The Evangelicals: The Struggle to Shape America

Initially a populist rebellion against the established Protestant churches, evagelicalism became the dominant religious force in the country before the Civil War, but the northerners and southerners split over the issue of slavery. After the Civil War, the northern evangelicals split, eventually causing a conflict between fundamentalists and modernists. Only after the second World War would conservative evangelicalism gain momentum, thanks in large part to Billy Graham's countrywide revivals. Fitzgerald shows how the conflict between religious conservatives and others led to national culture wars and a Southern Republican stronghold, and how a new generation of evangelicals is challenging the Christian right by preaching social justice and the common good. Fitzgerald suggests that because evangelicals are splintering, America, the most religious of developed nations, will eventually look more like secular Europe. --