10 books like The Evangelicals

By Frances FitzGerald,

Here are 10 books that authors have personally recommended if you like The Evangelicals. Shepherd is a community of 8,000+ authors sharing their favorite books with the world.

Shepherd is reader supported.

When you buy books through our website, we may earn an affiliate commission. Please help us make book discovery magical and join our membership program.

Book cover of Inventing a Christian America: The Myth of the Religious Founding

Kathleen Wellman Author Of Hijacking History: How the Christian Right Teaches History and Why It Matters

From the list on the Christian Right as a political power.

Who am I?

I am a history professor at Southern Methodist University. When some students in my university classes believed that the Enlightenment was so evil I should not be allowed to teach it, I wondered what they were taught in high school. I became more directly involved when I spoke before the State Board of Education of Texas against the ahistorical standards they stipulated for history, including that Thomas Aquinas and John Calvin were central to the Enlightenment and Moses to the founding documents of the United States. These standards distorted history to emphasize the role of religion in the American founding. I wondered: How could a state school board stipulate such ahistorical standards? Where had they come from? Who supported them and why? I wrote Hijacking History to address these questions.

Kathleen's book list on the Christian Right as a political power

Discover why each book is one of Kathleen's favorite books.

Why did Kathleen love this book?

A central assertion of the Christian right is that the United States was founded as a Christian nation and should be again. But this argument, as Green documents in his meticulous study of historical and legal sources, is deeply embedded in Americans’ sense of their national history as exceptional. He examines a series of claims made about critical junctures in the early history of the nation that purportedly support this view--the religious founding of the English colonies, the American Revolution as a religious cause, American government formed to be Christian. His careful examination of the evidence for and against the crucial claims of the Christian nation thesis provides a nuanced history of the religious terrain of early America by studying those who made such assertions and why. Green concludes that these claims developed during the nineteenth century rather than during the nation’s founding. More importantly, they are largely mythic but…

Inventing a Christian America

By Steven K. Green,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Inventing a Christian America as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Among the most enduring themes in American history is the idea that the United States was founded as a Christian nation. A pervasive narrative in everything from school textbooks to political commentary, it is central to the way in which many Americans perceive the historical legacy of their nation. Yet, as Steven K. Green shows in this illuminating new book, it is little more than a myth.

In Inventing a Christian America, Green, a leading historian of religion and politics, explores the historical record that is purported to support the popular belief in America's religious founding and status as a…


Book cover of From Bible Belt to Sunbelt: Plain-Folk Religion, Grassroots Politics, and the Rise of Evangelical Conservatism

Kathleen Wellman Author Of Hijacking History: How the Christian Right Teaches History and Why It Matters

From the list on the Christian Right as a political power.

Who am I?

I am a history professor at Southern Methodist University. When some students in my university classes believed that the Enlightenment was so evil I should not be allowed to teach it, I wondered what they were taught in high school. I became more directly involved when I spoke before the State Board of Education of Texas against the ahistorical standards they stipulated for history, including that Thomas Aquinas and John Calvin were central to the Enlightenment and Moses to the founding documents of the United States. These standards distorted history to emphasize the role of religion in the American founding. I wondered: How could a state school board stipulate such ahistorical standards? Where had they come from? Who supported them and why? I wrote Hijacking History to address these questions.

Kathleen's book list on the Christian Right as a political power

Discover why each book is one of Kathleen's favorite books.

Why did Kathleen love this book?

