For the better part of a decade, American evangelicals have been a convenient punching bag. Condescending think pieces in The Atlantic and the New York Times, along with bestsellers like “Jesus and John Wayne,” have painted a picture of a movement dominated by rich, white, power-hungry hypocrites — people for whom politics is the real religion and faith is little more than a costume. But a new book is asking a question that, according to its author, has gone largely unasked: Is any of that actually true?
Bonnie Kristian, an editor at Christianity Today and a lifelong insider to evangelicalism, has written “In Defense of Evangelicalism,” a direct challenge to what she sees as a media-built myth. The book comes at a time when evangelicals are viewed more negatively than any other major religious group in the United States, according to a recent Pew survey cited in the text. Kristian’s goal isn’t to declare the movement beyond reproach — in fact, she insists she wants fair critique, not blanket immunity. What she is pushing back against is a lazy, politically convenient caricature that she argues has come to define the public conversation.
The trouble begins, Kristian writes, with the word “evangelical” itself. It has been stretched so far from its religious meaning that it barely functions as the label it once was. In the public imagination, the term has become synonymous with “white Republican.” But Kristian highlights some inconvenient facts: many people who actually identify as evangelical are Black, and roughly 90% of the world’s evangelicals live outside the United States. Those numbers alone complicate the narrative that evangelicalism is simply the religious wing of the GOP.
Who Counts As An Evangelical?
Part of the problem, Kristian argues, is that pollsters, pundits, and critics have accepted self-identification from people who aren’t actually evangelicals — while discounting the self-understanding of those who are. Gallup data, she notes, shows that many white Americans who don’t hold evangelical beliefs and rarely attend church still label themselves evangelical when asked. That inflation of the term, she suggests, may be a direct byproduct of the politicization of the label.
At the same time, Kristian points out, critics often dismiss the voices of people whose evangelicalism is more typical of the movement — especially those who don’t fit the political stereotype. She spotlights several self-described evangelicals in ministry who did vote for Donald Trump, but often, she says, for lack of a better option on the issues they cared about most. When you ask actual churchgoing evangelicals what their faith means to them, Kristian reports, they don’t mention the former president. They talk about Jesus.
“It’s impossible to go to an evangelical church on a Sunday morning and come away honestly convinced that faith is irrelevant there,” she writes. “Evangelicalism makes sense only if folks really believe it — and for all our flaws, we do.”
Taking On The Critics By Name
One of the book’s strengths is its willingness to name specific authors and engage with their arguments directly. Kristian doesn’t just complain about “the media” as an abstraction. She opens up the most popular anti-evangelical books and checks their claims.
Take Kristin Du Mez’s “Jesus and John Wayne” and Beth Allison Barr’s work on patriarchy. These books, Kristian contends, build sweeping indictments of evangelical “militant masculinity” and male dominance. But she points to a data point that undercuts a significant portion of their arguments before they even begin: most evangelicals today hold egalitarian views on gender roles. That’s a striking finding, and Kristian uses it to show how critics have taken the fringe and presented it as the center.
She also catches Du Mez conceding, some 300 pages into her own book, that the patriarchal militarism she describes does not “define the whole of American evangelicalism.” That admission, buried deep, would seem to undermine the book’s broader thesis — but it rarely makes it into the media coverage.
Kristian argues that the selection of examples is telling. An attention-seeking outlier like Doug Wilson, who has built a brand on provocative, often militaristic rhetoric, is treated as representative of evangelicalism precisely because he’s fringe. Meanwhile, a genuinely mainstream movement like the Promise Keepers — the massively popular men’s gatherings that have emphasized racial reconciliation — often goes unmentioned. The result, she says, is a distorted portrait that serves both critics and click-hungry headlines.
The ‘Christian Nationalism’ Charge
Perhaps the most important section of the book deals with the accusation that evangelicals are “Christian nationalists” seeking to “legislate their morality” on the rest of the country. Kristian doesn’t deny that evangelicals — like every other demographic — want their values reflected in public life. That, she says, is what political participation looks like.
“Everyone involved in American politics is, at some level, doing the same thing: seeking power to advance the moral and political vision they believe is good and prudent,” she writes.
The double standard, she argues, is glaring. Activists of every stripe — environmentalists, labor unions, gun-rights groups, abortion-rights advocates — lobby for their worldviews without being accused of wanting a theocracy. But when evangelicals do the same, the press reaches for words like “dominion” and “theocracy.” Kristian calls the label “a handy shorthand” — something scary-sounding and headline-ready, but largely empty when probed.
That doesn’t mean evangelicalism is beyond criticism. Kristian is clear that her goal is “not to exempt it from fair scrutiny,” but to clear away “specious and spurious attacks so we can conserve what is valuable and make room for real repair.” It’s a distinction that sums up her entire approach: critique is welcome; caricature is not.
It’s an important message in 2026, when the Pew data show evangelicals are viewed more negatively than any other major religious group in America. “In Defense of Evangelicalism” won’t end that hostility overnight, but anyone who reads it honestly may find the old stereotypes a lot harder to believe.
Source: www.dailywire.com — https://www.dailywire.com/news/media-built-a-myth-about-evangelicals-a-new-book-completely-dismantles-it