As a Methodist, President George W. Bush was not a member of what scholars usually classify as an Evangelical Protestant denomination, but Evangelicals claimed him as one of their own and Bush was clearly comfortable in Evangelical circles. As the former governor of Texas with a Mexican sister-in-law, Bush was also someone who spoke highly of the positive impact of immigrants on American society and urged Congress to work with him on an (ultimately unsuccessful) immigration reform package.

Sixteen years later, another mainline Protestant won the U.S. presidency with strong support from Evangelicals, only this time on a platform of building a wall with Mexico and banning Muslims from immigrating to the United States. Donald Trump, a Presbyterian who made Evangelical appeal central to his campaign strategy, proceeded to implement one of the most punitive and restrictive immigration policy agendas in modern American history. Evangelicals and Immigration: Fault Lines Among the Faithful, by Ruth M. Melkonian-Hoover and Lyman A. Kellstedt, tells the story of what happened among Evangelical Protestants between the administrations of these two presidents. This text serves as a useful documentary account of public opinion of both Evangelical leaders and rank-and-file voters on the issue of American immigration policy over the last 20 years.

After a conceptual overview in Chapter 1 of how the authors are defining “Evangelical” (denominationally, as per current best practice), Chapter 2 presents a brief historical overview of immigration policy in the United States since the 18^th century and describes Protestant responses to changes in immigration policies and patterns during this same time period. Chapter 3 then examines how evangelical elites and advocacy groups have attempted to influence immigration conversations and policy during the last three presidential administrations (George W. Bush, Barack Obama, and Donald Trump). Contrary to conventional wisdom, Melkonian-Hoover and Kellstedt show that elite Evangelical responses to immigration were slow and tentative during the early part of the 21^st century and gradually moved in a more supportive direction to include support for comprehensive immigration reform and legalizing the status of DREAMers in the United States. When Donald Trump emerged as a leading Republican presidential candidate in 2015, however, Evangelical responses to immigration quickly polarized. While many continued to push for a compassionate approach to immigration, vocal leaders like Franklin Graham and Jerry Falwell, Jr. veered quickly to support Trump's punitive “law and order” approach to immigration policy.

Chapter 4 then focuses on rank-and-file Evangelicals in the mass American public. Triangulating a combination of Pew, PRRI, and GSS survey data, the authors demonstrate that white Evangelicals are the most conservative religious group in America when it comes to immigration policy views, while Latino Evangelicals are among the most liberal and black Evangelicals are somewhere in-between. This is further evidence that the intersection of partisanship and race is often a stronger factor than religion in driving political views in contemporary American politics.

Chapter 5 reports the results of a multivariate model of immigration attitudes that simultaneously accounts for religion, political attitudes, and demographic characteristics. Not surprisingly, political factors account for most of the variation in immigration policy attitudes, but the authors show that even when accounting for political ideology and voting behavior, religious variables still matter a little in influencing immigration attitudes. Chapter 6 shows that when clergy speak on the issue of immigration that those in the pews become, on average, more liberal in their immigration policy attitudes. The volume concludes with a discussion of paths for future research on this topic.

As with any academic text, this volume has clear strengths and weaknesses. One of the clearest advantages of this text is its comprehensive documentation of Evangelical attitudes toward immigration policy attitudes in contemporary American politics, focusing in turn on elite discourse, bivariate trends, and multivariate analyses. This includes clear discussions of where Evangelical opinion tends to be monolithic and where it tends to diversify. Another key strength of this book is that it brings together in one concise volume an overview of American immigration policy and situates modern Evangelical responses within that broader context.

One of the clearest shortcomings of this text is that it has relatively little to contribute to scholarly theorizing on the nature of the relationship between religion and politics, religion and race/ethnicity, or the effect of religious elite cues on political attitudes. That is to say, each chapter is largely descriptive and does only a little to situate its findings within the broader context of political science or sociological scholarly literature. When broader theoretical contexts are discussed, it is often to show how the empirical analyses serve to confirm existing understandings (which are sometimes cited, often not) rather than to contribute novel scholarly perspectives on this topic.

On the whole, though, the key documentary strengths of this volume make it an excellent resource for undergraduate courses on religion and politics or immigration policies. It would also be of great use to non-academic audiences looking to learn more about links between Evangelicals and immigration policy.