Awards

• Winner of Honorable Mention, Hubert Morken Best Book in Religion and Politics Award, American Political Science Association.

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9780190069186

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Why are white evangelicals so supportive of Donald Trump, when in the past evangelicals were often on the side of progressive social reforms? Many have attempted to answer that question by looking only to the present. In this book John Compton takes a longer view, convincingly arguing that the Religious Right emerged to fill the vacuum left when mainline Protestantism lost its authoritative voice in American public life. This book is required reading for anyone trying to make sense of the contemporary American religious landscape. -- David Campbell, Packey J. Dee Professor of American Democracy, University of Notre Dame As a former pastor who spent my life in the milieu described in John Compton's new book, I read with it with both personal and professional interest. Well-written and energetically researched, The End of Empathy overturned several of my previously settled assumptions, and forced me to see many of my own struggles and perplexities in a new light. Most importantly, it convinced me that evangelical leaders of the Religious Right have not actually been religious leaders; rather, they have been social mirrors, following their white flocks into a form of backlash politics that reflects their racial anxieties and resentments. An important book, especially in this conflicted time. -- Brian D. McLaren, author of The Great Spiritual Migration In this compelling contemporary history, John Compton marshals a wide range of evidence to argue that it is the decline, not the enhanced influence, of religious authority in their day-to-day lives that drives racial resentment and other conservative political characteristics associated with white evangelicals today. -- Janelle Wong author of Immigrants, Evangelicals, and Politics in an Era of Demographic Change A comprehensive, balanced, and insightful review of the liberal American Protestant story. --Kirkus Compton has written a...nuanced historical study on the loss of Protestant social influence in America.... [He argues that] the waning of [religious] authority in the 1960s and 1970s under such forces as individualism and suburbanization...led to the loss of a distinctly religious politics and the emergence of a situation where it is increasingly politics that determines religion rather than the other way around. --Religion Watch The End of Empathy will become an immediate classic in American political and religious history. [It] unearths a mountain of empirical data to support some of the darker truths that many liberals have been reluctant to accept about the rightward trend of American Protestant and evangelical institutions. --Los Angeles Review of Books

Compton seeks to explain support for Donald Trump among American Protestants, suggesting that the empathy religious voters had previously demon-strated for underprivileged groups had been compelled by mainline Protestant churches that, beginning in the 1960s, increasingly lost members to evangelical churches opposing government efforts to more equitably distribute wealth and political power. * Survival: Global Politics and Strategy * Why are white evangelicals so supportive of Donald Trump, when in the past evangelicals were often on the side of progressive social reforms? Many have attempted to answer that question by looking only to the present. In this book John Compton takes a longer view, convincingly arguing that the Religious Right emerged to fill the vacuum left when mainline Protestantism lost its authoritative voice in American public life. This book is required reading for anyone trying to make sense of the contemporary American religious landscape. * David Campbell, Packey J. Dee Professor of American Democracy, University of Notre Dame * As a former pastor who spent my life in the milieu described in John Compton's new book, I read with it with both personal and professional interest. Well-written and energetically researched, The End of Empathy overturned several of my previously settled assumptions, and forced me to see many of my own struggles and perplexities in a new light. Most importantly, it convinced me that evangelical leaders of the Religious Right have not actually been religious leaders; rather, they have been social mirrors, following their white flocks into a form of backlash politics that reflects their racial anxieties and resentments. An important book, especially in this conflicted time. * Brian D. McLaren, author of The Great Spiritual Migration * In this compelling contemporary history, John Compton marshals a wide range of evidence to argue that it is the decline, not the enhanced influence, of religious authority in their day-to-day lives that drives racial resentment and other conservative political characteristics associated with white evangelicals today. * Janelle Wong author of Immigrants, Evangelicals, and Politics in an Era of Demographic Change *

In this compelling contemporary history, John Compton marshals a wide range of evidence to argue that it is the decline, not the enhanced influence, of religious authority in their day-to-day lives that drives racial resentment and other conservative political characteristics associated with white evangelicals today. * Janelle Wong author of Immigrants, Evangelicals, and Politics in an Era of Demographic Change * As a former pastor who spent my life in the milieu described in John Compton's new book, I read with it with both personal and professional interest. Well-written and energetically researched, The End of Empathy overturned several of my previously settled assumptions, and forced me to see many of my own struggles and perplexities in a new light. Most importantly, it convinced me that evangelical leaders of the Religious Right have not actually been religious leaders; rather, they have been social mirrors, following their white flocks into a form of backlash politics that reflects their racial anxieties and resentments. An important book, especially in this conflicted time. * Brian D. McLaren, author of The Great Spiritual Migration * Why are white evangelicals so supportive of Donald Trump, when in the past evangelicals were often on the side of progressive social reforms? Many have attempted to answer that question by looking only to the present. In this book John Compton takes a longer view, convincingly arguing that the Religious Right emerged to fill the vacuum left when mainline Protestantism lost its authoritative voice in American public life. This book is required reading for anyone trying to make sense of the contemporary American religious landscape. * David Campbell, Packey J. Dee Professor of American Democracy, University of Notre Dame *

Author Information

John W. Compton is Associate Professor of Political Science at Chapman University and the author of The Evangelical Origins of the Living Constitution.

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