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Faith, Hope, and...

Evangelicals in America.

Mar 10, 2008, Vol. 13, No. 25 • By RYAN T. ANDERSON
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Faith in the Halls of Power

How Evangelicals Joined the American Elite

by D. Michael Lindsay

Oxford, 352 pp., $24.95

Up until college, I hadn't met a single evangelical. Growing up in Baltimore and attending a Quaker school, I seemed to meet only liberal Jews and nominal Christians. But Princeton was overflowing with evangelicals. They were at my residential college, in my section of the orchestra, even on my football team.

How strange, I thought, that I'd never even heard of them. Now, thanks to the 2004 election, we all know about them. Or at least we think we do. But reality, and what the media choose to report, are two different things. Most recent books written about evangelicals feature gross politicization, partisan agendas, and at their worst, antireligious bigotry: Evangelicals are fascists, want a theocracy, and psychologically abuse their children.

D. Michael Lindsay, assistant professor of sociology at Rice, knows this isn't the real story, and Faith in the Halls of Power tries to paint a fuller picture. The result is a remarkably balanced look at what Lindsay describes as "the most discussed but least understood group in America today." Combining academic rigor with flowing prose, Lindsay presents the fruits of over 10 years of research on elite evangelicals, including unprecedented interviews with 360 of them, among them two former presidents. Lindsay lets these leading evangelicals speak for themselves, but he also points out their inconsistencies and omissions.

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