Doctoral Dissertation Research: A Vision for the Center--Elite Refashioning of American Evangelicalism

本论文旨在探索美国福音主义的变化轮廓，考察其作为当代社会运动的发展，并特别关注社会领袖在这一宗教运动重塑中的作用。福音派是美国宗教版图的核心部分，在过去的三十年里它发生了变化。虽然一些研究探讨了基层的福音派运动，但很少有人关注精英在美国福音派中的作用。这篇论文假设，一群精英--他们将被称为“主要福音派教徒”--代表着福音主义的“隐藏之手”，自1976年以来，他们在改变该运动的方向、范围和战略方面发挥了重大的、往往是低调的影响。这个项目试图了解一群主要的福音派教徒是如何将这场运动从一场局限于美国生活中较低社会经济阶层的运动，转变为一场在白宫和其他具有社会影响力的职位上的运动。通过对主要福音派告密者的半结构化采访，对福音派组织文件的内容分析，以及在几个福音派聚会上的参与者观察，该项目将采用多种调查方法来审视美国社会这一重要的、不断变化的方面。拟议的研究将涉及五个主要问题：1)确定主要福音派教徒并分析他们的宗教生活；2)主要福音派网络的相对凝聚力和两极分化；3)使运动向更广泛的公众受众合法化；4)为运动提供资金，并审查权力、财富和慈善问题之间的紧张关系；以及5)社会运动领导力。这项研究的更广泛的影响如下：这项研究将有助于研究人员了解当代美国福音主义，精英的宗教生活，当代宗教运动与更广泛的社会世界互动的方式，特别是在最高级别的权力和影响，文化偶像和普通公众之间的关系，在共同的身份矩阵中，以及精英及其网络在重塑机构边界和文化剧目方面的作用。

This dissertation aims to explore the changing contours of American evangelicalism, examining its development as a contemporary social movement and paying particular attention to the role of societal leaders in the refashioning of this religious movement. Evangelicalism is a central part of the American religious landscape, and it has changed over the last thirty years. While some studies have explored the evangelical movement at the grassroots level, little scholarly attention has been directed to the role of elites within American evangelicalism. This dissertation hypothesizes that a cohort of elites-who will be called "leading evangelicals"-represent the "hidden hand" of evangelicalism and have exerted significant, often understated influence in changing the movement's direction, scope, and strategies since 1976. This project seeks to understand how a cohort of leading evangelicals have transformed the movement from one confined to the lower socio-economic strata of American life to a movement at home in the White House and among other positions of societal influence. Through semi-structured interviews with leading evangelical informants, content analysis of evangelical organizations' documents, and participant-observation at several evangelical gatherings, this project will bring to bear multiple methods of inquiry to examine this important, changing aspect of American society. The proposed research will address five primary issues: 1) identification of leading evangelicals and an analysis of their religious lives; 2) relative cohesion and polarization of leading evangelical networks; 3) legitimating the movement to a wider public audience; 4) financing the movement and examining the tensions among issues of power, wealth, and philanthropy; and 5) social movement leadership. The broader impacts of this research are as follows: This research will be of useful to researchers interested in understanding contemporary U.S. evangelicalism, elites' religious lives, ways in which contemporary religious movements interact with the wider social world, particularly at the highest levels of power and influence, the relationships between cultural icons and the general public within the matrix of a shared identity, and the role of elites and their networks in refashioning institutional boundaries and cultural repertoires.