The Evangelicals: The Struggle to Shape America

Frances FitzGerald traces the history of the Evangelical movement in America from the Puritan era through the 2016 election. The movement emerged from eighteenth and nineteenth-century revivals known as the Great Awakenings, beginning as a populist challenge to established churches before becoming the country's dominant religious force. During the nineteenth century, white evangelicals fractured along regional and theological lines. After World War II, evangelist Billy Graham drew large crowds and attempted to unite Protestants, but the civil rights movement and 1960s social upheaval divided them again. By the 1980s, figures like Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson led the formation of the Christian right, which protested abortion and gay rights while shifting the South toward the Republican Party. For thirty-five years, this conservative faction represented evangelicals nationally. A younger generation later broadened the agenda to include climate change, gender equality, and immigration reform. Today, evangelicals comprise twenty-five percent of the American population but lack political unity, ranging from Tea Party supporters to social reformers. FitzGerald argues that as religious faith declines generally, evangelical churches must engage ethnic minorities to sustain themselves.