Protestant Evangelicals as the Christian Other

David Hollinger opens his Christianity’s American Fate with an anecdote about arguing—from his liberal Protestant standpoint—about religion with fundamentalist classmates in Southern California. Hollinger eventually left the faith, but we are left with the impression he didn’t do so rancorously. He did so because Christianity in the United States became a hardened conservative religion deeply influenced by fundamentalists, who “constantly invoked Billy Graham” but had never heard of “the missionary doctor Albert Schweitzer, the great hero of my parents and their circle of churchgoers.”