Evangelicals in the 1960s were thriving. Alongside rock ’n’ roll, the Civil Rights movement, Camelot, the New Left, and the counterculture, they helped shape one of the nation's most important eras in significant and decisive ways. In this period evangelicals could be found almost everywhere – in the nation's corporate boardrooms, in Washington, DC lobbies, in important federal offices, and at the center of the most substantial and controversial issues of the time. That evangelicals have had a significant influence on American politics and culture in recent decades came as a surprise only to those who were not paying attention. Evangelicals’ current power, often measured by the success of the religious right, is not the result of backlash, but instead represents evangelicals’ brilliant long-term mission to reclaim the influence they exercised in the nineteenth century.

Axel Schäfer's smart introduction lays out the argument of American Evangelicals and the 1960s: “evangelicals not only reacted against or appropriated the 1960s but also shaped the content and meaning of the decade's political insurgencies, economic transformations, and public policy trajectories in ways that revise established understandings of ‘liberal’ and conservative” (4). Indeed, twelve excellent essays support this thesis, beginning with the late Paul Boyer's insightful overview of religion in this tumultuous decade. The essays show that we need to take evangelicals’ work in this era very seriously.

Some of the essays in the collection focus on the hot-button cultural issues that have come to be associated with modern evangelicalism, offering new insights and analysis. Steven P. Miller examines the challenge that the civil rights movement presented for evangelicals. White Christians knew that they were supposed to love all people regardless of race, but they had long been suspicious of the political motives of those who sought redress from the federal government. Daniel K. Williams focusses on the complicated relationship between evangelicals and gender. As evangelicals rethought sex and sexuality, their views on everything from sexual practices to abortion evolved. David R. Swartz analyzes the rise of the evangelical left. The work of progressive, social-justice-oriented evangelicals among college students demonstrates that the ascension of the religious right was not foreordained. Finally, Eileen Luhr looks at the young evangelicals of the 1960s to show how they helped create a populist rhetoric of liberation that looked very much like those espoused by the student movements on the left.

Other essays in this collection deal with policy issues, showing that evangelicals were not only making a play for influence at the level of ideas but were also trying to impact the nation by shaping the ways in which the government related to its citizens. Kendrick Oliver explores the work of Watergate felon Charles Colson and the creation of evangelical prison ministries, where individual transformation and the punitive power of the state walked hand in hand. Axel Schäfer's essay deals with public funding of religious agencies working in the areas of education, health care, and social services, foreshadowing more recent debates about faith-based welfare. Emma Long's piece focusses on evangelicals’ relationship with school funding, illustrating the complicated ways in which battles over church and state played out in education. Darren Dochuk analyzes evangelicals’ relationship with the oil industry to illustrate that conservative Christians assumed important roles in corporate America. He argues that the stereotype of evangelicals as marginal, economic outsiders has never really fit. Other essays deal with evangelicals’ global encounters. Andrew Preston links evangelicals’ understanding of Vietnam to their politics and social activism to explain how and why the war became so central to evangelical understandings of the world. Hans Krabbendam focusses on missionary work in Europe, and especially how evangelicals used foreign missions as a tool for competing with their theologically liberal American counterparts. Neil J. Young focusses on the Second Vatican Council, revealing how it indirectly paved the way for more recent Catholic–evangelical alliances.

American Evangelicals and the 1960s is an invaluable essay collection. Schäfer has brought together many of the sharpest minds (and best writers) of the current generation from North America and Europe. Their work does exactly what Schäfer promises in the introduction. They help readers understand that evangelicals in recent decades were not simply reacting to the 1960s, and nor was the rise of the religious right the product of backlash. Instead, evangelicals were on the front lines in the 1960s, helping guide and shape the major issues that defined and continue to define the modern United States.