The Evangelicals

The Struggle to Shape America

By: Frances FitzGerald

Narrated by: Jacques Roy

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

“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).

Pulitzer Prize–winning historian Frances FitzGerald reveals the “epic history” (The Boston Globe) of the Evangelical movement in America—from the Puritan era to the 2016 election.

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—a prominent evangelist preacher—attracted enormous crowds and tried to gather all Protestants under his big tent, but the civil rights movement and the social revolution of the 1960s 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” (The Wall Street Journal), Evangelicals “could not have been more timely, more well-researched, more well-written, or more necessary” (The American Scholar).

An important story told with too many words

Fitzgerald has done an amazing amount of fact gathering and attention to detail. That has, however, distracted from the message of the origin, evolution and present state of the folks we call evangelicals. While co-mingling the religious and political worlds he did not make a clear case why so many would agitate & vote against core religious beliefs. The important summary was limited in the afterward in about one paragraph- that needed much more explication.
The spoken performance was about perfect- clear, well paced & free of mispronounced words- Roy needs to do more books.

Historical look at fundamentalist, evangelicals, and the Christian Right

FitzGerald goes all the way back to the Great Awakening to trace the history of the Christian Right. If you want to know why Evangelicals vote Republican, and how they came to their beliefs, read this book. It is fascinating. A great insight into the political leanings of Christians in America.

Evangelical became political

The narrator's voice is great if you need to relax / fall asleep but not so much if trying to focus on the details of this book.
Overall, interesting and not surprising as far as those who claim to be Christian.
Love one another (just not immigrants).
Support the right to life (but cut or eliminate programs that help all of these children who grow up and unfortunately, end up on the streets).
An informative book.

Enlightening!

This detailed and thoughtful overview of how the gospel-Christians have shaped the course of American politics over the past two millennia helps one understand recent and current social directions in that country. I'm glad I took the time to work through it.

The reading by Francis Roy is calm, clear, very well articulated and never overbearing.

Fascinating!!

An unexpected page-turner! Had no idea how influential the evangelical movement has been in American social and political life. A well researched and artfully written history of a very American movement. Jacques Roy is a steady reader and delivers the material with minimal emphasis or expression.