God and Country

Starred review from August 28, 2006
Billed as a primer on evangelical Christianity for the millions of Americans with only a superficial understanding of its inner workings, El-Faizy's book delivers impressively on its promise. Raised in a strict fundamentalist church, El-Faizy left it behind in college and now looks back at her roots through the lens of the urban, liberal, secular journalist she has become. This insider-outsider position combined with her crisp writing and wide-ranging research make her the perfect bridge from one world to the other. She writes both critically and appreciatively of this growing movement, laying down the historical context for how evangelicalism grew out of austere fundamentalism and into a come-as-you-are ministry that reaches across multiple social boundaries by emphasizing God's love. El-Faizy takes her readers on tours of megachurches, the exploding Christian publishing and music industries, evangelical colleges and political activism. Along the way, she sprinkles the text with important (but never intrusive) observations about the evolution of religion in America and ends with some surprising and intriguing predictions for the future of Christianity. Among the gaggle of books rushing in to translate the gulf between red-state and blue-state America, this one shines. Well-written, engaging and informative, this snapshot of American evangelicalism is a must-read for students of American religion.

September 15, 2006
Because El-Faizy wrote this book for personal as well as professional reasons, author and reader join to become intellectually curious investigators. A journalist recently with the "New York Daily News", El-Faizy explores the confluence of evangelism and secular mainstream culture via a return visit to her former fundamentalist Christian life. Along the way, she reveals the influence of megachurches, the Christian media, the Yellow Pages of Christian businesses, and celebrity preachers. El-Faizy effectively argues that evangelical Christianity is attracting the young through music, books, and films modeled on the secular world, but it -s the old guard, including President Bush, that is driving the political agenda. The chapter -A Brief History of Evangelicals in America - is a condensed, comprehensive overview detailing evangelism -s repeated progress toward and withdrawal from modernism. What makes this text different is the almost National Public Radio style of reporting, which reflects on the massive isolationist church communities, the return to the 1950s conformity, and the cyclical nature of societal trends. The reader is left pondering what will happen as evangelical fervor ebbs; will the megachurches have served their purpose? For most readers who enjoy good journalism." -L. Kriz, West Des Moines P.L., IA"

Copyright 2006 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

October 1, 2006
According to former evangelical Christian El-Faizy, as much as 44 percent of Americans are evangelicals, and to the greater American society, they constitute a mystery. She convincingly argues that they are "the new establishment" and exert considerable influence on virtually every aspect of American life and culture. She examines many facets of that influence: megachurches, Christian rock, Christian publishing, Christian television, and Christian idealism in the movie industry and politics. Evangelicals can be hard to categorize, for many have no specific denominational affiliation. What makes them so important, El-Faizy says, is their remarkable ability to adopt the attitude of secular America; they "have learned to straddle two worlds--their own and the one that the rest of us live in." Discriminating evangelicals from fundamentalists (a matter more of attitude than of belief), sketching American evangelical history, and describing how evangelicals find and retain new adherents, El-Faizy offers an informed and perceptive portrait of the state of evangelicalism in America today.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2006, American Library Association.)