“The Evangelicals’’ begins with a fast-paced romp through the First Great Awakening in America (which reached its apogee in the 1740s but continued to rattle traditional Episcopalian and Presbyterian church windows in 1776). “Many have little in common,” Fitzgerald writes of these evangelical outlets, “except for the essentials of their faith” Her intricate knowledge of Southern Baptists, Mennonites, holiness groups, Dutch Reformed groups, and other nondenominational churches is astonishing. It also tracks the movement’s influence on the nation’s politics, including evidence from the last election of widening schisms that gave a lift to candidate Trump.įitzgerald, always judicious and unbiased, nobly succeeds in analyzing the nuanced differences between evangelicalism and fundamentalism, Calvinism and postmillennialism, charismatics and Pentecostals. 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.
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