LAUSR

In his first monograph, Wes Markofski adds to the recent literature highlighting the various evangelical Christianities present on the American religious landscape. This work is primarily a culmination of five years of participant observation in four neo-monastic intentional communities, thousands of informal conversations, and thirty-one in-depth interviews. The author also includes a detailed textual analysis of popular books from various evangelical perspectives, including megachurch evangelicalism, the conservative Christian right, the emerging church movement, the evangelical left, and neo-monasticism. In contrast to the theological individualism and socio-political conservativism of traditional American evangelicalism, neo-monastics take what Markofski labels a holistic communitarian approach to theological, social, and political issues. In this sense, neo-monastics emphasize communal expressions of faith (e.g., living together in the same residence) and collective social action (e.g., the support of progressive taxation to resolve economic inequalities). Due to their holistic communitarian approach, neo-monastics tend to lean to the political left, while emphasizing communitarian aspects of theology, particularly orthodox views of the Trinity. Despite the contrasts to traditional American evangelicalism, Markofski emphatically states that neo-monastics are evangelicals in that they deeply value Christian scriptures and take an activist approach to their faith through evangelism. He also notes that neo-monastic communities are growing and, as the book’s title states, are transforming American evangelicalism. Markofski’s exposition of this transformation significantly contributes to the scientific study of religion. Critiquing both religious consistency theory and moral cosmology theory as reducing evangelical religio-political views to either biblical cultural meanings, as is the case with the former, or changes in social structures, as is the case with the latter, Markofski argues that we need a practical social hermeneutic of American evangelicalism. Practical, in the sense that a small set of religious symbols can generate meaningful interpretations of a range of actions that transform religious and political views. Social, in the sense that meaning Book Review 1