One consequence of what I called "evangelical sociology" in the previous piece is that since evangelicals regard themselves as intractably "outside" elite American institutions and much of the American mainstream they must find civic belonging elsewhere.
Again, in talking about "evangelicals" I am referring to the children of Hatch's democratized Christianity, a group which tends toward congregationalist governance and, often though not always, a hard and quite extensive separateness from civic society. The outcome of this is that you end up with localized church institutions that have no ties outside of themselves—no sister churches in a shared denominational fellowship that has real authority to offer counsel and aid to them, and no ties to local civic society that is aided and enriched by the faithful ministrations of Christian believers.
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