Randall Balmer. Worldmark Encyclopedia of Religious Practices. Editor: Thomas Riggs, 2nd Edition, Volume 1, Gale, 2015.
Overview
Evangelicalism, which originated in Germany in the 16th century and flourished in North America beginning in the 18th century, is a movement within Christianity that emphasizes reliance on Scripture over tradition and holds conversion to be the foundation of life for the believer. Most evangelicals think that it is incumbent on the believer to evangelize, or to bring others into the faith. The broader category of evangelicalism encompasses several subgroups, including the holiness movement, Pentecostalism, fundamentalism, and neo-evangelicalism.
With Martin Luther’s “rediscovery of the Gospel” and the beginning of the Reformation in the 16th century, “evangelical” came to be associated with Protestantism; the term refers to the Gospels, the first four books of the New Testament written by Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John (who are also called evangelists). Though it had roots in England, evangelicalism emerged in North America in the 18th century from a confluence of three “Ps”: Puritanism, Pietism, and Presbyterianism. These three Protestant strains congealed into a distinct movement during the Great Awakening, a revival of religion that swept through the Atlantic colonies in the 1730s and 1740s. Though evangelicalism has spread throughout the world, its most robust expression is in the United States, where it has been an important influence on the religious, cultural, and even political life into the early 21st century.
The Lausanne Global Analysis estimated that in 2011 the number of evangelicals worldwide was about 550 million. A 2005 Gallup Poll found that 42 percent of Americans described themselves as evangelicals, but it also determined that only 22 percent of Americans actually fit the description of an evangelical. African American religious life has been overwhelmingly shaped by evangelicalism, while increasing numbers of Hispanics have gravitated from Roman Catholicism to various expressions of evangelicalism.
History
Evangelicalism in North America has several roots. In the 17th century the Pietism of Lutheran pastor Philipp Jakob Spener (1635-1705) and others was a response to the formality and perceived rigidity of more scholastic expressions of Protestantism. Pietists called for a religion of the “open air and the human heart”; they emphasized the importance of affective, warmhearted piety, convinced that faith was more than merely an intellectual expression.
On May 24, 1738, Anglican minister John Wesley felt his “heart strangely warmed,” and from then until his death in 1791, he preached in churches and open fields throughout England and North America, calling people to conversion and organizing small Bible groups for prayer. With equal passion, figures such as English Baptist John Bunyan (1628-1688), the author of The Pilgrim’s Progress (1678), stressed believer’s baptism, rejecting both Protestant and Roman Catholic forms of infant baptism and demanding that Christians make up their minds individually about their belief in Jesus Christ.
The second source of evangelicalism in North America derived from Scots-Irish Presbyterians, who began arriving in the Middle Colonies (New York, New Jersey, Delaware, and Pennsylvania) late in the 17th century. Presbyterians had been allied, both religiously and militarily, with Puritans in the Old World. They emphasized the importance of doctrinal precision, and the history of Presbyterianism in America is perforated with doctrinal controversies. Finally, evangelicalism built on the vestiges of New England Puritanism. In the decades prior to the Great Awakening, a period of religious resurgence from the 1730s to 1740s, Puritan ministers had been calling for repentance.
The three “Ps” came together in the course of the Great Awakening to create a uniquely American movement, one emphasizing both religious individualism and a kind of spiritual upward mobility. Even in the early 21st century, it was possible to discern characteristics from each of these precursors. From the Puritans, evangelicals inherited the discipline of spiritual introspection and self-examination; from the Presbyterians, the importance of doctrinal precision; and from the Pietists, the necessity of warmhearted piety.
The second formative event for evangelicalism in America was the Second Great Awakening, a revival of religion in the 1790s that encompassed three theaters of the new nation: New England, the Cumberland Valley of Kentucky, and upstate New York. Whereas the First Great Awakening was generally Calvinist in theology (the notion that God alone knows the identity of those “elected” to salvation), preachers of the Second Awakening emphasized the power of the individual in the salvation process. Rather than wait for the call of God, revivalists urged, auditors should seize the initiative and give their lives to Jesus. This “democratizing” of evangelical theology meshed nicely with the emerging American ethos. Among a people who had only recently taken their political identity into their own hands, preachers assured Americans that they could control their religious destiny as well.
