Product Description

As the pressures of globalization are crushing local traditions, millions of uprooted people are buying into a new American salvation product. This fundamentalist Christianity, a fusion of American popular religion and politics, is one of the most significant cultural influences exported from the United States.

This is not "old-time" religion. It is a fresh hybrid of Pentecostal fervor, mainstream evangelicalism, and bible-believing millenialism distributed by modern means: innovative megachurches and parachurches, televangelism and computerized crusades. Engaging in spiritual warfare with their global competitors--Islam, socialism, feminism, secular humanism, and Catholicism--the new fundamentalists are helping to reconfigure the role of the United States in the "new world order."

Is this kind of Christianity equipping its believers to live in free and democratic societies? The authors think not. More likely it is hastening their adaptation to a global culture of consumer gratification. The fastest-growing, most influential, and most American of the new churches are praying for imminent health and wealth, while displaying indifference to growing poverty and authoritarianism. With illuminating case studies based on extensive field research, Exporting the American Gospel demonstrates how Christian fundamentalism has taken hold in many nations across Africa, Latin America and Asia.

Product Details

Review
"...information about the real or apparent connections between the global spread of such "fundamentalism" and the expansion of U.S. influence..." -- Interpretation, April 1998

The authors offer an impressive amount of information about the real or apparent connections between the global spread of such fundamentalism and the expansion of U.S. influence within the social and political conditions created by economic developments in the post-Marxist era.
–Interpretation, April 1998

[The authors] have made their case with welcome reability and an impressive . . . grasp of both the religious and economic dimensions involved
...a new kind of Christian fundamentalism...is spreading across the globe, the authors first look at its theological origins and permutations in the USA where it combined and simplified many elements already present in 19th and 20th century conservative Protestantism..
– NT General,(1, '97)

[The authors] have made their case with welcome reability and an impressive . . . grasp of both the religious and economic dimensions involved
...a new kind of Christian fundamentalism...is spreading across the globe, the authors first look at its theological origins and permutations in the USA where it combined and simplified many elements already present in 19th and 20th century conservative Protestantism..
– NT General,(1, '97)

The authors offer an impressive amount of information about the real or apparent connections between the global spread of such fundamentalism and the expansion of U.S. influence within the social and political conditions created by economic developments in the post-Marxist era.
–Interpretation, April 1998

About the Author
Susan Rose is Associate Professor of Sociology at Dickinson College; Paul Gifford is Professor of the Study of Religions at the School of Oriental and African Studies at the University of London; and Steve Brouwer is author of Conquest and Capitalism.