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For decades, evangelicals have lamented their lack of representation or respect in politics, media, education, and business. Michael Lindsay, a sociology professor at Rice University, says that's no longer true. His latest book, Faith in the Halls of Power: How Evangelicals Joined the American Elite, reflects an unparalleled degree of research of evangelicals in high-profile leadership positions. Christianity Today senior writer Tim Stafford interviewed Lindsay to find out what he learned about today's newly empowered evangelicals.

You conducted 360 in-depth interviews with American evangelical leaders from every walk of life. What prompted you?

In the late 1990s, I was working for the Gallup Institute as a consultant on religion and culture. One of my responsibilities was to handle media inquiries. In the run-up to the 2000 election, there were lots of calls from reporters saying, "I need the numbers on evangelicals and how they have grown over the last 30 years." And as I looked into it, I realized that the number of Americans who self-identified as evangelicals hadn't changed much. What had changed was that evangelicals had become much more prominent. And that got me wondering what was going on.

The media's portrait of evangelicals has focused on the obvious—popular evangelicalism. Yet you found something distinct, a hidden evangelicalism.

I wouldn't say hidden, so much as one that's less understood, more behind the scenes … what one person I interviewed called "move-the-dial" Christianity—folks who have their hands on commanding positions of American society. Just by their very presence, they have the ability to affect public institutions—for instance, the way a corporate mission statement is worded, or how an educational institution is run. I found a cohort of folks who identify with American evangelicalism, but who are not quite into the bombast or the placard-bearing Christianity that is sometimes associated with evangelicalism. They were subtler and quieter, but frankly higher-ranking and more powerful.

How powerful? How influential?

The big story line is that evangelical influence in America is a lot more than people think, and yet a lot less than people think. It's more than people think, because evangelicalism is a faith that penetrates to the core of the believer's identity in such a way that if one wants to be faithful and be an artist or a producer in Hollywood, then invariably, his or her faith has to come to bear on those kinds of things. It's something you can't check at the door. So evangelical influence is not just pervasive in Washington, but at Harvard, in Hollywood, on Wall Street, and in Silicon Valley.

But it's a lot less than people think because there's not some unified strategy to co-opt or take over the country. Even if evangelicals wanted to do that (which I don't find that they do), there's too much diversity in the movement; the differences of opinion are too great. There's a lot of space between Rick Warren and Pat Robertson, between Joel Osteen and George Bush. I find no evidence of some vast, right-wing conspiracy being coordinated by evangelical power brokers.

How are these evangelicals different from more "populist" evangelicals?

The cosmopolitan evangelicals I write about are people who are just as committed to their faith, just as involved in mainstream evangelical life. By and large, they are very orthodox in their beliefs. Yet they rub shoulders with a much more diverse population. They're far from insular or inward-focused. The majority of their working day is spent with people of different faiths or of no faith. They have reached higher levels of education. One in ten of those whom I interviewed earned a degree at Harvard, either undergraduate or graduate. It's a very elite group, but it's not really about class sensibility—it's more about an orientation to the world. They read Christianity Today, but they also read The New York Times. They might go to a Christian rock concert, but they also go to the symphony. And they have a broadmindedness that goes alongside their faith.

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November 2007, Vol. 51, No. 11