In the 19th century this message spread to ever-widening circles in Europe and the United States by way of American revivalists such as Charles Grandison Finney (1792-1875) and Dwight L. Moody (1837- 1899). In addition, the movement spawned an international evangelical mission to South America, Africa, and Asia. By the end of the 19th century, Christian leaders confidently spoke of the “evangelization” of the entire world.
This hope was deflected in the 20th century by controversies over the interpretation of Scripture that fragmented the evangelical movement; fundamentalists, for example, insisted on a thoroughgoing literalistic interpretation of the Bible, while other evangelicals took a slightly less mechanistic approach. In the post- World War II years a new movement called “neoevangelicalism,” led by the former fundamentalist Billy Graham (1918- ), created a loose coalition of evangelicals. Evangelicals of this era extended their reach through the media; they were pioneers in the use of both radio and television to spread their religious messages. Their evangelical use of the media, in turn, provided a springboard for their political activism and for the emergence of the conservative Religious Right in the late 1970s.
In the decades surrounding the turn of the 21st century, politically conservative evangelicals became a force in electoral politics. In the 1980 presidential election, for instance, they organized to defeat a fellow evangelical, the Democrat Jimmy Carter (1924- ), in favor of the socially conservative Ronald Reagan (1911-2004), whose churchgoing was episodic at best. In the 2000 and 2004 presidential elections, evangelicals rallied behind George W. Bush (1946- ), a Republican. At the same time the spread of evangelicalism to other countries, including Brazil, South Africa, South Korea, and the Philippines, brought further growth.
Central Doctrines
Evangelicalism is not a particular denomination. Evangelicals are found across the Protestant spectrum and even in the Roman Catholic Church, especially in what has come to be known as the Catholic Charismatic Renewal, a movement that emphasizes spiritual gifts, including divine healing and speaking in tongues. Evangelicalism is best defined by its beliefs and practices: (1) the authority of Scripture as divinely inspired, (2) the centrality of a conversion experience, and (3) the call and obligation to share the “good news” of Jesus Christ with all people (evangelism). With subtle variations these beliefs are held by the groups that are called evangelical, whether mainstream Protestant churches (such traditional evangelical denominations as Baptist, Seventh-day Adventist, and Christian and Missionary Alliance) or the Pentecostal network of churches (including Assemblies of God, International Church of the Foursquare Gospel, and the predominately African American Church of God in Christ). Pentecostals often include a focus on the “gifts and fruits of the spirit”—healing, exorcism, and speaking in tongues—and the fastest growing evangelicals in the Southern Hemisphere feature Pentecostal forms of evangelicalism.
Evangelicalism differs from mainstream Protestant denominations in emphasizing the exclusive truth of the Gospel message and the obligation to evangelize others and to lead them to conversion. Evangelicalism is distinct from Roman Catholicism in four principal ways: (1) an emphasis on Scripture over historical traditions, (2) a focus on religious experience in conversion and healing, (3) the independence of churches from one another, and (4) pronounced lay participation in leadership, often including women as missionaries and occasionally as pastors.
Moral Code of Conduct
Because the origins of evangelicalism are partly in the Pietist and Holiness movements of the 17th through 19th centuries, purity of personal conduct has been a central mode of its expression. While this strictness has decreased over time, a person is generally expected to abstain from tobacco, alcohol, and sex outside marriage. At one time dancing was forbidden, and in the early 20th century movies were, too. The latter two restrictions have dropped away, but faithfulness in marriage has remained critical. After the 1970s, however, divorce no longer automatically resulted in a dismissal from the church or even from leadership as a pastor.
In the early 21st century the passion that evangelicals brought to moral issues tended to vary along generational lines. The generation that came of age with the Religious Right in the 1980s still opposes abortion and same-sex marriage, whereas the younger generation, or the so-called “millennials,” often sees a much broader spectrum of issues as “moral,” including war, poverty, and environmentalism.
Sacred Books
The sacred, foundational books for evangelicals are the Christian Scriptures: the Old Testament and the New Testament. In this sense evangelicalism has adopted the Reformation theme of sola scriptura, the belief that it is by Scripture alone that a person can know God. Correct biblical interpretation is a critical issue. Some evangelicals say that the Scriptures are “infallible” (without error regarding salvation), while others insist that they are “inerrant” (without error in all matters, including both science and salvation). Those in the latter camp tend to be more devoted to biblical literalism, including, for instance, a strict and literal “creationist” reading of the early chapters of Genesis.
