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D. Michael Lindsay is a member of the sociology faculty at Rice University and is the author of Faith in the Halls of Power: How Evangelicals Joined the American Elite. In the post below he reflects on the Republican candidates. This post originally appeared on The Immanent Frame.

Mike Huckabee’s early success in the primary season shows that evangelicals have political muscles to flex in the post-George W. Bush era. Just as scribes across the country were ready to write Huckabee’s political obituary, he came out of nowhere and won the Republican Caucuses in Iowa by nine points over Mitt Romney. He also did better in New Hampshire than many pundits predicted, and with South Carolina and many other states up for grabs in the next few weeks, Huckabee’s political star will continue to rise—at least for a few more weeks. (more…)

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D. Michael Lindsay, author of Faith in The Halls of Power, spent long hours trying to get to the bottom of the Evangelical mind-frame. In the podcast below Lindsay explains how he got the interviews that shaped his book. Additionally, on Beliefnet, they are holding a Blogalogue (such a cool word right?) about Lindsay’s research with journalists Hanna Rosin and Jeff Sharlet, evangelical author Jerry Jenkins, and former Bush aide David Kuo. Read Lindsay’s first piece here.

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The Surgeon General, Fortune 500 CEO’s, Politicians and Bono - powerful people that seem to exist in a different world with different rules. So how do they include their faith in their sometimes cut-throat professional worlds? In the second podcast from our interview with Michael Lindsay, he shares his interviewee’s takes on subjects ranging from medical ethics to making underwear ads less promiscuous - and finally lets us in on the strategy that is making the Evangelicals so successful in their rise to positions of power. The transcript of the audio is after the jump.

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Last spring, just as OUP was beginning to buzz with excitement for our fall books, D. Michael Lindsay, the author of Faith In The Halls of Power, came and talked to us. For the next couple of weeks I am going to share some of what he said. It the podcast below Lindsay tells the story of what happened when Bud McFarlane woke up from his attempted suicide attempt. The transcript of the audio is after the jump.

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D. Michael Lindsay is the author of Faith in The Halls of Power: How Evangelicals Joined the American Elite and is a member of the sociology faculty at Rice University. Lindsay conducted interviews with a variety of prominent Evangelical Americans — including two former presidents, dozens of political and government leaders, more than 100 top business executives, plus Hollywood moguls, intellectuals, athletes and other powerful figures. His book shows who the real evangelical power brokers are, how they rose to prominence, and what they’re doing with their clout. In the post below he ruminates on the role Evangelicals play in popular culture. Read Lindsay’s other blog posts here.

Evangelicals have been making strides in all kinds of places over the last thirty years. We know about their gains in Washington, but they’ve also been quite active in Hollywood. As I conducted interviews with media moguls and artists—all of whom are evangelical—I was struck by the number of times they compared themselves to another group that has also been on the move, the gay and lesbian movement. (more…)

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Michael J. Klarman is the author most recently of Unfinished Business: Racial Equality in American History and is the James Monroe Distinguished Professor of Law at the University of Virginia. His book From Jim Crow to Civil Rights: The Supreme Court and the Struggle for Racial Equality won the 2005 Bancroft Prize. In the post below Klarman commemorates the dispatch of federal troops to Little Rock by reminding us why this was such a pivotal moment. Read more posts by Klarman here.

Why Little Rock Mattered

Sept. 24, 2007 (50th anniversary of the dispatch of federal troops to Little Rock)

Fifty years ago today, President Eisenhower sent federal troops into Little Rock, Arkansas to defend the right of nine African American students to attend formerly all-white Central High School. For three reasons, Little Rock was an epic event in the modern civil rights movement. (more…)

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The post below is by Theo Calderara, editor at OUP.

Evangelicals in politics get a lot of attention these days, much of it focusing on issues like abortion. But while everyone’s watching what James Dobson is doing in America, they’re missing what Rick Warren is doing in Africa.

Last night, Michael Lindsay spoke about his new book, Faith in the Halls of Power, at the Carnegie Council for Ethics in International Affairs. One of the many fascinating things the crowd heard is that while everyone thinks evangelicals have a lot of influence on domestic issues, they’re really making an impact abroad. (more…)

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Students everywhere are heading back to school. But is school the way you remember it? In the post below D. Michael Lindsay, author of Faith In The Halls of Power: How Evangelicals Joined The American Elite, blogs about how faith has changed on campus, specifically evangelical faith. Read Lindsay’s other posts here.

Today, thousands of students will begin another year at Harvard, which begins its 369th year of classes. Since its founding, Harvard has been home to all kinds of religious believers, people of various faiths and of no faith at all. In recent decades, though, the nation’s leading university has diversified its student body geographically, ethnically, and racially. What’s surprising is how that diversity has changed Harvard’s religious makeup. (more…)

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D. Michael Lindsay is the author of Faith in The Halls of Power: How Evangelicals Joined the American Elite and is a member of the sociology faculty at Rice University. In the post below he examines the influence of religion on the military based on his experience interviewing prominent evangelical Americans. Read more by Lindsay here.

In the buildup to the General Petraeus’s appearance before Congress, we’ve been hearing a lot about partnerships between the American military and Sunni tribal leaders, like the so-called “Anbar Awakening.” These military leaders are often the only Americans Iraqis ever meet. And these leaders are more and more likely—especially at the elite level—to be evangelicals. (more…)

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This post is about introductions in more ways than one. First, let me introduce you to the author D. Michael Lindsay who will be blogging here quite a bit this fall. Lindsay is a member of the sociology faculty at Rice University and the author of Faith In The Halls of Power: How Evangelicals Joined The American Elite. Faith In The Halls of Power draws on interviews Lindsay conducted with an array of prominent Americans — including two former presidents, dozens of political and government leaders, more than 100 top business executives, plus Hollywood moguls, intellectuals, athletes and other powerful figures. His book shows who the real evangelical power brokers are, how they rose to prominence, and what they’re doing with their clout.

In the post below Lindsay recounts introducing himself Karen Hughes in a bookstore. Would you have had the “chutzpah” to walk up and introduce yourself?

Sitting down with some of the nation’s most powerful figures to talk about their faith has been an exhilarating part of my life for the last five years. More than once someone said to me, “I can’t believe I’m telling you this stuff.” (more…)

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Michael J. Klarman, won the Bancroft Prize in 2005 for From Jim Crow to Civil Rights: The Supreme Court and the Struggle for Racial Equality. Brown v. Board of Education and the Civil Rights Movement, is an abridged, paperback edition of his original masterpiece, which focuses around one major case, Brown v. Board of Education. In the original essay below Klarman, who is the James Monroe Professor of Law and Professor of History at the University of Virginia, explores political backlash.

While we ordinarily think of Brown v. Board of Education (1954) as contributing to the creation of the modern civil rights movement, Brown’s more immediate effect was to crystallize the resistance of southern whites to progressive racial change, radicalize southern politics, and create a climate ripe for violence. Indeed, prominent Court decisions interpreting the U.S. Constitution have often produced political backlashes that undermine the causes that the rulings seem to promote. (more…)

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