It’s the question that hangs out there for every author. It’s the literary equivalent of “What was going through your mind?” that athletes are inevitably asked after a contest. The question is important but sometimes difficult to answer. So I’ll try.
I have always been fascinated by why people believe what they do, and the consequences of private beliefs in the public arena. You cannot understand contemporary America without understanding the influence of evangelicals. They have helped shape American traits such as individualism, mistrust of government, hyper-patriotism, and faith in capitalism.
Many recent books have examined evangelicals through the prisms of race, gender, politics, white nationalism, and geography. They are all profitable ways to study a complicated subject. I chose to look at evangelicals as entrepreneurs, which was a road much less traveled. How do they develop their message and market it? How do they pay for their ministries? How closely do they work with business leaders and corporations? How does this shape their worldview? It took a few years of research to find satisfactory answers to these questions.