In recent years evangelical Christians have been increasingly turning their attention toward issues such as the environment, international human rights, economic development, racial reconciliation, and urban renewal. Such engagement marks both a return to historic evangelical social action and a pronounced expansion of the social agenda advanced by the Religious Right in the past few decades. For outsiders to evangelical culture, this trend complicates simplistic stereotypes. For insiders, it brings contention over what "true" evangelicalism means today.Beginning with an introduction that broadly outlines this "new evangelicalism," the editors identify its key elements, trace its historical lineage, account for the recent changes taking place within evangelicalism, and highlight the implications of these changes for politics, civic engagement, and American religion. The essays that follow bring together an impressive interdisciplinary team of scholars to map this new religious terrain and spell out its significance in what is sure to become an essential text for understanding trends in contemporary evangelicalism.

Table of ContentsAcknowledgmentsContributorsIntroduction: The New Evangelical Social Engagement - Brian Steensland and Philip GoffPart One: Recent Evangelical Movements and TrendsChapter One - "FORMED": Emerging Evangelicals Navigate Two Transformations - James S. BieloChapter Two - Whose Social Justice? Which Evangelicalism? Social Engagement in a Campus Ministry - John SchmalzbauerChapter Three - All Catholics Now? Spectres of Catholicism in Evangelical Social Engagement - Omri ElishaChapter Four - The New Monasticism - Will SamsonChapter Five - "We Need a Revival": Young Evangelical Women Redefine Activism in New York City - Adriane BilousChapter Six - New and Old Evangelical Public Engagement: A View from the Polls - John C. GreenPart Two: Areas of Evangelical Social EngagementChapter Seven - Green Evangelicals - Laurel KearnsChapter Eight - The Rise of the Diversity Expert: How American Evangelicals Simultaneously Accentuate and Ignore Race - Gerardo Marti and Michael O. EmersonChapter Nine - Pro-Lifers of the Left: Progressive Evangelicals' Campaign Against Abortion - Daniel K. WilliamsChapter Ten - Global Reflex: International Evangelicals, Human Rights, and the New Shape of American Social Engagement - David R. SwartzChapter Eleven - Global Poverty and Evangelical Action - Amy Reynolds and Stephen OffuttPart Three: Reflections on Evangelical Social EngagementChapter Twelve - What's New about the New Evangelical Social Engagement? - Joel CarpenterChapter Thirteen - Evangelicals of the 1970s and 2010s: What's the Same, What's Different, and What's Urgent - R. Stephen WarnerChapter Fourteen - We Need a New Reformation - Glen Harold StassenIndex