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Evangelicals, for all the cultural bogeys, have chosen to adapt more to the mainlines of American life than most other groups. Polls and surveys show them most ready to sing the battle hymns of the Republic and to support warfare in its name. They have bought into the language of reduced federal government while supporting the policies of the past score of years that see it enlarged—never more so than with the current administration. Their majority once supported the godliness-with-contentment school of stewardship but today they are as ready as any group to write and live by theological justifications for "the market" (as in Harvey Cox's famed article, "The Market as God").

Globally, thanks to their missionary and humanitarian ventures, they are well poised to "go global," though here the other religious clusters do remain very much on the scene. Evangelicals produce and buy religious bestsellers whose sales totals have left all other religious camps far behind. Though many heard the rock music beat as demonic a score of years ago, they now are at home in their $1 billion-a-year Christian rock business. They alone command religious television, and they alone produce religious celebrities—unless we want to count the Pope as one.

Such a chronicle might sound like the expression of sour grapes, envy, or resentment based on the displacement of those left behind. Parsons's word to those he called winners still applies to many taken-for-granted features of national life. Still, those Christians would have to hear the public now ask of them, "What have you done for us lately?"

Such a chronicle will almost certainly inspire some responses, noting that I here overlook important minority voices, among them the various dissenting "Evangelicals for" or "Evangelicals Concerned about" movements. And evangelicalism today, like its counterparts, has tremendous diversity. A Puerto Rican Pentecostal in New York, a billionaire Baptist in Texas, and a Yale Divinity professor can rightfully be called evangelical. I have lined up observation and evidence in these gross generalizations to make one point: evangelicalism has won enough in enough spheres that its leaders will do well to ask what happens after groups have "won."

The evangelical advance was not made in a historical vacuum. Its leaders both profited and learned from the successes and the mistakes of other Christian clusters. Anthropologist Robert Service borrowed two concepts from Thorstein Veblen that help explain this move. Veblen spoke of "the merits of borrowing" and "the penalty of taking the lead." A century ago, progressive Protestants and Catholics "took the lead" in relating to modern culture, and later-comers who once rejected modernity were able to "borrow" some of their positives while avoiding their negatives.

Protestants who dominated in America during the first half of the 20th century had original privileged access to radio and early television. Meanwhile their theologians and theorists worried about what technology, media, and propaganda would do to dehumanize people, to harm soul and spirit. They and Catholics fumbled with the media. Along came evangelicals, who had developed radio expertise almost by stealth—who but fundamentalists were listening to them in the 1920s to 1950s?—and were ready with their own approaches when television followed.

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February 2004, Vol. 48, No. 2