Page 12 - The University of Wisconsin Press Spring 2013
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S
PRING
2013
12
THE UNIVERSIT Y OF WISCONSIN PRESS
•
U.S. HISTORY / RELIGION / POLITICS
“A rich and provocative reinterpretation of American evangelicalism in the
decades after World War II. These essays upset conventional wisdom about
the ways that American evangelicals responded to the American civil rights
movement, the sexual revolution, the VietnamWar, and the Great Society.”
John G. Turner, author of
Bill Bright and Campus Crusade for Christ
In the late 1970s, the New Christian Right emerged as a formidable political
force, boldly announcing itself as a unified movement representing the views of
a “moral majority.” But that movement did not spring fully formed from its pre-
decessors.
American Evangelicals and the 1960s
refutes the thesis that evangelical
politics were a purely inflammatory backlash against the cultural and political
upheaval of the decade.
Bringing together fresh research and innovative interpretations, this book
demonstrates that evangelicals actually participated in broader American devel-
opments during “the long 1960s,” that the evangelical constituency was more
diverse than often noted, and that the notion of right-wing evangelical politics
as a backlash was a later creation serving the interests of both Republican-
conservative alliances and their critics. Evangelicalism’s involvement
with
—
rather than its reaction
against
—the main social movements, public policy initia-
tives, and cultural transformations of the 1960s proved significant in its 1970s
political ascendance. Twelve essays that range thematically from the oil industry
to prison ministry and from American counterculture to the Second Vatican
Council depict modern evangelicalism both as a religious movement with its
own internal dynamics and as one fully integrated into general American history.
Axel R. Schäfer
is director of the David
Bruce Centre for American Studies at Keele
University in the United Kingdom. He is
author of
Countercultural Conservatives:
American Evangelicalism from the Postwar
Revival to the New Christian Right
and of
Piety and Public Funding: Evangelicals and
the State in Modern America.
PAPERBACK ORIGINAL
JULY
LC: 2012037153 BR
280 PP. 6 X 9 6 B/W ILLUS.
E-BOOK $24.95 ISBN 978-0-299-29363-5
Studies in American Thought
and Culture
Paul S. Boyer, Series Editor
“A particularly effective effort to
enlighten the general public, prob-
lematize stereotypes, and deepen
understanding. It makes a substan-
tial contribution to both religious
and sociopolitical history.”
Mark
Noll, coeditor of
Religion and Ameri-
can Politics
O f r e l a t e d i n t e r e s t
Schäfer traces the evolution of a diffuse
and pluralistic evangelical movement into
the conservative political force of the New
Christian Right, from the early 1940s to the
late 1990s.
PUBLISHED DECEMBER 2011
LC: 2011012634 BR 264 PP. 6 × 9
20 B/W ILLUS.
E-BOOK $24.95 ISBN 978-0-299-28523-4
Studies in American Thought
and Culture
