At that point, I began to observe that our politics and culture had changed. I began to feel differently about our surrounding secular culture, and noticed that its attitude toward Christianity was not what it once had been. Aaron Renn’s account represents well my thinking and the thinking of many: There was a “neutral world” roughly between

One by one, conservatives gained control of the denomination’s seminaries, purging faculties of moderate voices. Moderates denounced this “power-crazed authoritarianism, a win-atany-cost ethic and a total disregard for personal values and religious freedom,” but to little avail.

Evangelical is a contested term. While I would like to argue that evangelical refers primarily to shared theological beliefs—our focus on the Bible and the resurrection of Jesus as well as our emphasis on conversion and evangelism—I can’t. Evangelical has become an identity (and mostly a white conservative identity), not just a shared set of