Sacred Symbols
From its inception, Protestantism has been iconoclastic, rejecting any object or person that might take the place of God in the hearts of believers. Thus, symbols—whether in stained glass, rosaries, or icons—have been rejected by many churches. Like other Christians, evangelicals use the cross as a symbol of their faith, but whereas Roman Catholics favor the crucifix (Jesus hanging on the cross), evangelicals almost always prefer the empty cross because it symbolizes the resurrection. Some evangelicals also use the “fish” (ICHTHYS) symbol as a representation of their faith. (In Koine Greek the first letters in the words “Jesus Christ God Son Savior” spell ichthys, the word for “fish.”) The fish symbol is often seen on the back of cars.
Early and Modern Leaders
Among the early founders of evangelical thought was Philipp Jakob Spener, whose theological text Pious Desires (Pia Desideria; 1675) and work to reform Lutheranism helped form the Pietist movement in Germany. In 18th-century England, Charles Wesley (1707-1788) was a prolific writer of hymns who helped forge the Holiness movement, which promoted the notion that total faith can lead to a state of salvation that frees one entirely of sin. The Holiness movement emerged from Methodism, which Wesley’s brother John (1703-1791) had founded. The leading figures in the Great Awakening, which helped forge evangelicalism, included Gilbert Tennent (1703-1764), an American preacher who led a radical wing of the Presbyterian church; Theodorus Jacobus Frelinghuysen (1692-c. 1747), a Dutch Pietist;and, most notably, Jonathan Edwards (1703-1758), a Congregationalist minister whose writings and sermons laid the intellectual foundation for the evangelical movement.
In the 19th century the revivalist Presbyterian minister Charles Grandison Finney continued to push American Protestants toward evangelicalism. In the early 20th century Aimee Semple McPherson (1890-1944), an American, was one of the leaders of the Pentecostal movement. Billy Graham became a pivotal figure in the second half of the 20th century, carrying the evangelical message around the globe with his innovative use of media such as radio and television.
Now that evangelicalism is a worldwide phenomenon, many contemporary leaders have been indigenous to their own countries. Edir Macedo (1945- ), for example, rose from the lower middle class of Brazil to found one of the largest churches in Latin America, the four-million-member Universal Church of the Kingdom of God, in 1977. In the United States in the early 21st century, the most visible leaders include Bill Hybels (1951- ), founder of Willow Creek Community Church in Illinois; Rick Warren (1954- ), pastor of Saddleback Church in southern California; Jim Wallis (1948- ) of Sojourners, an evangelical advocacy group based in Washington, D.C.;T. D. Jakes (1957- ), pastor of the Potter’s House in Dallas; Joel Osteen (1963- ), popular televangelist and pastor of Lakewood Church in Houston, Texas, America’s largest church in 2013;and Gabriel Salguero (1973- ), president of the National Latino Evangelical Coalition.
Major Theologians and Authors
One of the most important evangelical theologians was one of its first, the aforementioned Edwards. In Northampton, Massachusetts, Edwards led a revival and wrote numerous theological works, including the classic A Treatise concerning Religious Affections (1746), a nuanced reflection on evangelical religious experience. In the 19th century Charles Hodge (1797-1878), a theologian at Princeton Theological Seminary, created a scientific biblicism, or a theological science proving the validity of the Bible, to counter the Darwinian movement (which put forth a theory of evolution based on natural selection, or survival of the fittest) and the German historical critical method (which involved viewing the Bible from a historical perspective). In the 20th century British evangelicals such as C. S. Lewis (1898-1963) and John R. W. Stott (1921-2011) wrote apologetic works, intellectual defenses of the faith that, along with the theology of James I. Packer (1926- ), attracted a worldwide readership.
In contemporary times a movement emerged among American evangelicals promoting the idea of an intelligent designer, or an intelligent force-God—responsible for the origins of the world. This movement was supported by legal scholar Philip Johnson (1940- ), biochemist Michael Behe (1952- ), and philosopher William Dembski (19- ). American theologian Stanley J. Grenz (1950-2005) was the author of Theology for the Community of God (2000) and an interpreter of evangelical faith in the postmodern period. Roger E. Olson (1952- ), a theologian at Baylor University, wrote about evangelicalism from an Arminian (rather than Calvinist) perspective, one that emphasizes human agency instead of human inability in the salvation process. Reformed theologians such as David F. Wells (1939- ), John Piper (1946- ), and Michael Horton (1964- ), conversely, carried the standard for Calvinism.
