Older book that still contains information needed in today's world. Who are the Evangelicals and why do they support the present administration? How do they justify their belief in Jesus Christ and still appear to be uncaring for "love thy neighbor". Both sides will find this book helpful.

A history of the Evangelical movement perhaps better subtitled, "The Story of Why Evangelicals Vote the Way They Do," aka the only reason secularists tend to care about Evangelical Christianity.

The author is well researched and does about as well as a person can in attempting to maintain a secular disinterest but communicate about the subject. She spends very little time in the early period of the movement, focusing mostly on the divides manifest in the great awakenings leading to the fundamentalist / modernist schism fully complete by the 1920s.

The author spends a bit more time discussing all the streams that lead to the Religious Right coalition of the 1970s and onward; the majority of the book, provided in extreme detail, focuses on that Religious Right coalition in its various iterations and the attempts of various Evangelicals to shape political movements and policy over the past 40 years. The author concludes by establishing her purpose: to show that the Evangelicals of today are really no different from the fundamentalists of yore, manifesting the same concerns, and still as alien as ever.

I'm not sure if we needed a book describing the political endeavors of the Evangelicals and its origins, considering that the Evangelicals would be offended by their portrayal and the secularist posture of the author, and I'm not quite sure many secularists are that particularly interested in what motivates Evangelicals...considering, as the author points out well, that the secularists tend to think Evangelicalism has died out as a political force until it arises again and influences elections, and is still summarily otherized or ignored. Nevertheless, we have it, and so:

...for secularists: the book does well to show that you can ignore conservative Christianity, you can summarily dismiss it, you can fear it or otherize it or in whatever various ways consider it a spent force going into decline, and yet it continues to exist and exerts continual influence.

...for conservative Christians: the work gives an opportunity to see how the political work over the past few decades has been managed and how it looks to secularists. Unfortunately it's not a very pretty picture...and it has not helped advance the purposes of God in Christ in His Kingdom.

If you're looking for an actual history of Evangelicalism you're going to have to seek out Noll or others like him. You won't find it here. But if you're looking for all the politics, here it is.