For many Europeans, Christian fundamentalism in the United States is almost as disturbing and alien as Islamic fanaticism.

According to American fundamentalists, people do not become born-again Christians through baptism or education, but through an intense conversion experience or a so-called personal encounter with God that obliges them to lead their lives according to more or less strict interpretations of the Bible. President George W. Bush and other members of his administr   ation regard themselves as born-again in this sense, and take advice from evangelical ministers. This brand of Christianity, with its strict division of the world into good and evil, has influenced the policies of the global superpower for years.

Rainer Traub’s recent article in Der Spiegel is worth reading, especially if you are among the ranks of American evangelicalism. As evangelicalism becomes an increasingly diverse segment in American religious life, encompassing everything and everyone from Joel Osteen to James Dobson, it grows all the more unwieldy in describing. Traub’s article is like many assessments of American evangelicals in its oversimplistic generalizations of evangelical religion. While traditional categories and sociological markers may have been useful for previous historians, one has to wonder just how those who look back to our time will be able to simultaneously capture the growing diversity among American evangelicals as well as their shared social and intellectual distinctives.

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