The Evangelicals

Last month marked the passing of Billy Graham, “America's pastor.” While I am not among the 215 million people to have heard him preach in person, I did grow up impersonating his memorable cameo in this DC Talk song. That counts for something, right?

As it happens, just a day or two before Graham died I read the chapter about him in The Evangelicals: The Struggle to Shape America by the Pulitzer prize-winning journalist Frances FitzGerald. This line from the beginning of that chapter says it all: “Indefatigable and constantly in motion, he evangelized on five continents and with the advantages of radio, television, and airplanes spoke to more people than any other preacher before in history.”

As for the rest of The Evangelicals, I was made aware of some of the book’s shortfalls and quirks beforehand. But it is a book I simply couldn't not read, daunting as it may be. I’m glad I didn’t let its heft scare me away. FitzGerald is a wonderful storyteller, which is not to say she’s a dispassionate one. She is not an evangelical, but has made every effort to understand evangelicals, and it shows.

Personally, I’m bummed that the term “evangelical” has morphed from a fairly helpful theological label for those who proclaim and embody “good news” into a narrow political one (with curiously little “good news” to speak of). But this book offers some clues as to how we’ve gotten where we are. If there’s any consolation, it’s that the evangelical movement keeps changing, often in unpredictable directions, as this book ably demonstrates. As Billy might say: who knows where the wind will blow?