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Anxiety increased as he noticed that people inside the tin shacks were glowering at him, a suspicious gringo invading their turf. Was he a narc? An undercover cop? Then the chief drug lord of that neighborhood noticed on the back of his T-shirt the logo of a local Pentecostal church. He broke out in a big smile. "O, evangélicos!" he called out, and the scowls turned to smiles. Over the years, that church had extended practical help to the barrio, and now the foreign visitors were joyfully welcomed.

Many U.S. evangelicals, of course, share in that vibrancy. We staff many of the 500 Christian agencies that have sprung up since World War II to combat social problems. Megachurches based on the 17,000-member Willow Creek Community Church near Chicago and Saddleback Community Church in Southern California are replicating in major cities. A new, hard-to-classify emergent church has evolved to minister to the postmodern generation. In fact, one recent survey revealed that 93 of the top 100 rapidly growing churches in the United States identify themselves as evangelical.

Truly, you can get evangelicals to do anything. The challenge, as my friend emphasized, is that "you've also got to soften their judgmental attitudes before they can be effective."

When I was writing What's So Amazing About Grace? I conducted an informal survey among airline seatmates and other strangers willing to strike up a conversation. I would ask, "When I say the word evangelical, what comes to mind?"

Often in response I would hear the word against: Evangelicals are against abortion, against pornography, against gay rights. Or, I would hear a name like Pat Robertson or Jerry Falwell, two of the most visible (and political) representatives of evangelicalism. For many, evangelicals were a force to fear—a gang of moralists attempting to impose their will on a pluralistic society.

A journalist working in the New York media told me that editors have no qualms about assigning a Jewish person to a Jewish story, a Buddhist to a Buddhist story, or a Catholic to a Catholic story, but would never assign an evangelical to an evangelical story. Why not? "They're the ones with an agenda."

Evangelicals, according to the New York stereotype, will propagandize and proselytize. You can't trust them. They're judgmental. They have an agenda.

Pollster George Barna found that while 22 percent of Americans say they have a favorable impression of evangelicals, 23 percent report an unfavorable impression. Much of the reason traces back to the perception of evangelicals as a political force, a perception based on a most checkered history.

Until the 1960s, evangelicals were as likely to be aligned with the Democratic Party as the Republican. Evangelicals led the fight for women's suffrage and the abolition of slavery—and also the opposition to it. (Revivalist George Whitefield in the 18th century justified slavery, and Southern Baptists formed over the right of missionaries to own slaves.)

Evangelicals battled for a constitutional amendment decreeing the prohibition of alcohol, a measure later overturned and now viewed with considerable misgiving. Evangelical African Americans led the civil-rights crusade while some white evangelicals opposed it. In the 1980s, Jerry Falwell urged American Christians to buy gold Krugerrands and to promote U.S. reinvestment in South Africa in an effort to shore up the white regime. Evangelicals take a prominent role in championing the death penalty, supporting pro-life legislation, and retaining traditional definitions of marriage.

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June 2005, Vol. 49, No. 6