (and heated conflicts) of America’s Evangelical movement, from Puritans to the 2016 election. Shedding light on culture wars and divisive politics, this thought-provoking read graces many critics’ “best of” lists.
Frances Fitzgerald
Frances FitzGerald is the recipient of the Pulitzer Prize, the National Book Award, the Bancroft Prize, and a prize from the National Academy of Arts and Sciences. She is the author of The Evangelicals: The Struggle to Shape America; Fire in the Lake: the Vietnamese and the Americans in Vietnam; America Revised: History School Books in the Twentieth Century; Cities on a Hill: A Journey through Contemporary American Cultures; Way Out in the Blue: Reagan, Star Wars and the End of the Cold War; and Vietnam: Spirits of the Earth. She has written for The New Yorker, The Atlantic, Harper’s, The New York Review of Books, The Nation, Rolling Stone, and Esquire.
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Reviews for The Evangelicals
46 ratings4 reviews
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5I grew up a conservative Evangelical and still consider myself an Evangelical, but am baffled by my community's support of Trump. This book made my life make sense. I recommend this along with Kruse's "One Nation Under God" as well as some Noll and Hartgrove books. I'm really beginning to understand the importance of knowing where we came from in order to see where we're going.
2 people found this helpful
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Very good until the modern era at which point the writer shows her bias
1 person found this helpful
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5This book is a slow read or listen and comprehensive to the suject matter of evangelicalism in America. There was a lot more information than I came with expectation of finding. An increasingly good read and audiobook from start to finish. I recommend this book highly.
1 person found this helpful
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Interesting analysis. I think it could have been better if it had spent more time on laymen and less time on celebrities and intellectuals. Although it does to this to an extent, I am still unclear on how influential the high profile evangelicals were on shaping the belief system of 'everyday' evangelicals. I also felt it was lacking in analyzing how factors outside of theology affected the stances of evangelicals: such as money and racism.