Organizational Structure
The organizational structures of evangelicals are enormously diverse, with no central authority. This elasticity and the ability to adapt to the needs of particular cultural systems have allowed evangelical leaders to plant new churches quickly, with little or no bureaucratic approval. The authority of local evangelical leaders frequently depends on their personal charisma. The polity of the overwhelming majority of evangelical churches is congregational, meaning that decisions are made at the local level.
Houses of Worship and Holy Places
Evangelical worship centers are diverse, ranging from stadiums to churches that are no more than thatched huts. Two of the most architecturally grand include Edir Macedo’s mother church in São Paulo, Brazil, which has an arched-girder roof with a 230-foot (70-meter) clear span and holds 25,000 worshippers; and Robert Schuller’s Crystal Cathedral in Garden Grove, California, designed by the renowned architect Philip Johnson (1906-2005) and built in 1981. Schuller’s church declared bankruptcy in 2010, and the cathedral was sold to the Roman Catholic diocese two years later.
In general, however, evangelical architecture, especially in the 20th century, was less than distinguished. Because most evangelicals do not have a strong sense of sacred space, function almost invariably trumps form. Part of this derives from theology: If Jesus will return at any moment and bring an end to the world as we know it (which many evangelicals believed throughout most of the 20th century), there is no justification for spending time and money to construct ornate buildings.
In the early 21st century, evangelical religious architecture remains overwhelmingly functional. Megachurches tend to be large, cavernous spaces that resemble auditoriums or stadiums more than traditional worship spaces. Lakewood Church in Houston, for example, was formerly the Compaq Center, where the Houston Rockets of the National Basketball Association played their home basketball games.
For evangelicals there are few holy places, although their doctrine of biblical prophecy, called dispensational premillennialism, foretells that during the “last days” Jews will return to their homeland, Christians will be taken to heaven, and, seven years later, Christ will return with his followers and rule for 1,000 years from the restored Temple in Jerusalem. Israel, therefore, is understood by evangelicals to be a holy place. This explains in part evangelical political support for the state of Israel and is why many evangelicals make sojourns to the “Holy Land.”
What is Sacred
For evangelicals the Scriptures are the sacred witness to Jesus Christ as the only salvation for a person’s soul for eternity. Evangelicals may admire saints for their worthy lives, but unlike Roman Catholics or Eastern Orthodox Christians, they would regard praying to the saints, including the Blessed Virgin Mary, as a form of idolatry.
Holidays and Festivals
In general, evangelicals do not follow the traditional Christian liturgical year. Although they celebrate Christmas and recognize Easter as the focus of their faith since it commemorates the resurrection of Jesus from the dead, they tend to look askance at liturgical patterns as overly ceremonial and vaguely “papist.”
A common phrase in American evangelical parlance is that “Christianity is not a religion but a relationship with Jesus.” Thus, liturgical formality is downplayed, and conversion becomes a central focus of worship and of holidays, with festivals often serving as occasions for evangelical outreach. Many Baptist congregations, especially in the South, schedule annual “revivals” or “home-comings,” several consecutive days of religious gatherings intended to attract converts and rejuvenate the faithful. In addition, some evangelicals insist that every single Sunday is a celebration of Easter and that gathering for worship on that day marks the rising of Jesus.
Mode of Dress
Although modes of dress for evangelicals vary by region, informality is the rule for both believers and clergy. Evangelicals remain suspicious of vestments as “too Catholic,” and they also want to convey the impression of accessibility. It is not uncommon for pastors to forego coats and ties, and in warmer climates they may even be clad in shorts. There are, however, evangelical clergy in the Anglican and Catholic traditions who maintain the practice of wearing vestments and clerical collars.
Dietary Practices
Dietary restrictions for evangelicals often include a prohibition on the consumption of alcohol, although this varies by region, and the taboo has been relaxed significantly in the late 20th and early 21st centuries. This is due primarily to the historical distance from the temperance movement, an evangelical initiative that culminated in the 18th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution (passed by Congress in 1917 but later repealed by the 21st Amendment), which prohibited the consumption of alcohol. A growing number of evangelicals do not share their parents’ scruples about alcohol, though at the same time all evangelicals look askance at drunkenness. Otherwise, there are no notable restrictions.
