American evangelicals have always been innovators. They reimagined what a church could be, whether it was a humble tent in a rural field or a high-tech urban megachurch. They embraced new forms of media to spread their message to the masses. They thrived in a fiercely competitive religious marketplace.
In Soul Winners, journalist David Clary argues that this entrepreneurial spirit has indelibly shaped evangelical ministries and their worldview. For generations, evangelical leaders have partnered with tycoons to pay for their churches, crusades, and campuses. In turn, evangelicals adopted the pro-business, anti-government values of their conservative benefactors. White evangelicals evolved into the Republican Party’s most loyal voting bloc.
The close relationship between business and evangelicals has produced the growth-oriented megachurches that dot the nation’s landscape. Pastors such as Rick Warren used market research and management theory to create their “seeker-sensitive” churches. Televangelists and “prosperity gospel” preachers, most notably Joel Osteen, tell their audiences that faith will be rewarded in this world as well as in the kingdom to come.
Clary’s narrative approach brings to life colorful characters such as the ballplayer-turned-preacher Billy Sunday, who condemned the “godless social service nonsense” of liberal churches, and Billy Graham, who brought evangelicalism into the highest precincts of business and politics.
Soul Winners offers a fresh, balanced perspective on evangelicals and the consequences of their enduring influence on American life.
Clary brings an objective journalistic approach to his research and writing. … [Soul Winners is] that rare book that adeptly lays out how laissez-faire economic systems and religious fervor are often symbiotic, with both thriving because of the other.
—Seth Combs, The San Diego Union-Tribune
"Clary provides a smart, accessible overview of the history of modern evangelicalism and helps us understand how Christians who claim to represent the prince of peace became shills for Donald J. Trump—this is an excellent book." – Matthew Avery Sutton, author of Double Crossed: The Missionaries Who Spied for the United States During the Second World War
“The United States would not be what it is today without the influence of evangelism. David Clary’s Soul Winners is an extraordinarily rich and entertaining history of the out-sized, highly driven and innovative Protestant preachers who have forged American society—for better or worse—into its current religious and political condition.” — Dan Barker, Co-president of the Freedom from Religion Foundation
“With exceptional skill, David Clary has brought together the stories of America’s most successful evangelical entrepreneurs – from Billy Sunday and Aimee Semple McPherson to Franklin Graham and Paula White – providing us with a vivid and fair-minded (if sometimes frightening) portrayal of their outsized cultural, economic, and political influence. A valuable and eminently readable resource.”
– Robert Wuthnow, author of Why Religion Is Good for American Democracy
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