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Frances Fitzgerald

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The Evangelicals: The Struggle to Shape America Paperback – Illustrated, April 24, 2018

by Frances FitzGerald (Author)

4.5 388 ratings

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* Winner of the 2017 National Book Critics Circle Award
* 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).

Print length

768 pages
Language

English
Publication date

April 24, 2018
Dimensions

6 x 1.92 x 9 inches
ISBN-10

1439131341
ISBN-13

978-1439131343
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Editorial Reviews

Review

* FINALIST *

* NATIONAL BOOK AWARDS *
* NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARD *
* LOS ANGELES TIMES BOOK PRIZE *
* J. ANTHONY LUKAS BOOK PRIZE *

“A page turner: FitzGerald is a great writer capable of keeping a sprawling narrative on point . . . Anyone curious about the state of conservative American Protestantism will have a trusted guide in this Bancroft and Pulitzer Prize winner . . . 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

“A well-written, thought-provoking and deeply researched history that is impressive for its scope and level of detail.” ― The Wall Street Journal

“The waves of conservative Protestant influence that have swept American life at various points in history have often seemed to come out of nowhere. The emergence of the Christian right's political influence in the 1970s, for example, just as experts said religion was losing its place in U.S. culture, was shocking. But in her new major work on the subject, The Evangelicals, historian Frances FitzGerald shows how the origins of these booms are discernible from afar. Her book makes the case so well, it leaves readers with the feeling that we should all be paying closer attention.” ― TIME

“An epic history of white American evangelical Protestantism from Plymouth Rock to Trump Tower . . . Fitzgerald, who won a Pulitzer Prize in 1973 for “Fire in the Lake,’’ an account of the Vietnam War, gracefully swoops over the decades of populist evangelicalism with Barbara Tuchman-like grace. This is a comprehensive, heavily footnoted, yet readable study of how the evangelical tradition has become seared into the fabric of American life and the key figures who made it happen. . . . Fitzgerald, always judicious and unbiased, nobly succeeds in analyzing the nuanced differences between evangelicalism and fundamentalism, Calvinism and postmillennialism, charismatics and Pentecostals.” ― The Boston Globe

“[A] capacious history of Evangelical American Protestantism. This rich narrative ranges across the various Evangelical denominations while illuminating the doctrines—especially personal conversion as spiritual rebirth, and adherence to the Bible as ultimate truth—that unite them. . . . A complex and fascinating epic.” ― Booklist, starred review

“FitzGerald’s brilliant book could not have been more timely, more well-researched, more well-written, or more necessary.” ― The American Scholar

“Frances FitzGerald answers the recurrent question, “Where did these people [mainly right-wing zealots] come from?” She says there is no mystery involved. They were always here. We were just not looking at them. What repeatedly makes us look again is what she is here to tell us.” ― The New York Review of Books

“An excellent work that is certain to be a standard text for understanding contemporary evangelicalism and the American impulse to reform its society.” ― Library Journal

"Timely and enlightening" ― The Economist

“Without a doubt the best book on the history and present status of American evangelicals. . . . ambitious, engaging, and nuanced.” -- Harvey G. Cox, Jr., Hollis Professor of Divinity Emeritus, Harvard Divinity School

“This is the book I’ve been waiting for. Now we have in one volume the richly textured, often puzzling, and always engaging story of American evangelicalism from colonial days to the present. To understand evangelicalism’s impact on our country, this is must reading.” -- Robert Wuthnow, Professor of Sociology and Director of Princeton University’s Center for the Study of Religion

“Another superb work by renowned but long-absent political journalist FitzGerald . . . this one centering on the roiling conflict among American brands of Christianity. . . . Overflowing with historical anecdote and contemporary reportage and essential to interpreting the current political and cultural landscape.” ― Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

“FitzGerald has crafted nothing less than a spiritual history of the nation whose truest believers have for four centuries constituted themselves a moral majority. This is an American story, objectively told and written from the inside out” -- Richard Norton Smith, author of On His Own Terms: A Life of Nelson Rockefeller

“A compelling narrative history of “the white evangelical movements necessary to understand the Christian right and its evangelical opponents.” . . . [FitzGerald] skillfully introduces readers to the terminology, key debates, watershed events, and personalities that have populated the history of white American evangelical Protestant culture in the last half-century. She explains issues such as fundamentalism, biblical inerrancy, Christian nationalism, civil religion and anticommunism, the charismatic movement, and abortion, and introduces such diverse figures as Karl Barth, Jerry Falwell, Reinhold Niebuhr, and Pat Robertson . . . a timely and accessible contribution to the rapidly growing body of literature on Christianity in modern America.” ― Publishers Weekly

“This is an important book. FitzGerald has written a monumental history of how evangelicalism has shaped America. Few movements in our long story have had as significant an influence on American life and culture as conservative Christianity, and FitzGerald does full justice to the subject's scope and complexity.” -- Jon Meacham, Pulitzer Prize winning author of Destiny and Power and Thomas Jefferson