Darren Dochuk’s From Bible Belt to Sunbelt is a fascinating account of a crucial development in the evolution of the Christian right—how evangelicals first became Republicans. He argues when many Southern evangelicals moved during the Dust Bowl and the Great Depression from the Southern states to urban centers of Southern California, especially Los Angeles and Orange County, they fundamentally altered American politics. Southern evangelical preachers and businessmen argued against the New Deal and the United Nations as incipient communism but also opposed the civil rights movement. These messages flourished within its intended audience who evolved from New Deal Democrats to staunchly right-wing Republicans. This political shift among Southern evangelicals led directly to both the rightward turn of the Republican Party and its Southern Strategy with Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan. The powerful alliance of Republicans and evangelicals made it a national movement and fostered evangelical business empires, including those of…

From Bible Belt to Sunbelt

By Darren Dochuk,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked From Bible Belt to Sunbelt as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

From Bible Belt to Sun Belt tells the dramatic and largely unknown story of "plain-folk" religious migrants: hardworking men and women from Oklahoma, Texas, and Arkansas who fled the Depression and came to California for military jobs during World War II. Investigating this fiercely pious community at a grassroots level, Darren Dochuk uses the stories of religious leaders, including Billy Graham, as well as many colorful, lesser-known figures to explain how evangelicals organized a powerful political machine. This machine made its mark with Barry Goldwater, inspired Richard Nixon's "Southern Solution," and achieved its greatest triumph with the victories of Ronald…


Jesus and John Wayne

By Kristin Kobes Du Mez,

Book cover of Jesus and John Wayne: How White Evangelicals Corrupted a Faith and Fractured a Nation

Kathleen Wellman Author Of Hijacking History: How the Christian Right Teaches History and Why It Matters

From the list on the Christian Right as a political power.

Who am I?

I am a history professor at Southern Methodist University. When some students in my university classes believed that the Enlightenment was so evil I should not be allowed to teach it, I wondered what they were taught in high school. I became more directly involved when I spoke before the State Board of Education of Texas against the ahistorical standards they stipulated for history, including that Thomas Aquinas and John Calvin were central to the Enlightenment and Moses to the founding documents of the United States. These standards distorted history to emphasize the role of religion in the American founding. I wondered: How could a state school board stipulate such ahistorical standards? Where had they come from? Who supported them and why? I wrote Hijacking History to address these questions.

Kathleen's book list on the Christian Right as a political power

Discover why each book is one of Kathleen's favorite books.

Why did Kathleen love this book?

In Jesus and John Wayne, Du Mez examines the rise of the Christian right through the lens of popular culture. She argues that over the past seventy-five years evangelicals have remade Christianity into a form of toxic masculinity and Christian nationalism. They have extolled strong, heroic models of masculinity from the fictionalized characters in John Wayne and Mel Gibson movies to political figures, including Ronald Reagan, Oliver North, and even Donald Trump. Their projected strength was vital to protect and promote Christian values. This muscular Christianity supports patriarchy, authoritarianism, and aggressive foreign policies, and opposes the expansion of rights for minorities and women. Du Mez explores a vast array of artifacts of evangelical popular culture—popular books, movies, songs, and merchandise—all intended to promote those values as the essence of Christianity. Jesus and John Wayne helps to explain how evangelicalism became the cultural and political force it is today and how…

Jesus and John Wayne

By Kristin Kobes Du Mez,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Jesus and John Wayne as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

In Jesus and John Wayne, a seventy-five-year history of American evangelicalism, Kristin Kobes Du Mez demolishes the myth that white evangelicals "held their noses" in voting for Donald Trump. Revealing the role of popular culture in evangelicalism, Du Mez shows how evangelicals have worked for decades to replace the Jesus of the Gospels with an idol of rugged masculinity and Christian nationalism in the mould of Ronald Reagan, Mel Gibson and above all, John Wayne. As Du Mez observes, the beliefs at the heart of white evangelicalism today preceded Trump and will outlast him.


The Power Worshippers

By Katherine Stewart,

Book cover of The Power Worshippers: Inside the Dangerous Rise of Religious Nationalism

Kathleen Wellman Author Of Hijacking History: How the Christian Right Teaches History and Why It Matters

From the list on the Christian Right as a political power.

Who am I?

