Her book makes the case so well, it leaves readers with the feeling that we should all be paying closer attention ... Although FitzGerald's coda on Donald Trump's victory has a tacked-on feel in an otherwise masterful narrative, her explanation of evangelical support for his campaign — which puzzled many — reads as essential. FitzGerald illuminates how a decades-long relationship between the Christian right and the Republican Party (later joined by the Tea Party) coalesced into what looks like a mutually inextricable bloc.
...she has crafted a well-written, thought-provoking and deeply researched history that is impressive for its scope and level of detail ... What is the future of the Christian right? In The Evangelicals, Ms. FitzGerald treats her subject mostly as a historical phenomenon with a long and interesting genealogy. But she is obviously aware of its persistence and the obstacle it still presents to an 'enlightened' or liberal agenda. What the Christian right almost certainly will not do—even if it is not now what it once was—is lay down the struggle to shape America.
FitzGerald 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.
...[a] massively learned and electrifying new book ... 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.
It is, simply put, a page turner: FitzGerald is a great writer capable of keeping a sprawling narrative on point, even as it descends into discussions of Keswickian holiness, pretribunalist rapture and theonomic governance. Anyone curious about the state of conservative American Protestantism will have a trusted guide in this Bancroft and Pulitzer Prize winner ... Amazingly enough, The Evangelicals, for all its length, is not comprehensive.
Even though she limited her subject to white people, the topic appears too complex and fragmented to encompass all its parts ... Her history of that [early] time, however, is so full of details that it seems aimed at a religious history student rather than the general reader. Her list of figures in the movement reads almost like an Old Testament genealogy of 'begats' ... Evangelicals might be seen as a work in progress as the population of white Protestants — the traditional element of the movement — declines and is replaced by a growing number of nonwhite citizens. Along with its history, FitzGerald might have written its elegy.
Ms. FitzGerald’s book is filled with vivid portraits of evangelical leaders, including not only the 'usual suspects' (Billy Graham, Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson, Jim Bakker, James Dobson and 'new evangelical' Rick Warren) but also the two principal theoreticians of the Christian right (R.J. Rushdoony and Francis Schaeffer). Her analysis is insightful, but it should be noted that she comes at her subject as an outsider to evangelicalism. She does does not approve of people who are certain they know what God wants, and she views education as the process of learning the single right answer to every question ... 'Presidential election votes may seem to deny it,' Ms. FitzGerald concludes, 'but evangelicals are splintering.' She may be right, but these days it is probably wise to think — and think again — before making predictions about the future of religion and politics in America.
Another superb work by renowned but long-absent political journalist FitzGerald ... Overflowing with historical anecdote and contemporary reportage and essential to interpreting the current political and cultural landscape.
She 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 ... A substantial bibliography and endnotes will assist readers who wish to delve more deeply into specific topics. This is a timely and accessible contribution to the rapidly growing body of literature on Christianity in modern America.
Despite its size, the scope of FitzGerald’s history is oddly narrow. Like many historians, she sees the 1980s as the moment when the Christian Right ‘reintroduced’ religion into politics—a focus that makes it difficult to persuasively connect recent events, like the rise of Trump, with the long and extraordinary history of compromises and shifting allegiances among evangelicals … FitzGerald makes clear from the beginning her intention to write a history of white evangelical politics, but is there really any such thing as a white American history without black history?...In 1957, or even 1967, well-intentioned white historians evidently thought [so]. But in 2017, with race at the heart of the politics that gave rise to Trump and what may well be the most fundamentalist cabinet in history, any account that seeks to place our religious past in ‘contemporary history,’ as FitzGerald puts it, must make race central to its concerns.