“A rare and valuable book. It’s admirable that Frances FitzGerald is able to tell the story of the American evangelical movement without judgment or bias—but it’s absolutely astonishing that she’s able to tell it with such authority, clarity, and complete grasp of the historical context.” -- Daniel Okrent, author of Last Call: The Rise and Fall of Prohibition

“The Evangelicals is a comprehensive history of white evangelical movements in the United States, geared to provide a deeper understanding of present-day evangelicals and their influence. Journalist and historian Frances FitzGerald presents nearly 300 years of complex ideologies, schisms, social reforms and energetically creative theology in a well-organized, eye-opening narrative. . . . This book is not only for those with a particular interest in religious history; it is for anyone with a serious interest in American social movements, politics and culture. It is a history that strongly re-emphasizes the evolution of a nation, and those who hope to shape the future are wise to study the past.” ― Shelf Awareness

"The Evangelicals explodes any notion of evangelicalism as a monolithic movement. FitzGerald also deftly captures the 'exotic cast' of this pure product of America..." ― San Francisco Chronicle

"A masterful narrative." ― Gospel Coalition

"Essential reading on the conjoined nature of religion and politics today." ― Barnes & Noble (BN.com)

“Massively learned and electrifying . . . the long, contradictory, and compelling history of American Evangelicals and the world they made. In the telling of this story, FitzGerald pulls off an admirable feat. She writes compassionately about generations of deeply held faith without seeming naive, even as she resists cynicism while noting the psychotics, charlatans, and con artists who have sometimes arisen to "deceive the very elect." The result is a quiet marvel of a book, well deserving of winning its author her second Pulitzer . . . magisterial . . . FitzGerald is adroit and gentle in noting how often America’s religious right wing seems to have been fighting rearguard actions.” ― The Christian Science Monitor

“This incisive history of white evangelical movements in America argues that their influence has been more pervasive and diverse than generally realized.” ― The New Yorker

"A formidable achievement that could become one of the definitive works on the subject." ― Vox

About the Author

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.

Product details

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Simon & Schuster; Illustrated edition (April 24, 2018)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Paperback ‏ : ‎ 768 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 1439131341
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1439131343
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 1.8 pounds
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 6 x 1.92 x 9 inches

Best Sellers Rank: #96,986 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #83 in History of Religion & Politics
- #335 in History of Christianity (Books)
- #445 in Christian Church History (Books)

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4.5 388 ratings

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A Recurring History

Reviewed in the United States on April 17, 2017

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Frances FitzGerald's new history of the American Evangelicals is a massive one: 637 pages of text plus another hundred pages of a Glossary, extensive Notes, and a Bibliography. While it is a weighty history it is nevertheless an engaging one, well written and replete with short biographies of major figures and revelatory anecdotes that help to illuminate important points. You need not be a theologian or a historian to enjoy The Evangelicals, anyone interested in American history, American Christianity, and America's possible futures will find much rich material here.

A major theme of The Evangelicals is the recurring or cyclical nature of the history of American Evangelicalism. Beginning in the 18th and 19th centuries with the First and Second Great Awakenings evangelical religion developed out of dissatisfaction with the Established Churches and mainstream religion in general. In the early to mid nineteenth century evangelicalism had to deal with the same overwhelming issue as the rest of the nation: the debate over African slavery. As in the nation as a whole the debate eventually led to division, with many evangelical churches splitting into Northern and Southern halves. After the Civil War ended the evangelical divisions continued, with the result that much of the ferment for reform and the subsequent rise of new evangelical beliefs took place in the North since the South was smaller, poorer, and more uniformly minded. Conflict and controversy continued in the late 19th and early 20th centuries with the debate between Fundamentalists and Modernists that culminated in the 1920s with, among other events, the Scopes Monkey Trial and the rise of the Pentecostal and other movements that threatened to splinter Evangelicalism still further.

The summary I've supplied thus far takes readers through Chapter 5. The following 12 chapters and Epilogue concern the period from about the World War II era through the 2016 election. Here once again the history of Evangelicalism is one of conflict and controversy: how churches should deal with modern war and Cold War; Civil Rights and other movements for social change from the 1950s through the 1970s; and the reaction to these social changes that led to the rise of a harder line fundamentalism in the South, the Moral Majority and Christian Coalition's attempts to influence American politics, and the development of the Christian Right in the 1990s and early 2000s. Throughout this period FitzGerald documents another recurring theme in Evangelical history: the sad story of organized religion's attempts to influence secular politics, which inevitably result in religious belief becoming subordinate to and controlled by political ambition. Included in these chapters are the stories of the careers of Billy Graham, Pat Robertson, Jerry Falwell and other preachers; thinkers like Francis Sheaffer and Rousas Rushdoony and their influence; and the politicians like Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush who encouraged Evangelicals to believe they were on their side in order to obtain their support but then put their concerns at the bottom of their agenda. The final chapter and Epilogue describe the changes in American Evangelicalism, changes which parallel those in the nation as a whole: greater tolerance, more awareness of the threat of climate change, less interest in hardline political policies of either the left or the right, and overall a more multi-cultural society. FitzGerald ends her history by noting the heavy Evangelical influence in the election of Donald Trump, but maintains that the larger trends I've just mentioned might be delayed but not derailed.

