The Evangelical Crackup

Explores a crucial question in American national politics: How durable is the close connection between the GOP and the evangelical movement?

As immigration from Asia and Latin America reshapes the demographic composition of the U.S., some analysts have anticipated the decline of conservative white evangelicals’ influence in politics. Yet, Donald Trump captured a larger share of the white evangelical vote in the 2016 election than any candidate in the previous four presidential elections. Why has the political clout of white evangelicals persisted at a time of increased racial and ethnic diversity? In Immigrants, Evangelicals, and Politics in an Era of Demographic Change, political scientist Janelle Wong examines a new generation of Asian American and Latino evangelicals and offers an account of why demographic change has not contributed to a political realignment. Asian Americans and Latinos currently constitute 13 percent of evangelicals, and their churches are among the largest, fastest growing organizations in their communities. While evangelical identity is associated with conservative politics, Wong draws from national surveys and interviews to show that non-white evangelicals express political attitudes that are significantly less conservative than those of their white counterparts. Black, Asian American, and Latino evangelicals are much more likely to support policies such as expanded immigration rights, increased taxation of the wealthy, and government interventions to slow climate change. As Wong argues, non-white evangelicals’ experiences as members of racial or ethnic minority groups often lead them to adopt more progressive political views compared to their white counterparts. However, despite their growth in numbers, non-white evangelicals—particularly Asian Americans and Latinos—are concentrated outside of swing states, have lower levels of political participation than white evangelicals, and are less likely to be targeted by political campaigns. As a result, white evangelicals dominate the evangelical policy agenda and are overrepresented at the polls. Also, many white evangelicals have adopted even more conservative political views in response to rapid demographic change, perceiving, for example, that discrimination against Christians now rivals discrimination against racial and ethnic minorities. Wong demonstrates that immigrant evangelicals are neither “natural” Republicans nor “natural” Democrats. By examining the changing demographics of the evangelical movement, Immigrants, Evangelicals, and Politics in an Era of Demographic Change sheds light on an understudied constituency that has yet to find its political home.

New York Times Bestseller. With just the right mixture of humor and insight, compassion and incredulity, A Year of Biblical Womanhood is an exercise in scriptural exploration and spiritual contemplation. What does God truly expect of women, and is there really a prescription for biblical womanhood? Come along with Evans as she looks for answers in the rich heritage of biblical heroines, models of grace, and all-around women of valor. What is "biblical womanhood" . . . really? Strong-willed and independent, Rachel Held Evans couldn't sew a button on a blouse before she embarked on a radical life experiment--a year of biblical womanhood. Intrigued by the traditionalist resurgence that led many of her friends to abandon their careers to assume traditional gender roles in the home, Evans decides to try it for herself, vowing to take all of the Bible's instructions for women as literally as possible for a year. Pursuing a different virtue each month, Evans learns the hard way that her quest for biblical womanhood requires more than a "gentle and quiet spirit" (1 Peter 3:4). It means growing out her hair, making her own clothes, covering her head, obeying her husband, rising before dawn, abstaining from gossip, remaining silent in church, and even camping out in the front yard during her period. See what happens when a thoroughly modern woman starts referring to her husband as "master" and "praises him at the city gate" with a homemade sign. Learn the insights she receives from an ongoing correspondence with an Orthodox Jewish woman, and find out what she discovers from her exchanges with a polygamist wife. Join her as she wrestles with difficult passages of scripture that portray misogyny and violence against women.

"Christians today find themselves in new and strange cultural territory. Sometimes we feel that the dangers are overwhelming. Yet in his introduction, James Emery White writes, "Unexplored territory does not always hold the peril of dragons, it can also hold the promise of a new world." In these pages he presents four themes that can take us to the core of faith and bring the unity we need as Christians to find our way: truth, orthodoxy, culture and church."--Jacket.

For most of the last century, popular and scholarly common sense has equated American evangelicalism with across-the-board social, economic, and political conservatism. However, if a growing chorus of evangelical leaders, media pundits, and religious scholars is to be believed, the era of uncontested evangelical conservatism is on the brink of collapse-if it hasn't collapsed already. Combining vivid ethnographic storytelling and incisive theoretical analysis, New Monasticism and the Transformation of American Evangelicalism introduces readers to the fascinating and unexplored terrain of neo-monastic evangelicalism. Often located in disadvantaged urban neighborhoods, new monastic communities pursue religiously inspired visions of racial, social, and economic justice-alongside personal spiritual transformation-through diverse and creative expressions of radical community. In this account, Wes Markofski has immersed himself in the paradoxical world of evangelical neo-monasticism, focusing on the Urban Monastery-an influential neo-monastic community located in a gritty, racially diverse neighborhood in a major Midwestern American city. The resulting account of the way in which this movement reflects and is contributing to the transformation of American evangelicalism challenges entrenched stereotypes and calls attention to the dynamic diversity of religious and political points of view which vie for supremacy in the American evangelical subculture. New Monasticism and the Transformation of American Evangelicalism is the first sociological analysis of new monastic evangelicalism and the first major work to theorize the growing theological and political diversity within twenty-first-century American evangelicalism.

In Trump, White Evangelical Christians, and American Politics, political scientists Anand Edward Sokhey and Paul A. Djupe bring together a wide range of scholars and writers to examine the relationship between former President Donald Trump and white American evangelical Christians. They argue that, while this relationship—which saw evangelicals supporting a famously unfaithful, materialistic, and irreligious candidate despite self-defining in opposition to these characteristics—prompted many to wonder if Trump himself transformed American evangelical religion in politics, this alliance reflected both change and the outcome of dynamics that were in place or building for decades. Contributors contextualize the Trump presidency within the story of religious demographic change, the growth of politicized religion, nationalistic religious expression, and the ways religion and politics in the United States are enmeshed in the politics of race. These investigations find that the idea of religious “transformation” is not accurate. Instead, the years 2015 to 2022 saw mainly minor changes to the ways religion appeared in public life—but these changes ultimately complemented and advanced an existing white evangelical strategy to increase political and social power as they became a demographic minority in the United States. Taken together, this collection reveals new insights for readers seeking to understand the religious dimensions of Trump’s rise, the reasons evangelicals become political activists, and the multifaceted alliances between secular politicians and conservative religious subcultures. Contributors: Abraham Barranca, Ruth Braunstein, Ryan P. Burge, David E. Campbell, Jeremiah J. Castle, Paul A. Djupe, John C. Green, Sarah Heise, Geoffrey C. Layman, Andrew R. Lewis, Gerardo Martí, Eric L. McDaniel, Napp Nazworth, Shayla F. Olson, Enrique Quezada-Llanes, Kaylynn Sims, Anand Edward Sokhey, Hilde Løvdal Stephens, Kyla K. Stepp, Allan Tellis.

Deviance: Social Constructions and Blurred Boundaries is designed for courses on social deviance that take a strong sociological perspective. The book draws on up-to-date scholarship across a wide spectrum of deviance categories, providing a symbolic interactionist analysis of the deviance process. The book addresses positivistic theories of deviant behavior within a description of the deviance process that encompasses the work of deviance claims-makers, rule-breakers, and social control agents. Students are introduced to the sociology of deviance and learn to analyze several kinds of criminal deviance that involve unwilling victims-such as murder, rape, street-level property crime, and white-collar crime. Students also learn to examine several categories of "lifestyle" and "status" deviance and develop skills for critical analysis of criminal justice and social policies. Overall, students gain an understanding of the sociology of deviance through cross-cultural comparisons, historical overview of deviance in the U.S., and up-close analysis of the lived experience of those who are labeled deviant as well as responses to them in the U.S. today