A new book paints a damning portrait of America’s evangelicals

On July 4th 1976, more than 25,000 people gathered in a field in Lynchburg, Virginia, to mark, if not exactly celebrate, the bicentenary of the Declaration of Independence. The stage was decorated with jolly red, white and blue bunting and a full-scale replica of the Liberty Bell, but the message coming from the podium was grim. —a popular television preacher and founder of the nearby Liberty University—had organised the event, and he spelled out where America had gone wrong. “The nation was intended to be a Christian nation by our ,” he proclaimed. “This idea of ‘religion and politics don’t mix’ was invented by the devil to keep Christians from running their own country.”This was an odd, and oddly ahistorical, message to deliver on the 200th anniversary of a nation founded in large part on the notion of religious liberty. Rather than embrace a pluralist vision of a prosperous democracy in which people of all faiths (and no faith at all) would be left to their own beliefs, Falwell urged his audience to rescue America from the liberal, secular elites that were dragging it into the pit. Falwell would soon rebrand his followers as the Moral Majority, a block of voters that could be marshalled to support conservative causes and elect Republican candidates.