Studies in American Thought and Culture

American Evangelicalism from the Postwar Revival to the New Christian Right

Axel R. Schäfer

• Publisher: University of Wisconsin Press
• Year: 2011
• ISBN:
  9780299285234
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: World History
• Index: History

In the mid-twentieth century, far more evangelicals supported such "liberal" causes as peace, social justice, and environmental protection. Only gradually did the conservative evangelical faction win dominance, allying with the Republican Party of Ronald Reagan and, eventually, George W. Bush.
    In Countercultural Conservatives Axel Schäfer traces the evolution of a diffuse and pluralistic movement into the political force of the New Christian Right. In forging its complex theological and political identity, evangelicalism did not simply reject the ideas of 1960s counterculture, Schäfer argues. For all their strict Biblicism and uncompromising morality, evangelicals absorbed and extended key aspects of the countercultural worldview.
    Carefully examining evangelicalism's internal dynamics, fissures, and coalitions, this book offers an intriguing reinterpretation of the most important development in American religion and politics since World War II.

Table of contents

• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction: Beyond the “Backlash”
• 1. The Enigma of Conservative Protestantism
• 2. The Postwar Neo-Evangelical Awakening
• 3. The Evangelical Left and the 1960s
• 4. The Rise of the Christian Right
• Conclusion: New Perspectives on American Evangelicalism
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index