Rituals
Most evangelicals take a “memorialist” view of the Lord’s Supper, meaning that the bread and wine merely remind the believer of the death of Jesus. As a result, Holy Communion tends to be observed infrequently, rarely more than once a month. For Roman Catholics or Episcopalians, however, the bread and wine of the Eucharist are actually considered the body and blood of Christ, so the communicant wants to partake as frequently as possible. In North America, because of evangelical ties to the temperance movement in the 19th century, evangelicals have substituted grape juice for wine. In charismatic gatherings, Holy Communion, which serves as congregational fellowship, is often followed by a period of prayer that invokes the “gifts” of the Holy Spirit in healing and prophecy.
Weddings are often seen by evangelicals as occasions for witnessing to the family, while funerals are celebrations of the moment at which believers receive their promise of eternal life. As with most evangelical gatherings, the occasions themselves are not conducted according to ritual or liturgical forms; instead they tend to include the standard evangelical elements of music and preaching.
Rites of Passage
The central rite of passage for evangelicals is conversion or a “born again” experience, which marks a turning point from sin to salvation and secures the believer’s admission to heaven. Most evangelicals reject baptismal regeneration, the doctrine that baptism makes the individual a Christian, because they regard it as a Catholic doctrine unsupported by the New Testament. For that reason, baptism is for adults, or “believers,” only; it serves as a public attestation of faith. Conversion (not baptism) is central, and evangelicals regularly recount the date and the circumstances of their conversions.
Membership
A prerequisite for membership in evangelical congregations is conversion to the faith, which is the primary rite of passage. Converts must repent, or turn from sin, and give their hearts to Jesus Christ. Local congregations frequently require prospective members to recount their conversion experiences before being admitted as members. Those accepted to membership typically agree to standards of moral purity (especially on matters of sexuality), to participate regularly in worship, and to reach out to others with the message of the “gospel of Jesus Christ.”
There is often, though not always, an expectation that the person will tithe, or give money in support of the church; unlike the Mormons, however, evangelicals generally have no mechanism for enforcement.
Proselytization is central to evangelicalism, and evangelicals have served as missionaries around the world. An extensive use of mass media is part of this mission to bring others into the faith. Evangelicals have long been pioneers in “spreading the Gospel” by means of mass communications, including print media, radio, television, and, more recently, the Internet.
Religious Tolerance
Religious freedom is a key issue for evangelicals, particularly those in the Southern Hemisphere, where evangelicalism is a minority faith; in many countries the lives of evangelicals and their families are in danger from secular as well as other religious groups. In Latin America, where Catholicism remains culturally and often politically dominant, Protestantism must struggle for both political and public acceptance. In some nations of Africa and Asia, Muslims have made it illegal for Christians to evangelize Muslims. In the United States evangelicals have supported religious freedom and tolerance, although generally as a context in which evangelization can take place rather than as a celebration of religious pluralism. Because evangelicals lack a broad ecumenical movement, international connections are rare, and institutional cooperation is not common.
Social Justice
In the 19th century evangelicalism featured a strong mission of social amelioration that included schools, children’s homes, orphanages, prison reform, hospitals, and centers for the care of the sick, elderly, and disabled. Moreover, English evangelical William Wilberforce (1759-1833), a member of the House of Commons, advocated for an end to the slave trade, which was finally abolished by Parliament in 1807. All British slaves were freed a month after Wilberforce’s death in 1833.
In the 20th century evangelicalism grew in places where there was significant poverty. In the early 21st century American evangelicals, such as Rick Warren, undertook initiatives in Africa. Part of the movement’s appeal in Africa lies in its claim and in its ability to empower the poor in countries like Nigeria and South Africa. Evangelicalism focuses less on programs for social justice, however, than it does on personal transformation, which often means a stronger work ethic and personal discipline, and on easing social problems such as hunger and the effects of natural disasters. Nonetheless, some of the largest nongovernmental global social service agencies—such as World Vision International, a program that has been in place since 1950 to help those in poverty—are evangelical. Human rights are important to, but not the focus of, evangelical advocacy.
