Introduction: a city on a hill -- Challenging the routine of religion: eighteenth-century pietism and the evangelical tradition -- Diversity and stability: the paradox of religious pluralism -- Visions of rapture: optimism and apocalypticism in American culture -- A pentecost of politics: evangelicals and public discourse -- A loftier position: American evangelicalism and the ideal of femininity -- Winning the country back: the ironies of the religious right -- The vocabulary of evangelicalism.