A Jew Among the Evangelicals: A Guide for the Perplexed

Mark I. Pinsky is the author of The Gospel according to The Simpsons (with Samuel Parvin), The Gospel according to Disney, and A Jew among the Evangelicals. His writing has also appeared in the Los Angeles Times, New York Times, and the Columbia Journalism Review. He appears frequently in national media discussing religion and culture.

Religion journalist Pinsky's (The Gospel According to The Simpsons) political beliefs were shaped in the 1960s and 1970s at Duke and later at Columbia. In 1995, when he became the religion writer for the Orlando Sentinel, which serves an area of Florida that is home to evangelical Christians and national and international Christian missionary organizations, he found himself a Jew among fundamentalists and evangelicals. Here he describes typical Sunbelt megachurch families and other evangelicals holding a range of religious beliefs, noting that some are politically conservative while others lean more to the Left. Pinsky's book is filled with a lot of information that does not fit together neatly. Instead, it is a collection of observations based on his personal friendships with evangelicals and his journalistic inquiry showing the spectrum of beliefs held by evangelicals today. As such, it may have limited appeal to readers, be they evangelicals or nonevangelicals.-George Westerlund, formerly with Providence P.L. Copyright 2006 Reed Business Information.

What's a nice Jewish boy doing at a Baptist church on Sunday? This is not the first line of a joke, but the raison d'etre of Pinsky's account of American evangelicalism. Pinsky (The Gospel According to the Simpsons) is a reporter for the Orlando Sentinel, and his beat-religion in the Sunbelt-draws him into close contact with evangelical Christians. Here, he examines evangelical pop culture and asks hard questions about evangelicalism's attitudes toward Judaism. But it is Pinsky's treatment of evangelicals in politics that distinguishes his book from countless other journalistic forays into the land of megachurches and Veggie Tales. Pinsky shows that evangelicalism is much more politically diverse than is often acknowledged. To illustrate, Pinsky takes readers to Calvin College, where a furor erupted when President Bush was invited to speak at graduation; many of the faculty and students at this decidedly evangelical school were appalled, and some boycotted commencement rather than give tacit approval of a president they disdained. Pinsky charts a growing evangelical environmental movement and shows that though many people who believe in a literal six-day Creation are evangelicals, many evangelicals do not hold to creationism. Kudos to Pinsky for offering nuanced reporting instead of stereotypes. (Aug.) Copyright 2006 Reed Business Information.