Evil Evangelicals?

There’s a plethora of new books portraying USA white Evangelicals as just about the worst people in the world, and Evangelicalism as just about the most repressive retrograde force in the world. Articles touting this perspective in major publications are routine and nearly weekly. They typically are not very creative and they all repeat similar talking points.

A New Republic book review by Matthew Avery Sutton is typical of this genre. He’s reviewing several of these new anti-Evangelical books, and he fully subscribes to their conventional and predictable dark analysis. He commends these books about Evangelicals for bringing “their deep-seated racism and sexism to the surface.” After all, Evangelicals are motivated by “fear, anger, and anxiety.” They are governed by “patriarchy,” “xenophobia,” and “Christian nationalism.” Of course, they want to “undermine 50 years of progress on civil rights.“