How America's Evangelicals Became a Potent Force

White evangelicals make up around a fifth of America's population, yet four decades after they became a central feature of public life they continue to baffle their compatriots. “The Evangelicals” was written before Donald Trump's victory, but it illuminates these contradictions. Ms FitzGerald, a Pulitzer prizewinning historian, shows how the rise of evangelical creeds, during the Great Awakenings of the 18th and 19th centuries, was itself a sort of populist revolt, by “a folk religion characterised by disdain for authority and tradition”. It was not only anti-elitist but anti-intellectual, “a religion of the heart, as opposed to the head”, in which puritanical harangues were leavened by the promise of a widely shared salvation and, after a born-again experience, a direct relationship with God.