In the United States, there are hundreds of thousands of Protestant churches whose members habitually carry their Bibles with them.

These churches--often referred to as "evangelical" or "fundamentalist"--play a crucial role in shaping American society. In this book, David Watt draws on years of fieldwork to present an elegant reinterpretation of the way that conservative Protestants influence American politics and culture.

At the heart of the book is a sympathetic, but far from uncritical, analysis of those forms of social power that are assumed to be natural among Bible-carrying Christians. While outsiders often presuppose that evangelical Christians take for granted the authority of certain institutions (among them the American state, corporations, ministers, men, and heterosexuals), Watt argues that the reality is far more complex.

This is a concise and lively book that sheds new light on the way that Bible-carrying Christians influence the way that people in America think--and avoid thinking--about social power.