Evangelical Politics

The American political scene today is poisonously divided, and the vast majority of white evangelicals plays a strikingly unified, powerful role in the disunion. These evangelicals raise a starkly consequential question for electoral politics: Why do they claim morality while supporting politicians who act immorally by most Christian measures? In this clear-eyed, hard-hitting chronicle of American religion and politics, Anthea Butler answers that racism is at the core of conservative evangelical activism and power.

Through a nationwide telephone survey of 2,000 people and an additional 200 face-to-face interviews, Michael O. Emerson and Christian Smith probed the grassroots of white evangelical America. They found that despite recent efforts by the movement's leaders to address the problem of racial discrimination, evangelicals themselves seem to be preserving America's racial chasm. In fact, most white evangelicals see no systematic discrimination against blacks. But the authors contend that it is not active racism.

How did a libertine who lacks even the most basic knowledge of the Christian faith win 81 percent of the white evangelical vote in 2016? And why have white evangelicals become a presidential reprobate's staunchest supporters? Jesus and John Wayne is a sweeping account of the last 75 years of white evangelicalism, showing how American evangelicals have worked for decades to replace the Jesus of the Gospels with an idol of rugged masculinity and Christian nationalism.

This groundbreaking book 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 presidential election. Evangelicals have, in many ways, defined the nation. They have shaped our culture and our politics. Frances FitzGerald's narrative of this distinctively American movement is a major work of history, piecing together the centuries-long story for the first time.

In Shepherds for Sale, Megan Basham of the Daily Wire documents how progressive powerbrokers—from George Soros, to the founder of eBay, to former members of the Obama administration—set out to change the American church. Their goal: to co-opt evangelicals for political purposes.

A generation of young Christians are weary of the political legacy they've inherited and are hungry for a better approach. They're tired of seeing their faith tied to political battles they didn't start, and they're frustrated with leaders they thought they could trust. Kaitlyn Schiess grew up in this landscape and understands it from the inside. In The Liturgy of Politics, Schiess shows that the church's politics are shaped by its habits and practices, even when it's unaware of them.

Americans have been leaving their churches. Some drift away. Some stay home. And some have been searching for—and finding—more authentic ways to find and follow Jesus. This is the story of one such “radical outpost of Jesus followers” dedicated to service, the Sermon on the Mount, and working toward justice for all in this life, not just salvation for some in the next. Part of a little-known yet influential movement at the edge of American evangelicalism, Philadelphia’s Circle of Hope grew for forty years, planted four congregations, and then found itself in crisis.

"The scandal of the evangelical mind is that there is not much of an evangelical mind." So begins this award-winning intellectual history and critique of the evangelical movement by one of evangelicalism's most respected historians.

In 2016, writer and filmmaker Ben Howe found himself disillusioned with the religious movement he’d always called home. In the pursuit of electoral victory, many American evangelicals embraced moral relativism and toxic partisanship. Whatever happened to the Moral Majority, who headed to Washington in the ’80s to plant the flag of Christian values? Where were the Christian leaders that emerged from that movement and led the charge against Bill Clinton for his deception and unfaithfulness?

Today’s right-wing Evangelical Christianity stands as the very antithesis of the message of Jesus Christ. In his new book, Christians Against Christianity, best-selling author and religious scholar Obery M. Hendricks Jr. challenges right-wing evangelicals on the terrain of their own religious claims, exposing the falsehoods, contradictions, and misuses of the Bible that are embedded in their rabid homophobia, their poorly veiled racism and demonizing of immigrants and Muslims, and their ungodly alliance with big business against the interests of American workers.

In Trump, White Evangelical Christians, and American Politics, political scientists Anand Edward Sokhey and Paul A. Djupe bring together a wide range of scholars and writers to examine the relationship between former President Donald Trump and white American evangelical Christians.

Published in the years following 9/11, David Dark's book The Gospel According to America warned American Christianity about the false worship that conflates love of country with love of God. The assessment he brought to these problems and the creative resources for resisting them are now more important than ever. Dark expands his vision of a fractured yet redeemable American Christianity, bringing his signature mix of theological, cultural, and political analysis to white supremacy, evangelical surrender, and other problems of the Trump era.

Fundamentalism and American Culture has long been considered a classic in religious history, and to this day remains unsurpassed. Now available in a new edition, this highly regarded analysis takes us through the full history of the origin and direction of one of America's most influential religious movements.

In this taut inquiry, Posner digs deep into the radical history of the religious right to reveal how issues of race and xenophobia have always been at the movement’s core, and how religion often cloaked anxieties about perceived threats to a white, Christian America. Fueled by an antidemocratic impulse, and united by this narrative of reverse victimization, the religious right and the alt-right support a common agenda.

Since the 1970s, an important new figure has appeared on the center stage of American evangelicalism - the celebrity preacher's wife. Although most evangelical traditions bar women from ordained ministry, many women have carved out unofficial positions of power in their husbands' spiritual empires or their own ministries. The biggest stars - such as Beth Moore, Joyce Meyer, and Victoria Osteen - write best-selling books, grab high ratings on Christian television, and even preach.

What should Christians think about Donald Trump? His policies, his style, his personal life? Thirty evangelical Christians wrestle with these tough questions. They are Republicans, Democrats, and Independents. They don't all agree, but they seek to let Christ be the lord of their political views. They seek to apply biblical standards to difficult debates about our current political situation. Don't listen to this audiobook to find support for your views. Listen to it to be challenged - with facts, reason, and biblical principles.

Rob Schenck’s extraordinary life has been at the center of the intersection between evangelical Christianity and modern politics. Attacked by partisans on both sides of the aisle, he has been called a "right-wing hate monger", the "ultimate D.C. power-broker", a "traitor", and "turncoat." Now, this influential spiritual adviser to America’s political class chronicles his controversial, sometimes troubling career in this revelatory and often shocking memoir. He reflects on his path to God, his unconscious abandonment of his principles, and his return to the convictions that guide him.

We face difficult days, but not hopeless days. Together, we can restore the Republic and reclaim our standing in the world. But first, we must remember our roots and return to the values that made our nation great. A deep and abiding desire for freedom and liberty, girded by faith in God, is the essence of who we are. Those are the precepts that must be reaffirmed if America is to be saved.

Los grupos evangélicos tuvieron en los últimos años un crecimiento exponencial en todo el continente americano y lograron consolidarse como una nueva fuerza política y social. Entre sus miembros hay presidentes, ministros y ministras, diputados y diputadas, asesores y asesoras que ocupan puestos clave en los gobiernos de la región. Son dueños de grandes medios de comunicación, tienen una fuerte base territorial entre los sectores populares y obtienen muchos recursos del Estado, por eso, sus líderes son muy requeridos por aquellos políticos que tienen ambiciones de poder.

The Evangelical Church in the United States and other parts of the world, in general, is in a crisis of identity and stuck at a pivotal crossroads of history, conflicted about its God-given role and direction. This paralysis has been exposed and magnified by a renewed and raging debate about the role and relevance of Christianity in the governance and destiny of nations.