Resurgent Evangelicalism in the United States: Mapping Cultural Change Since 1970

Abstract

In this look at evangelicalism in the United States, the author contests the widely ascribed southernization of American thesis, or the idea that the recent resurgence of born-again Christianity represents the spread of southern-style religion from the historically conservative, Protestant South to America's mainstream. He argues that even as evangelicalism changes the face of American culture, it is transformed by its encounter with secularism. The price of success for born-again Christianity, according to the author, is cultural accommodation. He contends that evangelicalism forfeits some of its southernness - including its moral strictness - in order to thrive outside the South, and adds that congregations that embrace secular elements of the surrounding culture grow more rapidly than those that hold tightly to traditional evangelical beliefs. Disagreeing with some recent obituaries of the New Christian Right, he suggests that evangelicalism will continue to have a significant effect on American culture in the foreseeable future, but not in the domineering way once feared by the liberal cultural establishment.