Resurgent Evangelicalism in the United States
Subtitle: mapping cultural change since 1970
By: Mark A. Shibley.
Publisher: University of South Carolina Press
Published: 1996
Place of publication: Columbia, S.C
Language: eng
Number of pages: 156
Subjects: Evangelicalism -- United States -- History -- 20th century.; United States -- Church history -- 20th century.
Description: In this provocative look at evangelicalism in the United States, Mark A. Shibley tests the widely ascribed "southernization of American religion" thesis, or the idea that the recent resurgence of born-again Christianity represents the spread of southern-style religion from the historically conservative, Protestant South to America's mainstream.

While confirming a link between evangelicalism's initial growth and the diffusion of southern-style religion, Shibley uncovers a reciprocity in the relationship between evangelicalism and secularism. He demonstrates that even as evangelicalism changes the face of American culture, it is being transformed by its encounter with secularism.

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Shibley predicts that evangelicalism outside the South will increasingly shape itself to meet individual rather than collective needs and that the restructuring of American religion and culture will follow a public-to-private, rather than liberal-to-conservative, continuum.

Disagreeing to some extent with recent obituaries of the New Christian Right, he suggests that evangelicalism will continue to exercise a significant effect on American culture in the foreseeable future, but not in the domineering way once feared by the liberal cultural establishment.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references (p. 143-151) and index.