Evangelicals : The Struggle To Shape America

In The Evangelicals: the Struggle to Shape America, Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Frances FitzGerald tells the powerful, dramatic story of the Evangelical movement in America, describing the profound ways in which evangelicals have shaped our nation, our culture, and our politics. Covering

FitzGerald’s sweeping and authoritative account of Evangelicalism provides a groundbreaking work of American history, piecing together this centuries-long story for the first time. Spanning from the Puritan era to the 2016 presidential election, FitzGerald covers the initial establishment of evangelicalism as a populist rebellion against the established Protestant churches; the split between modernists and traditionalists after the Civil War; the emergence of the fundamentalist-modernist conflict and subsequent national culture wars; and the rising Christian right of Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson, and James Dobson that helped turn the South into a Republican stronghold. She also describes how a new generation of evangelicals is challenging the Christian right by preaching social justice and the common good.

While white evangelical constitute 25 percent of American voters and are splintering and dwindling in numbers, FitzGerald believes evangelicalism has been and will continue to be important for years to come. This story, brilliantly and colorfully told in The Evangelicals, is a vital part of how the country came to be what it is.