I enjoyed The Evangelicals, though as an American Southerner with a lengthy family history intertwined with evangelical and fundamentalist history I could have wished for more details in the early chapters (but that would have made the book even longer). FitzGerald herself points out that she deliberately did not include African-American Evangelicalism since that is a long and rich history in itself deserving of more detail than she could provide in this volume. Even with these limitations The Evangelicals is an important study that non-specialists should not shy away from (FitzGerald's clear descriptions, as well as the Glossary, are very helpful). Whatever the future course of American Evangelicalism, those wishing a clear understanding of the movements' beginnings, conflicts, and continuing struggles will find FitzGerald's work to be a useful guide.

124 people found this helpful

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Bonnie seabright

Pages missing

Reviewed in the United States on November 6, 2023

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PP 357 thru 360 are missing. I am reluctant to exchange the book for a complete edition since i have notes and unerlinings in my copy up to p. 357l I would like some satisfaction though. Russell Seabright

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Finally, an answer!

Reviewed in the United States on May 4, 2018

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This is one of the most informative books that I have ever read! Fitzgerald really did a thorough job of researching and the voluminous footnotes pay off bit time. As a child of the South, a Christian, a mother, and a avid reader, I was brought to this book by its mention on several political programs I watched and in several articles that I read. In speaking with members of my family and my church friends, I would ask "Are we evangelicals?" Every one of them looked at me with a puzzled frown, stopped and stammered for a bit and usually replied, "I don't know." Well, I wanted to know. Now I do. I particularly liked the chronological order in which the author presented the movement from its earliest inception and the Pilgrims to today's Church and political situation. In several instances the author likens specific events to Biblical events which is most compelling. The use of the names of prominent members of the movement from its birth to now also was helpful to me, since I was able to liken many of my own experiences by linking the familiar names. Most books of this type are very difficult to read--;are dull and downright boring., This one is anything but that. I absorbed so much from it and was intrigued by the movement of the history that I had a difficult time putting it down to sleep or work. I highly recommend it to anyone who is curious about our current political divisions, the lack of partisanship in our congress, and how it all fits in with Christianity. I promise you that you will have your senses sharpened, your beliefs validated or perhaps changed, and come away with so much better understanding of who we are and where we are going. Certainly you will not be disappointed! I am thrilled.

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floyd long

HIGHLY ENLIGHTENING BOOK

Reviewed in the United States on May 23, 2018

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I read this book over the past month. It is a fairly long read but it flows very smoothly. I found the information to very understandable the author does a great job of breaking things down into understandable events and times. I lived through much of the era in the latter half of the book and being in an Large Christian family I learned a great deal about the manipulation that was taking place during that time and how that manipulation changed my own family dynamics. The book has given me a better understanding of why a large group of people in this country believe the way they believe and how that was manipulated to benefit a cause. The author does a pretty good job of staying neutral as to whether that manipulation was good or bad for the country as a whole. Although I think he leans a little to the left or at a minimum did not like all the grandstanding and manipulation that went on and effected the lives of millions of Americans especially those that went to war. The many back stories and back room political decision making that was very well laid out in the book and I might add very well researched was an eye opener to say the least. I can see why the book won a Pulitzer. I cannot recommend this book more highly for people to read. Especially those individuals who live in the Midwestern states and are between 40-70 years old.

4 people found this helpful

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Top reviews from other countries

Sylvia G.

Excellent, but it wiademic ckgrounf

Reviewed in Canada on January 18, 2021

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Wow.
A dear friend recommended it. Heavy reading, it will help to have some background knowledge of the subject.
Wow.

Religiophile

A well-written scholarly account of evangelical Christianity

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on September 21, 2017

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A well-written and thoroughly researched book that follows the historical development of evangelical Christianity in the US up to the beginning of the Trump presidency in 700 fact-filled pages. Highly recommended!

One person found this helpful

Guy Marion

Four Stars

Reviewed in Canada on May 13, 2017

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I now have a better understanding why you have a goon squad in Washington. So many unchristian christians.

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k gotheridge

Highly recommended.

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on May 24, 2017

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It is taking a while to get through this, but it has been an eye opener. Highly recommended.

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SUSAN DE GRAAF

Five Stars

Reviewed in Canada on May 25, 2017

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Thanks

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