Publisher's Synopsis
Televangelists stand out as the most conspicuous element of the evangelical subculture in America. The bizarre antics of such notorious figures as Jim Bakker and Jimmy Swaggart regularly make it into the headlines and the evening news. But as Randall Balmer reveals in this colorful narrative, these men represent merely one small part of a strikingly diverse religious movement.
Crisscrossing the country, from Oregon to Florida and from Texas to North Dakota, Balmer takes readers on a journey into the heart of evangelical America, visiting an old-fashioned, holiness camp meeting in St. Petersburg, Florida, an Indian reservation in the Dakotas, a huge trade show for Christian booksellers, and a fundamentalist Bible camp in the Adirondacks. Throughout this reflective series of New Yorker-like profiles, Balmer fills in the theological and historical background, creating, in effect, a capsule history of evangelicalism.
