Some of you will be familiar with Michael Lindsay’s recently published Faith in the Halls of Power: How Evangelicals Joined the American Elite. Lindsay is a member of the department of sociology at Rice University, and this book is a thoroughly researched and clearly written account of the ascendancy of evangelicals in the public square—in government, in education, in the arts and media, and in the marketplace.

There is much on which to reflect in Lindsay’s book. His distinction between “populist evangelicalism” and “cosmopolitan evangelicalism”; his description of the personal and somewhat informal networks that bind powerful evangelical leaders together; his accounts of evangelicals’ efforts to gain intellectual respectability in, and to bring Christian principles to bear on every aspect of, the broader culture—these are fascinating and important features of his research and deserve to be understood by evangelicals of all stripes. Click to continue »