The Evangelical Crackup? The Future of the Evangelical-Republican Coalition is a collection of studies on the connection between evangelicals and the Republican Party in the context of the 2016 U.S. Presidential Election. This edited volume is a timely and comprehensive empirical contribution to the field of religion & politics. The two editors are experts in the field and have participated in the writing of some chapters. Individual chapters cover numerous aspects of evangelical politics.

Although a large part of the book's focus is on individual political behavior, chapters draw on a wider range of methodological perspectives. In addition, the final three chapters provide a broader narrative, which emphasizes continuity and speculates about future trends. These features ensure that the text will be of interest to a diverse audience that extends beyond students of political behavior.

The book is motivated by an apparent paradox, which is summarized in the book's title of an “evangelical crackup”. Why did the well-known link between evangelical voters and the Republican Party persist in 2016, despite the negative disposition of religious and party elites against Donald Trump, and the seemingly greater appeal of other presidential hopefuls? Based on these unusual features of the 2016 race, the editors frame the much anticipated crackup as a natural opportunity for empirical research on the fundamentals of the evangelical-Republican politics relationship.

The book is organized in a way that pays tribute to social movement theory. In particular, the political connection between evangelicals and the GOP over time, but especially in the most recent presidential election, is treated through the prism of three interconnected processes. First, The Evangelical Crackup? examines the social-psychological motivations and preferences of evangelical voters. Second, it also pays attention to developments at the organizational and network levels. Third, it examines a changing political landscape that offers opportunities for the reinforcement of the link between institutional religion and party politics. Individual chapters cover a variety of phenomena that include mass political behavior, party activism, the language used by party platforms and advocacy groups, and developments taking place at the level of state and local politics.

A number of observations are put forward. Among other insights, we learn that evangelical voters do not necessarily follow the cues of evangelical elites (ch. 1). Evangelical activists of the GOP played their role in Trump's election (ch. 2). Racial attitudes can explain Trump's appeal among white evangelicals (ch. 3), while there are observable changes over time in the language used in GOP party platforms (ch. 4). Internal diversity within the evangelical block is considerable and consequential for a range of attitudes and the vote, but this does not necessarily signal a crackup (chs 5, 7-12, 15). Religious conservatives have a mixed record of influencing state- and local-level politics, with better outcomes on abortion restrictions and church-state questions than on same-sex marriage (chs 6 & 13). Finally, Christian legal groups are aligned with the GOP's conservative issue positions, although not all such groups are willing to lend their explicit support to the GOP during elections (ch. 14).

Without diminishing the book's overall significance and ambitious scope, there are some further points that could have been added to the material. First, despite the close focus on the evangelical influence in politics, the reader does not get a preliminary statement that defines consistently and with precision who these evangelicals are. The evangelical population can be operationalized in various alternatives ways (as acknowledged by different chapters in the book), but most chapters do not state explicitly how they define this population.

Second, a couple of chapters (9 & 15) spend adequate time on examining the experience of nonwhite evangelicals. Considering the further increase in the nonwhite segment of the U.S. population that is expected in the future, a more extended look at the evangelical portion of that segment and its political importance would have been useful.

Lastly, the Trump administration has highlighted very emphatically the relevance of legal advocacy in motivating the connection between evangelical mobilization and the Republican Party. Although the book does not ignore this phenomenon (ch. 14), greater attention could have been paid to this priority issue for evangelical politics.

Limitations notwithstanding, this is a comprehensive study of the persistent bonds that connect evangelical Christianity and Republican politics. It is an indispensable guide for those interested in religion and politics in the context of the 2016 vote and beyond. The book even has implications that extend beyond the study of American politics: a major theme underlying the “crackup” question, the disconnect between elites and their traditional bases, is a central point of debate for many other societies in the West.