Two Books Reveal a Diversity that Might Surprise Many

by Marcia Ford, Religion BookLine -- Publishers Weekly, 8/2/2006

Disturbed by the media’s often one-dimensional portrayal of evangelicals, two journalists who each were at one time immersed in the evangelical subculture have written strikingly similar but independent books that both release in October. Monique El-Faizy’s God and Country: How Evangelicals Have Become America’s New Mainstream (Bloomsbury) and Jeffery L. Sheler’s Believers: A Journey into Evangelical America (Viking) each examine the diversity in one of the most prevalent but misunderstood religious groups in the U.S.

“As evangelicals began to get more coverage, I noticed the things the mainstream media were missing,” says El-Faizy, the product of a fundamentalist upbringing. “If you don't speak the language, you don’t know the customs and you miss the nuances. The evangelical community was misrepresented—it was being painted as monolithic and identified by its fringe rather than its core. I felt someone had to go in and illuminate it.”

Both El-Faizy and Sheler, who also experienced fundamentalism as a child, say their research confirmed that evangelicalism has moved so far from its narrow, rigid, and separatist roots in fundamentalism that it has become America’s new mainstream faith. And while both authors found that the majority of evangelicals are likely to vote Republican, they are not all as conservative politically as the media often portray them to be. El-Faizy and Sheler each point out the significant percentage of evangelicals who closely identify with Democrats on issues like war, poverty, and social justice, and are the swing voters that frequently make all the difference come election time.

Sheler told RBL, “The image that often comes through in the media is filled with stereotypes and caricatures. As a journalist covering religion and as an evangelical myself years ago, I felt they were projecting a very unfamiliar face—one of intolerance, arrogance, and narrow-mindedness. If those were representative of evangelicalism, then it had become something very foreign to my own experience. I felt it was time to explore this, to discover who they are, what they stand for, who speaks for them, and who does not.”

Among those who do not speak for many of the country’s estimated 60 million evangelicals, Sheler discovered, are vocal and visible leaders like Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson and James Dobson. “The outrageous things you see on TV are an aberration, though some people do hold those views,” Sheler said. “But the vast majority of evangelicals are normal, reasonable people. They are hardworking, love their families, and are not out to cram religion down your throat and turn the country into a theocracy.”

While both books were written to help secular readers and mainline Christians understand evangelicalism, the authors also see evangelicals as a potential audience. One evangelical publisher, anticipating what he hoped would be an honest and objective assessment of the subculture, urged El-Faizy not to pull any punches in her portrayal of it. “Most evangelicals will find a more full-blooded portrait of themselves here, one that is more accurate than they are accustomed to seeing,” Sheler said of his book. “They’ll read it and recommend it to their friends.”