Social Life
Whereas American evangelicalism has focused on specific social issues—for example, by taking a pro-life position on abortion and by opposing equal rights for homosexuals—evangelicals in the Southern Hemisphere have been less single-minded and have tended to focus on religious freedom. These differences have less to do with theology than with economic status. Evangelicals in North America tend to be more affluent than their Southern Hemisphere counterparts, so their political concerns revolve more around social issues than economic matters. In many parts of Latin America, however, Pentecostalism has replaced Liberation Theology as the new “theology of the people” because Pentecostalism represents the economic concerns and interests of those on the margins of society. Moreover, evangelicals in the Southern Hemisphere generally are less loyal than American evangelicals to specific economic policies (Western capitalism) or political ideologies (liberal democracy). Nonetheless, in some Latin American countries evangelicals have entered politics by forming political parties and running candidates. Latin America has more than 20 evangelical parties, and in Brazil the number of evangelical members of Parliament grew from two in 1982 to 70 three decades later.
In the United States the politicization of the Religious Right has had effects on both American evangelicalism and on politics, including a shift among evangelicals toward the Republican Party. This is often framed by an emphasis on strengthening marriage and the family. For example, Focus on the Family, an organization founded in 1977 by American psychologist James Dobson, sponsors radio broadcasts and distributes printed materials that promote its views and challenges conservative Christians to push this agenda in the public sphere. Although Focus on the Family became somewhat less overtly political with Dobson’s retirement in 2003, other organizations, such as Family Research Council (founded in 1981), have continued to advocate for right-wing causes.
The evangelical record is mixed on women’s rights. Evangelicals in pre-Civil War America championed women’s equality and even advocated for voting rights. Several evangelical women, especially in the Holiness tradition, exerted leadership roles in evangelical circles, a practice that carried over into the early decades of Pentecostalism. As the Pentecostal movement congealed into denominations, however, women steadily lost influence, consigned to roles as missionaries or as Christian educators. In today’s evangelical families women are honored as mothers and caregivers but not usually as equals. Nonetheless, many women encourage the conversion of their husbands precisely because evangelicalism dictates that males exemplify moral discipline, monogamy in marriage, and hard work in providing for the family.
Controversial Issues
Unlike Roman Catholics, evangelicals are not opposed to contraception. Evangelicals roundly condemned divorce until the late 1970s, coincident with their political embrace of Ronald Reagan, who was elected U.S. president in 1980 and had been divorced and remarried. Abortion is universally condemned, although some evangelicals insist on seeing abortion as a moral issue rather than a legal one, and adoption is encouraged as an option.
Some evangelicals, especially those who espouse a literalistic interpretation of the Bible, have pressed for the teaching of what they call “creationism” in the public schools. Creationism is the belief that God created all life at once from nothing and that evolutionary theory is therefore wrong. Courts in the United States have consistently struck down such efforts as inconsistent with the First Amendment’s disestablishment clause, which calls for a separation of church and state. Many evangelicals have responded with “scientific creationism,” an attempt to make the Genesis account of creation scientifically defensible. When those efforts were similarly declared illegal, evangelicals devised what they called “intelligent design” for public-school curricula, which was also struck down in a ruling by U.S. District Court Judge John E. Jones III in Tammy Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District in 2005.
Cultural Impact
A 2011 Pew Forum survey found that 71 percent of evangelical leaders thought that the state of evangelical Christianity in the Southern Hemisphere would be better in five years; only 44 percent surveyed believed the same about the Northern Hemisphere. Similarly, 58 percent thought that evangelical Christians were increasing their influence in the Global South, while 66 percent believed that evangelicalism’s influence was decreasing in the Global North.
The expansion of evangelicalism in Latin America has allowed Protestantism to displace the region’s traditional Catholic culture to some degree. In Africa evangelicalism has not displayed clear cultural consequences aside from a resistance to gay rights, and in Asia it has remained for the most part a personal faith.
In the United States, however, evangelicals have shrewdly adapted popular forms of culture to their uses. Evangelicalism’s success in this area derives from its relative lack of liturgical rubrics, creedal formulae, and hierarchical structures—all of which allow evangelicals to be nimble in responding to popular sentiment and market forces. This can be seen in the abundance of megachurches, the best-selling series of Christian-based Left Behind novels by Tim LaHaye and Jerry B. Jenkins, the proliferation of Christian self-help books, and the development of Christian rock and what has come to be known as Contemporary Christian Music.