Evangelicals Struggle With the Role of Churches in Society

What inspired you to write Moral Ambition? What sparked your interest?

 Initially I set out to study the interaction of two major U.S. trends: the proliferation of evangelical megachurches on the one hand, and the growing popularity of faith-based social ministries on the other. I was interested to see what happened when megachurches in metro regions got involved in the nonprofit sector and how this affected the culture of civil society. However, as I began doing fieldwork in Knoxville, I was quickly drawn to a different angle on the story. Read more