What specific impact are evangelicals having on American mainstream culture?
It’s definitely mainstream. We used to talk about evangelicals as if they were kind of a countercultural force, as if they were marginalized from the society. But if the culture we’re talking about is the popular culture, the culture of NASCAR racing and Grand Ole Opry and all the things that I see when I turn on cable television, then the influence of evangelicals is everywhere. There is a kind of emotionality to our culture that I think owes a great deal to evangelical forms of worship. There is a kind of populism to our culture that I think grows out of the way evangelicals structure their entire approach to religion. Rick Warren’s THE PURPOSE-DRIVEN LIFE and the Left Behind series, the success ofTHE PASSION OF THE CHRIST, which of course was driven by substantial evangelical marketing and involvement — are those things an indication that movie marketers and NASCAR marketers are tapping a Christian market, just going where the money is, or is it really reflecting more of a homogeni
