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The New Old-Time Religion
Evangelicals defy easy labels. Here's why--and why their numbers are growing
By Jay Tolson

What would Jonathan Edwards think of suburban Chicago's Willow Creek Community Church, where every weekend some 17,000 congregants arrive in their Chevy Tahoes and Toyota minivans to worship in the enormous brick-and-glass auditorium? More specifically, what would the 18th-century Puritan preacher who penned the fire-and-brimstone sermon "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God" make of "seeker-friendly" services that use "drama, multimedia, and contemporary music" to serve "individuals checking out what it really means to have a personal relationship with Jesus"? Gazing across the packed rows, would Edwards recognize the modern face of the religious movement that he played such a key role in launching?

On the 300th anniversary of the great theologian's birth, the questions are hardly academic. From Saddleback Church in Orange County, Calif., to Bellevue Baptist Church outside Memphis, evangelical megachurches dot the American landscape like the Wal-Marts, Home Depots, and other big-box stores that so many of them resemble. But this is only the most visible sign of the growing sway of evangelical Christianity, a tradition that includes both the Pentecostal and Southern Baptist churches, as well as an ever growing array of nondenominational and even some mainline Protestant congregations. From the White House and the halls of Congress to a vastly expanding spiritual self-help movement to the most vigorous Christian missionary effort in the developing world, the growing influence of evangelicalism is everywhere.

Today, according to a Gallup survey, roughly 4 out of 10 Americans identify themselves as evangelical or born-again Christians. And, as Boston College sociologist Alan Wolfe argues in his book The Transformation of American Religion, many characteristics of the evangelical style--its strongly personalist and therapeutic tendencies, its market-savvy approaches to expanding the flock, and even a certain theological fuzziness--have permeated other faith traditions in America, including Roman Catholicism and Judaism. Wolfe says, only half facetiously, "We are all evangelicals now." ...