PROTESTANTISM AND THE EVANGELICALS

The most important development within American Protestantism since the early 1970s has been the ascendancy of the evangelicals, a phenomenon that most journalists have described only in political terms, thereby contributing generously to public misunderstanding of the forces behind the evangelical "revival."

Many Americans seem to believe that the expansion of political activity by evangelical Protestants, widely noted during the 1976 and 1980 presidential campaigns, is unprecedented. Public opinion researchers, operating without much historical perspective, at first predicted (and then interpreted as radically "new") a tide of Protestant support for "born again" candidates for public office and for "moral" legislation in the areas of education...