I am a history professor at Southern Methodist University. When some students in my university classes believed that the Enlightenment was so evil I should not be allowed to teach it, I wondered what they were taught in high school. I became more directly involved when I spoke before the State Board of Education of Texas against the ahistorical standards they stipulated for history, including that Thomas Aquinas and John Calvin were central to the Enlightenment and Moses to the founding documents of the United States. These standards distorted history to emphasize the role of religion in the American founding. I wondered: How could a state school board stipulate such ahistorical standards? Where had they come from? Who supported them and why? I wrote Hijacking History to address these questions.

Kathleen's book list on the Christian Right as a political power

Discover why each book is one of Kathleen's favorite books.

Why did Kathleen love this book?

Katherine Stewart investigates the think tanks, advocacy groups, and pastoral organizations funded by extremely wealthy donors and family foundations, which are deliberately using religion to concentrate political power in their hands and to remake the United States into an autocratic theocracy where their authority will be unchallenged. She argues that this development is not merely a political realignment or another manifestation of a broader culture war. Instead, Stewart strongly warns, these wealthy, politically conservative families and groups seek dominion over crucial American institutions--education, the media, government, and the courts-- by using “religious liberty” arguments. And they have had considerable success as her chilling examples of this anti-democratic concentration of power in state houses, schools, churches, hospitals, and the courts attest. They make religious liberty claims on First Amendment or free speech grounds to repudiate the separation of church and state. The current Supreme Court may well be sympathetic to their…

The Power Worshippers

By Katherine Stewart,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked The Power Worshippers as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

For readers of Democracy in Chains and Dark Money, a revelatory investigation of the Religious Right's rise to political power.

For too long the Religious Right has masqueraded as a social movement preoccupied with a number of cultural issues, such as abortion and same-sex marriage. In her deeply reported investigation, Katherine Stewart reveals a disturbing truth: this is a political movement that seeks to gain power and to impose its vision on all of society. America's religious nationalists aren't just fighting a culture war, they are waging a political war on the norms and institutions of American democracy.

Stewart pulls…


Book cover of Fuzhou Protestants and the Making of a Modern China, 1857-1927

Jennifer Lin Author Of Shanghai Faithful: Betrayal and Forgiveness in a Chinese Christian Family

From the list on history of Christianity in China.

Who am I?

I come from a long line of Chinese Christians. My grandfather, the Rev. Lin Pu-chi, was an Ivy League-educated Anglican minister, and my grandmother’s brother was Watchmen Nee, a leading Chinese Christian whose legacy lives on around the world. Library shelves are filled with books by missionaries. But where are the stories of the Chinese people they encountered? That’s the starting point for my family memoir, which spans five generations, starting with the first convert, a fisherman from Fujian. These are the books I relied on to place the family story into the broader context of what was happening in China from the period after the Opium Wars until today.

Jennifer's book list on history of Christianity in China

Discover why each book is one of Jennifer's favorite books.

Why did Jennifer love this book?

Fuzhou serves as a perfect microcosm for examining the rise of Christianity in China. It’s less familiar than Shanghai or Beijing and, as a result, this very accessible history book has a freshness to it. Like Bays, Ryan Dunch, a China scholar at the University of Alberta, is an academic who knows how to make history engaging. The story begins in 1857 after the forced opening of Fuzhou as a treaty port after the First Opium War, and ends with anti-western violence that roiled the city in 1927. I owe Dunch a debt of gratitude. Fuzhou was the birthplace of my grandparents and I discovered on the pages of this book that in 1927, an anti-foreign mob attacked the Rev. Lin Pu-chi—a fact unknown to my family. That event was the key to deciphering the psyche of my grandfather.

