Going into this, I really didn't know that it was going to be such a personal story--personal, both for the author telling so much of his own story and involvement as a pastor's kid at the Sovereign Grace mothership church, and for that story being so related to my own experience with Sovereign Grace churches, the denomination that my family was part of when I was in high school.

This book is a fantastic summary of what has been going on in evangelical churches in the US since the Jesus Movement in the 70s. With as much as I have read about this stuff, I think this author really does the best at explaining it to outsiders. The book hits on all the key players and movements, the main points of what they teach and how those unique teachings affect their actions. I learned some new things about what in the heck has been happening since I left the US regarding dominionism, the 7 montains, and the New Apostalic Reformation, which I had been hearing mentioned in some places but never fully explained.

One of the unique things about this book is that the author is a journalist who takes his job very seriously, and who started covering the conservative political beat for conservative news outlets because he was a right wing insider. Many former evangelical bubble kids have undergone serious personal transformations in their beliefs about God, religion, and morality in the past decade. It has been a time of intense growth and maturity for the people who went through a "deconstruction" phase and emerged on the other side still holding on to Christianity. Our faith and religious practices have had to be abandoned or re-learned, family and friendships have been dramatically reshaped, our understanding of institutions and government has fundamentally changed, the guideposts and mentors for the first 4 decades of life needed to be abandoned and new ones searched for or cultivated, all while going through a global pandemic and significant economic insecurity. The author details these shifts in his own life, openly and evenhandedly. He explains the specific news events, conversations he had, and things he read or listened to that led him to where he is in his faith and political beliefs today.

I am a bit surprised he didnt talk about the Exvangelical movement explicitly, but maybe he figured his own story covers it in a way?

Anyways, if you are in those circles and a bit fuzzy on what has been changing in American Christianity in regards to political engagement, I would definitely recommend this book. If you are looking for a book that is scholarly or an objective analysis, I don't think this is the right fit. It relies heavily on the author's personal experiences as a framing device for telling the political story.