MixedThe New York Review of BooksFitzGerald is good at describing these high-profile engagements in The Evangelicals. She observes the niceties that divide different factions in the biblical camp. She notes that some of the people she calls evangelicals don’t want to be called that...By trying to preserve a diplomatic objectivity as an observer, FitzGerald has to confess that 'this book is not a taxonomy.' She nonetheless uses 'evangelical' as a conveniently vague term for most kinds of revivalism, while diplomatically recognizing even small-bore turf battles. But she makes one astounding error of taxonomy. She doesn’t include black churches in a study of evangelicals ... Given these apocalyptic developments in the time between FitzGerald’s finishing her book and its publication, there is a certain wry poignancy to her final pages. She drops hints (hopes?) that the cycle of periodic revivals may have finally exhausted itself.
Susan Jacoby
MixedThe New York Times Book ReviewJacoby cannot admit there ever is such a thing as genuine spiritual conversion. She justifiably spends a lot of time on the crueler forms of compulsion, which recur distressingly often in history. But she thinks that all conversions are coerced, however softly or subtly.
E. J. Dionne Jr.
PositiveThe New York Review of BooksJoe Scarborough claims that the Republicans have continually oscillated between moderates and extremists. But he could find only two stellar moderates in the last half-century, Eisenhower and Reagan. Some oscillation! Dionne comes closer to the facts with his tale of a ground bass of growls against moderation, swelling at times or diminishing, but continuously present and becoming more embittered.
