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Christian America is an exercise in iconoclasm. In this engaging and forceful book, Christian Smith sets out to destroy the "myth" that evangelical Protestants are a monolithic force for—depending on your worldview—reaction or reform in American political and cultural life. This book is particularly aimed at critics, journalists, and academics outside evangelicalism who cling to the belief that evangelicalism is a "demonic" force in our national life determined to undercut basic American freedoms, as well as at Christian conservative activists who are convinced that evangelicalism is an "angelic" force for cultural and political renewal in America. Smith's essential argument is twofold: first, evangelical political and cultural attitudes are much more complex, ambiguous, and ambivalent than is commonly acknowledged; and, second, to the extent that there are common beliefs and strategies guiding evangelical political and civic engagement, these beliefs and strategies pose no fundamental threat to American canons of political moderation and tolerance.

Smith unravels the complexity of American evangelicalism by relying upon more than 200 in-depth interviews with evangelicals around the country. He begins by pointing out a number of fallacies that cloud academic and popular understandings of American evangelicalism and conservative Protestantism more generally. The first is "the representative elite fallacy," which holds that the opinions of average evangelicals can be understood by consulting the opinions of evangelical elites. Smith dispatches this fallacy by arguing that prominent evangelical elites cannot possibly represent the diverse opinions of evangelical laity and that such elites often stake out controversial positions that place them outside the mainstream of evangelical lay opinion.

Another fallacy is the "ideological consistency fallacy"—the assumption that most evangelicals hold an "internally consistent and nonparadoxical worldview." Smith notes that virtually all persons, including evangelicals, hold contradictory views that reflect tensions in their own lives and cultural repertoires.

Observers, critics, and supporters of American evangelicalism also make the mistake of assuming that this subculture has a monolithic approach to cultural and political matters—what Smith calls the "monolithic religious bloc fallacy." But such an assumption overlooks crucial religious, racial, and class differences—among others—that divide evangelicals. These differences, in turn, are linked to different orientations to key cultural and political issues. Indeed, Smith argues, the ideological makeup of American evangelicalism reflects a good deal of ambivalence, ambiguity, and diversity about the core cultural and political questions facing the nation.

Are American evangelicals poised to launch a putsch on behalf of "Christian America"? Hardly, Smith says. A substantial minority of evangelicals reject the notion that America ever was a Christian nation, nor do they think it will ever be one. And even the majority of evangelicals who think that America was once Christian hold sharply differing visions of what a Christian America might now look like. Some aim to promote religious freedom, others seek a religious but not a politically imposed revival of Christian faith in the populace at large, and still others seek to impose laws informed by biblical principles. But the latter group, whose spokesmen can be found in the likes of James Kennedy, of Coral Ridge Presbyterian Church, constitute a small minority of evangelical believers. Thus, there is no consensus in the evangelical world for the kind of theocratic political strategy that worries groups like Americans United for Separation of Church and State.

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