Chas Smith grew up deeply enmeshed in the evangelical Christian world that flourished in Southern California in the late 1960s. His family included famous missionaries and megachurch pastors, but his cousin Daniel Courson was Grandma's favorite. Smith looked up to Cousin Danny. He was handsome, adventurous, and smart; earned a degree from Bible college; and settled into a family and a stable career. Needless to say, it was a big surprise when Cousin...

Since the 1970s, an important new figure has appeared on the center stage of American evangelicalism--the celebrity preacher's wife. Although most evangelical traditions bar women from ordained ministry, many women have carved out unofficial positions of power in their husbands' spiritual empires or their own ministries. The biggest stars--such as Beth Moore, Joyce Meyer, and Victoria Osteen--write bestselling books, grab high ratings on Christian...

The American political scene today is poisonously divided, and the vast majority of white evangelicals play a strikingly unified, powerful role in the disunion. These evangelicals raise a starkly consequential question for electoral politics: Why do they claim morality while supporting politicians who act immorally by most Christian measures? In this clear-eyed, hard-hitting chronicle of American religion and politics, Anthea Butler answers that racism...

"Why did so many Evangelicals turn out to vote for Donald Trump, a serial philanderer with questionable conservative credentials who seems to defy Christian values with his every utterance? To a reporter like Sarah Posner, who has been covering the religious right for decades, the answer turns out to be far more intuitive than one might think. In this taut and meticulously reported inquiry, Posner digs deep into the radical history of the religious...