Evangelicals

Envangelicalism, a brand of Christian faith deeply associated with the U.S., has over the last few years roared out of relative dormancy and back into the forefront of the country's politics and culture. Its estimated 100 million American followers include not only President George W. Bush but much of the political base that elected him. Although the 2006 mid-term elections seemed to suggest that Evangelicalism's political clout may have peaked for now, its vitality is undimmed. Non-evangelicals, after seeing the movement for years as synonymous with political activists such as Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson, have also begun to sense its great diversity.

Evangelicalism was born in the two great religious revivals that swept America in the 17th and 19th centuries. Initially its main difference from the Christianities that the nation had imported from Europe was its downplaying of specific (and divisive) dogmas in favor of a relatively simple, emotionally charged experience of adult "conversion," or acceptance of the saving power of Christ. Scholars since then have noted other defining characteristics, especially Evangelicals' belief that the Bible is God's true and authoritative word, and their commitment to Jesus's biblical injunction to his disciples to spread his gospel.

Throughout most of the 19th century Evangelicalism was probably the biggest and most influential religious affiliation in the country. The Civil War was a blow, however (there were evangelicals on both sides), and in the early 20th century, in response to perceived threats from academic biblical criticism, many evangelicals became "fundamentalists." Their theology changed little, but they became more defensive and less tolerant, and abandoned social causes in favor of pure soul-saving. Fundamentalism lost huge numbers to more politically progressive, theologically liberal northern Protestant "mainline" denominations. Moreover, it was publicly tarred as philistine during the famous Scopes Trial over the teaching of evolution in 1925. For decades evangelicalism can be said to have been in eclipse.

It climbed out in two stages. In the 1940s, a young evangelist named Billy Graham began his remarkable career, simultaneously drawing millions to his Crusades and pulling millions more away from fundamentalism to a more open, more media-conscious "neo-evangelicalism." In the 1970s and '80s, galvanized by the Supreme Court's 1960s ban on school prayer and its 1973 legalization of abortion, theologically conservative Protestants surged back to political life in organizations like Falwell's Moral Majority and Robertson's Christian Coalition.

The Religious Right, as it came to be called, mobilized evangelical voters into perhaps the key Republican constituency. In recent years it flexed its muscle not only in the Bush Presidential elections but on issues such as "partial birth" abortions, stem-cell research and "intelligent design's" challenge to the theory of evolution. Equally important (since it is possible that evangelical voter participation has now topped out), outspoken evangelicalism helped propel religious ideas and vocabulary back into the center of civic debate.

Meanwhile, evangelicalism itself has grown and changed. Long-standing evangelical groups such as the huge Southern Baptist Convention and thousands of independent bible churches have been supplemented by Pentecostal and charismatic sects. These are marked by dramatic manifestations of the Holy Spirit such as prophesying, healing and speaking in tongues. From a modest birth at a single 1906 Los Angeles revival, the Pentecostal movement has come to include tens of millions of believers in the U.S. and probably more abroad, where it is one of the fastest-spreading forms of faith.

In America, megachurches, some with as many as 25,000 members, dot the sub- and exurbs. Christian Music has become a billion-dollar industry. "Prosperity gospel," which preaches that God wants us to be rich in this life, exists alongside the most astringent Calvinism. Even some members of the mainline churches consider themselves evangelicals; among these are conservatives who are fleeing the Episcopalian Church in the USA over its policy on homosexuality and other issues.

Today Evangelical leadership stands at the threshold of a generational change, as Billy Graham's generation passes the torch. The most likely candidate for Graham's role as "America's Preacher" is not his formidable son Franklin, to whom he has passed on his organization. It is Rick Warren, a dazzlingly versatile pastor of a huge California megachurch who leads a network of similarly inclined bodies, has written the bestseller The Purpose-Driven Life, and has spearheaded a shift in evangelicalism from focusing almost exclusively on conversion to pursuing such humanitarian causes as the fights against AIDS and global poverty. Odds are, however, that unless Evangelicalism undergoes another retraction of the type it suffered early in the last century, no one figure will truly be able to speak for this robust and ever-changing movement.

—David Van Biema