Fuzhou Protestants and the Making of a Modern China, 1857-1927

By Ryan Dunch,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Fuzhou Protestants and the Making of a Modern China, 1857-1927 as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

In this groundbreaking examination of Chinese Protestants and their place in the history of modern China, Ryan Dunch focuses on the Fuzhou area of southeast China from the mid-nineteenth century until 1927, when a national revolutionary government was established. Though accounting for only a small proportion of the population, Protestants occupied a central place in Fuzhou's political, intellectual, and social life, Dunch contends. He shows how Chinese Protestants, with a distinctive vision for constituting China as a modern nation-state, contributed to the dissolution of the imperial regime, enjoyed unprecedented popularity following the 1911 revolution, and then saw their dreams for…


Faith and Fatherland

By Kyle Jantzen,

Book cover of Faith and Fatherland: Parish Politics in Hitler's Germany

Kevin P. Spicer and Rebecca Carter-Chand Author Of Religion, Ethnonationalism, and Antisemitism in the Era of the Two World Wars

From the list on German Protestantism in Hitler’s Germany.

Who are we?

Kevin P. Spicer is a historian of twentieth-century Germany who investigates the relationship between church and state from 1918-1945. I'm fascinated by the choices of Christian leaders as they negotiated the challenges of living and leading under National Socialism. I seek to understand the connections between Christian antisemitism and National Socialist’s racial-based exclusionary ethnonationalism and antisemitism. Rebecca Carter-Chand is a historian of twentieth-century Germany who focuses on Christianity during the Nazi period. I'm particularly interested in the smaller Christian churches on the margins of the German religious landscape, many of which maintained ties with their co-religionists abroad. I seek to understand how religious communities navigate ethical and practical challenges of political upheaval and fascism.

Kevin's book list on German Protestantism in Hitler’s Germany

Discover why each book is one of Kevin's favorite books.

Why did Kevin love this book?

Jantzen has produced a thoroughly engaging study of the German Lutheran pastors under National Socialism. By contrast to the traditional “top down” institutional narratives on the Kirchenkampf (German Church Struggle), Jantzen has produced a “bottom up” work that focuses on the choices made by ordinary parish pastors under Hitler’s rule. As his point of departure, he examines Lutheran pastors working in three Church districts: Nauen, located northwest of Berlin in Brandenburg; Pirna, in southeast of Dresden in Saxony; and Ravensburg, in southern Württemberg. Throughout his work, Jantzen convincingly compares the response of the clergy in these diverse geographic areas. Though there were notable exceptions among these pastors, Jantzen concludes that Protestant clergy “largely failed to resist or even critique the Nazi state.” 

Faith and Fatherland

By Kyle Jantzen,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Faith and Fatherland as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

An informative glimpse into the world of German Protestantsin the difficult Hitler era, Faith and Fatherland approaches thehistory of the Church Struggle from the "bottom up," usingsources like pastors' correspondence, parish newsletters, localnewspaper accounts, district superintendents' reports, andlocal church statistics.

While Jantzen confirms the general understanding thatGerman Protestants failed to resist or even critique the Naziregime, he reveals a surprising diversity of opinion and varietyof action, including the successful efforts of some Lutheranpastors and parishioners to resist the nazification of theirchurches.


Stealing Jesus

By Bruce Bawer,

Book cover of Stealing Jesus: How Fundamentalism Betrays Christianity

Will Holcomb Author Of The Infinite Jeff: A Parable of Change – Part 1: A Journey into Insight

From the list on that transform how we think and make us grow.

Who am I?

One piece of advice I give my kids is to listen to people who are wrong. One of two things happen: you’ll have to define, refine, and explore your personal positions in order to articulate why they’re wrong; or you discover you’re wrong and you grow. I spent 25 years in a church that made no sense to me. That caused me to read and think about why I didn’t believe what they said was “absolute truth.” My writing is the result of a long soul-searching experience that has led me to a place I’m comfortable with and others are finding comfort in the wisdom of The Infinite Jeff.

Will's book list on that transform how we think and make us grow

Discover why each book is one of Will's favorite books.

Why did Will love this book?

