Recently, David R. Swartz reviewed a book for Christianity Today by Amy Sullivan entitled, The Party Faithful: How and Why the Democrats are Closing the God Gap. After reading the review, I am interested to read this book because it appears that it is another contribution to give the much needed texture to the label ‘Evangelical’, albeit from a political and historical perspective. Others have attempted to give doctrinal and theological texture to this label, which if you have time to read this you can gain a sense of the subtle diversity already latent within conservative circles of Evangelicalism. I am also interested to see what David Swartz publishes in the next few years, as I’ve seen that he’s at Notre Dame doing a dissertation under George Marsden on the evangelical left. Quickly here’s two snippets from his review of this book:

“In retrospect, the fragmentation of the evangelical Left underscores an
important reality about evangelicalism as a whole: its malleability.
Rooted in the 16th-century Reformation and “democratized” in the 19th
century, evangelicalism still nurtures an anti-authoritarian impulse.
Lacking a coherent hierarchy and willing to assume innovative cultural
shapes, evangelicalism continually evolves to fill many fissures in
American society. While this feature has contributed to its
considerable growth, it also keeps evangelicalism from speaking with
one voice. Consisting of hundreds of denominations and thousands of
para-church organizations with constituents from disparate geographies,
socio-economic statuses, and ethnicities, few evangelical leaders speak
for large numbers of constituents. Evangelicals’ engagement of diverse
politics—including New Left, progressive New Deal, and right-wing
politics, all since the early 1970s—suggests the volatility of
evangelical politics and its susceptibility to co-optation, sudden
shifts, and identity politics. The politicization of evangelicalism has
exposed the limits of evangelical politics …”

“… Moreover, it is not at all clear that evangelicals disillusioned with
conservative politics will flock to the Democratic Party. Sullivan
herself admits in the book’s closing pages that “for now, evangelicals
fleeing the GOP are labeling themselves independent.” A recent study by
Corwin Smidt of Calvin College confirms her suspicions. The number of
young evangelicals identifying as Republicans dropped from 55 to 40
percent from 2005 to 2007. But only one-third of them now call
themselves Democrats. The rest are independents. Rick Warren, for
example, who Sullivan cites as a harbinger of the greening of
evangelicalism, is far from identifying as a Democrat, despite Obama
and Clinton appearances at Saddleback and his new interests in the
African AIDS epidemic, the environment, and poverty.”

Come election day, these historians and sociologists will have more fodder for their demographics on how to splice up “Evangelicals.” Let’s just hope that they don’t get “Left Behind” in the shuffle.