Igrew up in a small evangelical church in California’s Central Valley where there were more blue collars than white. About 25 families filed into the pews each Sunday; they were loving, generous, and thoughtful. We camped the Sierra Nevadas, backpacked Yosemite, and set crab traps in Half Moon Bay. We studied the Word, shared meals when misfortune struck, and made more after-church trips to Taco Bell than any human being should be able to withstand. It was evangelicalism of the sunny California variety that wore its conservatism with T-shirts and surfer shorts and a breezy, convivial disposition.
When I think about that church, imperfect though it was, I am immensely grateful. It inoculated me against the poisonous caricature I would hear so often in the years following—especially in secular universities—that evangelical churches were fortresses of ignorance and prejudice.
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