Bawer delves into the history of Christian fundamentalism in this well-researched book. It explores the “church of law” vs “church of love.” This should be required reading in churches and maybe we would stop dividing ourselves over false doctrines. Too many religions are working to divide humanity and Stealing Jesus is an important book for resolving that. 

Stealing Jesus

By Bruce Bawer,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Stealing Jesus as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

From the author of the widely acclaimed A Place at the Table, this is a major work, passionately outspoken and cogently reasoned, that exposes the great danger posed to Christianity today by fundamentalism.

The time is past, says Bruce Bawer, when denominational names and other traditional labels provided an accurate reflection of Christian America's religious beliefs and practices. The meaningful distinction today is not between Protestant and Catholic, or Baptist and Episcopalian, but rather between "legalistic" and "nonlegalistic" religion, between the Church of Law and the Church of Love. On one side is the fundamentalist right, which draws a sharp…


Twisted Cross

By Doris L. Bergen,

Book cover of Twisted Cross: The German Christian Movement in the Third Reich

Kevin P. Spicer and Rebecca Carter-Chand Author Of Religion, Ethnonationalism, and Antisemitism in the Era of the Two World Wars

From the list on German Protestantism in Hitler’s Germany.

Who are we?

Kevin P. Spicer is a historian of twentieth-century Germany who investigates the relationship between church and state from 1918-1945. I'm fascinated by the choices of Christian leaders as they negotiated the challenges of living and leading under National Socialism. I seek to understand the connections between Christian antisemitism and National Socialist’s racial-based exclusionary ethnonationalism and antisemitism. Rebecca Carter-Chand is a historian of twentieth-century Germany who focuses on Christianity during the Nazi period. I'm particularly interested in the smaller Christian churches on the margins of the German religious landscape, many of which maintained ties with their co-religionists abroad. I seek to understand how religious communities navigate ethical and practical challenges of political upheaval and fascism.

Kevin's book list on German Protestantism in Hitler’s Germany

Discover why each book is one of Kevin's favorite books.

Why did Kevin love this book?

Bergen’s classic study of the German Christian movement explores the origins and influence of this sizable movement within German Protestantism that sought to synthesize Christianity and Nazism. The German Christians’ mission to transform Christianity into a ‘racially pure’ church manifested in practical ways, including denying the Jewishness of Jesus and excluding Christians of Jewish heritage. The book emphasizes the movement’s theological and political foundations, dispelling the myths that the German Christian movement was a purely Nazi creation imposed on the church or that the movement’s adherents were merely opportunistic. A central component of Bergen’s analysis is focused on gender, arguing for the centrality of gendered rhetoric and what would today be recognized as toxic masculinity. The narrative continues into the postwar period, revealing how many German Christians were able to reintegrate into German Protestant life after the war.   

Twisted Cross

By Doris L. Bergen,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Twisted Cross as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

How did Germany's Christians respond to Nazism? Bergen addresses one important element of this response by focusing on the 600,000 self-described ""German Christians"" who sought to expunge all Jewish elements from the Christian church. In a process that became more daring as Nazi plans for genocide unfolded, this group of Protestant lay people and clergy rejected the Old Testament, ousted people defined as non-Aryans from their congregations, denied the Jewish ancestry of Jesus, and removed Hebrew words like ""Hallelujah"" from hymns. Bergen refutes the notion that the German Christians were a marginal group and demonstrates that members occupied key positions…


A God Strolling in the Cool of the Evening

By Gregory Rabassa, Mario De Carvalho,

Book cover of A God Strolling in the Cool of the Evening

Ian Ross Author Of War at the Edge of the World

From the list on novels set in the later Roman Empire.

Who am I?

Ian Ross was born in England and studied painting before turning to writing fiction. He has been researching the later Roman empire and its army for over a decade, and his interests combine an obsessive regard for accuracy and detail with a devotion to the craft of storytelling. His six-novel Twilight of Empire series follows the career of Aurelius Castus as he rises from the ranks of the legions to the dangerous summit of military power, against the background of a Roman world in crisis.

