Evangelical Christianity in America is dying. The great evangelical movements of today are not a vanguard. They are a remnant, unraveling at every edge. Conversions. Baptisms. Membership. Retention. Participation. Giving. Attendance. Impact upon the culture at large. All are down and dropping. When veteran religion reporter Christine Wicker set out to investigate the evangelical movement, her intention was to forge through the stereotypes and shed new light on this highly divisive religious group. But the story soon morphed into an entirely new and shocking tale of discovery, as Wicker's research unearthed much more than she originally bargained for.

Everywhere Wicker traveled she heard whispers of diminishing statistics, failed campaigns, and empty churches. Even as evangelical forces trumpet their purported political and social victories on the national and local fronts, insiders are anguishing over their significant losses and preparing to rebuild for the future. The idea that evangelicals represent and speak for Christianity in America is one of the greatest publicity scams in history, a perfect coup accomplished by savvy politicos and zealous religious leaders who understand the weaknesses of the nation's media and exploit them brilliantly.

With her trademark vivid, firsthand reporting, Christine Wicker takes us deep inside the world of evangelicals, exposing the surprising statistics and details of this unexpected fall. Wicker shows us how the virtues of evangelicals are killing them as surely as their vices and that, to fully comprehend how and why this is happening, we'll need to understand both.

"Religion reporter Wicker (formerly of the Dallas Morning News and author of Lily Dale) proffers a tendentious, confused book about the alleged demise of conservative evangelicalism.She makes a few lucid points, as when she deftly takes apart the many competing statistics about how many Americans are evangelical.But overall the book has a shrill feel, thanks to the regular use of terms like 'threat' and 'death knell.'Some of the chapters, which seem like filler, are journalistic accounts of aspects of evangelical life — e.g., a portrait of a grieving widow who says she wouldn't give up Jesus to have her husband back — and are not closely related to the overarching argument.Wicker argues that some of the 'threats' to evangelicalism come from evangelical institutions themselves.For example, she asserts that megachurches carry a lot of debt — a fascinating claim that should be bolstered by more rigorous research and source citation. However, merely establishing that megachurches are 'vulnerable' because they cater to the tastes of boomers and depend on the personality of their leaders doesn't tell us that evangelicalism is dying; it just suggests that evangelicalism, ever protean, will once again change." Publishers Weekly (Copyright Reed Business Information, Inc.)

The "New York Times"-bestselling author returns to her Southern Baptist roots and takes readers deep inside the crumbling pillar of the Religious Right, exposing the surprising statistics and details of this unexpected fall.

Christine Wicker was raised in Oklahoma, Texas, and other parts of the South. Her mother's grandfather was an itinerant Baptist preacher, and her dad's father was a Kentucky coal miner. During her seventeen years at the Dallas Morning News, she was a feature writer, columnist, and religion reporter. She is the author of several books, including the highly acclaimed New York Times bestseller Lily Dale: The True Story of the Town That Talks to the Dead.