Beginning with the Jesus vogue of the early 1970s, evangelical Christianity was seen and heard, then seen and heard again.
During these years, evangelicalism (the label commonly given to the public expression of born-again Christianity) influenced American history in profound, but only partially appreciated, ways. As befits the subject matter, this is something of a story of rebirth. Public evangelicalism gestated in the space created by the Watergate scandal of the early and mid-1970s. Out of that context emerged both a born-again president, Jimmy Carter, and his equally evangelical archnemesis, the Christian Right. The climax came three decades later with the presidency of George W. Bush, who synthesized the former's therapeutic Jesus talk with the latter's political agenda.
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