Ian's book list on novels set in the later Roman Empire

Discover why each book is one of Ian's favorite books.

Why did Ian love this book?

The setting for this book is only marginally late Roman, but the picture it evokes, of the shadows lengthening over the classical world, is entirely appropriate. Our hero Lucius is the duumvir, or leading magistrate, of a provincial city in Lusitania at the end of the 2nd century AD. Cultured and urbane, devoted to the classical traditions and philosophies of Rome, Lucius is disturbed both by the appearance of a fervent sect of Christians in his city, and by rumours of an approaching horde of Moorish barbarians. With conflict both within the city and without, and the daughter of the richest citizen turning to the new religion, Lucius soon finds his nerves stretched and his ideals questioned. As the barbarians surround the city walls, and Lucius tries to repel their assault with his ragged band of militia, the duumvir’s faith in his own civilisation is tested to destruction. A God…

A God Strolling in the Cool of the Evening

By Gregory Rabassa, Mario De Carvalho,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked A God Strolling in the Cool of the Evening as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Winner of the Portuguese Writers' Association Grand Prize for Fiction and the Pegasus Prize for Literature, and a best-seller in Portugal, Mario de Carvalho's A God Strolling in the Cool of the Evening is a vivid and affecting historical novel set at the twilight of the Roman Empire and the dawn of the Christian era. Lucius Valerius Quintius is prefect of the fictitious city of Tarcisis, charged to defend it against menaces from without -- Moors invading the Iberian peninsula -- and from within -- the decadent complacency of the Pax Romana. Lucius's devotion to civic duty undergoes its most…


Book cover of Florence and Its Church in the Age of Dante

Tinney Sue Heath Author Of A Thing Done

From the list on medieval Florence.

Who am I?

I write historical fiction set in medieval Italy, in that lesser-known territory somewhere between ancient Rome and the Renaissance. I’m fascinated by the period before the Medici, before Michelangelo, sometimes even before Dante. The seeds of the Renaissance are hidden in that turbulent time, and I love to hunt for them. I also like to write about marginalized people—the obscure, unfamous, forgotten folk plucked from the footnotes. I’m happy to introduce some of the excellent history books that help me do that. These five books are specific to Florence, the city of my heart.

Tinney's book list on medieval Florence

Discover why each book is one of Tinney's favorite books.

Why did Tinney love this book?

To know medieval Florence, you have to have a sense of the enormous role the Church played in people’s lives. Here, Dameron concentrates on the 50-year period 1265-1321 (Dante’s lifetime), during which Florence went from something of a backwater to one of the wealthiest and most influential cities in all of Europe. Separation of church and state was simply not a thing back then; the concept would have bewildered medieval Florentines. All aspects of the city, from the legal system to charity efforts, were affected by religious institutions. This knowledgeable account will give you a rich, full picture of that aspect of medieval Florentine society.

Florence and Its Church in the Age of Dante

By George W. Dameron,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Florence and Its Church in the Age of Dante as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

By the early fourteenth century, the city of Florence had emerged as an economic power in Tuscany, surpassing even Siena, which had previously been the banking center of the region. In the space of fifty years, during the lifetime of Dante Alighieri, 1265-1321, Florence had transformed itself from a political and economic backwater-scarcely keeping pace with its Tuscan neighbors-to one of the richest and most influential places on the continent. While many historians have focused on the role of the city's bankers and merchants in achieving these rapid transformations, in Florence and Its Church in the Age of Dante, George…


5 book lists we think you will like!

Interested in evangelicalism, the Christian right, and Christianity?

8,000+ authors have recommended their favorite books and what they love about them. Browse their picks for the best books about evangelicalism, the Christian right, and Christianity.

Evangelicalism Explore 24 books about evangelicalism
The Christian Right Explore 13 books about the Christian right
Christianity Explore 467 books about Christianity