The Fall of the Evangelical Nation
The Surprising Crisis Inside the Church
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- $7.99
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- $7.99
Publisher Description
Veteran religion reporter Christine Wicker set out to reveal the truth about her childhood evangelical faith, in an attempt to get beyond stereotypes and shed new light on the religion. However, she found out much more than she had expected.
Evangelical Christianity in America is dying. The great evangelical movements of today are not a vanguard; they are a remnant, unraveling at every edge. Even as they trumpet their purported political and social victories, insiders despair over their great losses. In The Fall of the Evangelical Nation, Wicker takes us deep inside this crumbling pillar of the religious right and shows us how the virtues of the evangelicals are killing them as surely as their vices.
Christine Wicker was raised in Oklahoma, Texas, and other parts of the South. Her mother’s grandfather was an itinerant Baptist preacher and her dad’s father was a Kentucky coal miner. During her 17 years at The Dallas Morning News, she was a feature writer, columnist and religion reporter. She is the author of several books including the highly acclaimed Lily Dale: The True Story of the Town That Talks to the Dead.“This is a triple winner – meticulously reported, a joy to read, and filled with profound insights. In what will surely be one of the year’s most important books, Wicker offers a brilliantly written take on a provocative topic – and her work will stand as a bible for anyone wanting to know about religion in modern America.” – Bill Minutaglio, author of First Son: George W. Bush and the Bush Family Dynasty
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Religion reporter Wicker (formerly of the Dallas Morning News and author of Lily Dale) proffers a tendentious, confused book about the alleged demise of conservative evangelicalism.She makes a few lucid points, as when she deftly takes apart the many competing statistics about how many Americans are evangelical.But overall the book has a shrill feel, thanks to the regular use of terms like "threat" and "death knell."Some of the chapters, which seem like filler, are journalistic accounts of aspects of evangelical life e.g., a portrait of a grieving widow who says she wouldn't give up Jesus to have her husband back and are not closely related to the overarching argument.Wicker argues that some of the "threats" to evangelicalism come from evangelical institutions themselves.For example, she asserts that megachurches carry a lot of debt a fascinating claim that should be bolstered by more rigorous research and source citation. However, merely establishing that megachurches are "vulnerable" because they cater to the tastes of boomers and depend on the personality of their leaders doesn't tell us that evangelicalism is dying; it just suggests that evangelicalism, ever protean, will once again change.
